9 things I learned in my first 3 months as a UX Designer
It’s been a little over 3 months since my first day as a UX Designer and here’s a peek of what it’s been like, some pains and gains along the way and how it’s overturned some assumptions I had before I started.
🥺 Your design is not your precious
Don’t get overly attached to your work, your first ideas won’t necessarily make it to the development stage. You iterate & iterate and it’s likely that your team will make it better before it sees the light of day, & that’s totally fine.
You might feel you iterated a good number of times before you got to the final design, but be ready to adapt. I can’t remember how many times I’ve been told “it’s a good start” when I thought my design was ready for handoff. There’s always room for improvement and it might have taken me 7 iterations to get to something final, but I’m confident with experience it’s going to take me less.
🧽 Be like a sponge & absorb all that feedback
Accept all that constructive criticism & use it to do better tomorrow. Your colours might not have the right contrast, your layout might not make sense or be too crowded — it’s trial and error that helps you learn best. I remember I was dreading my manager to go on the Figma file & observe what I was doing, but it was the times I didn’t have feedback at all that it felt more challenging. This is how you get to “wow” your team & eventually your users, you grow by actually doing it.
🤼 Be confident to challenge ideas
We’re all human & make judgement errors. As long as you have a solid reasoning to back your arguments, I’m sure your team will see value in what you bring to the table. It takes time to build up that confidence in yourself but healthy teams work by bouncing ideas off each other, so make sure you get the ball and pass it on well.
A note here, tone it down when you disagree with clients, handle it graciously for a better relationship. Get to anticipate their needs before they realise they have them. At the end of the day, they hired you to best materialiae their ideas & presenting your solution in a way that benefits them is always a safe bet.
🧔🏻 Not everything’s about the user
Before you get immersed into the people using your product you have to get a good grip of the business you’re in. Empathising with users is just as important as getting how the product works from a business POV. Understanding the company vision & strategies makes for better design decisions.
🎨🧩 There’s no UX without UI
Being able to propose great solutions to problems comes from an in-depth understanding of your users. But people often judge a book by its cover. And great functionality comes hand in hand with clean interfaces, and that’s how you elevate experiences.
📝 Get the brief right
If you want to make the best decisions, ask lots of questions to clarify the problem you’re trying to solve. Make sure you got as much details as needed in the beginning before you jump off and ideate. Be as detailed as you can clear about those constraints before you start pushing them.
✂️ Keep it simple stupid
I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead
Don’t take up too much of your user’s time. Decide for the best solution that’s easy to implement. For example, don’t make the user sign up on your app if most of its features work for guests as well. You need to show value before you want users to commit.
🤷🏻♀️ Know when to step back
I felt at time my ideas ran dry, and had to be told to take a step back to avoid getting into a creative slump. Ask someone to give you some feedback, focus on something else for a day or two and I’m sure you’ll come back with fresh ideas. Break your project down into smaller chunks, this will give you a sense of achievement and you’ll get closer to achieving your goal.
🔍 Work on your skills every single day
What gets me excited every morning is that I’ll learn something new, be it design, marketing or simply about the product I’m working on.
There’s always room for improvement, & setting time aside to learn is key to becoming a better designer & articulate your design decisions. This is how you get to speak that lingo and build products that actually make a difference in the world.
When you feel you lack inspiration, find websites you like, patterns, explore dribble, behance or awwwards and ask your team for insights and ideas. When I started, I kept saying any feedback is welcome, but with time I started asking more specific questions: What elements am I missing? What should I focus on? What’s another approach?
Shift from ‘like’ to ‘what works’ to get better at articulating your design decisions.
And most importantly, put in the time, there are no shortcuts. It took me a day to figure out the layout for a single page, but I’m confident it’ll take me less next time and that’s just how growing works.
The list could go on, I think key to growing is to always believe in what you do. It takes time to find your voice and with experience you get closer to the best version of yourself. You’re not just a pixel mover but you create experiences. Kudos to getting there 💪🏼
