Dear future product designer, I am happy that you are here. This profession is very close to my heart (shoutout 14 years old me, ‘hacking’ his first Adobe Photoshop CS3 using a sketchy Keygan key that I found online) so the fact that you are here, on Medium, probably late at night, reading about how to start or improve as a designer, makes you by default, a designer. You may not see this now, but you are ‘designing’ your future. Keep going (and also keep reading).

Product design is many things. Problem-solving, Ideation, Conceptualization, communication, and more words that end with ‘ion’. I never in a million years thought that I would learn so much about so many different things and subjects. As I move forward to another year in this profession, starting a new position in a new team, and launching my own tools for people to (hopefully) use, I wanted to take a look back and reflect on what lessons I learned, in hopes that this year I won’t repeat them.

You can use the lessons here to start or keep moving to a better, more professional perspective. I hope you find this valuable.

What have I learned?

1. It’s not by the book, and it probably won’t ever be.

When we learn about design thinking in school or online, we see this clean, untouched, almost surgical process, from zero to one. We see research methods step by step, ideation workshops with colored sticky notes, and cool people smiling at each other. We see flawless interface designs on 3D mockups and happy customers using them.

Unfortunately, real life is a bit different. Companies (especially in their early days) are extremely messy. You hop on as a product designer with the dream to play it by the book and generate exceptional results, and you feel let down when none of this is possible. None of your work looks like “the books”, processes are cut-off, stretched, resources do not exist, and no one besides you knows what the hell is “design thinking” anyway.

Cheer up, buttercup! you are not doing anything wrong. This is simply the stage the company is currently at design-wise. And no, comparing your company to Google is not a good idea, since you can’t compare a company 3 years in, to Google that is around since 1998. Things will be messy, they will be ‘Do first, think later’, and that is ok!

So what can you do? first, acknowledge this. Then, communicate your needs to your manager, BUT be ready to have it 50% less than what you imagined. What worked for me is to communicate and teach what design thinking is, and always aspire to do things by the book, while also realizing each company has its own DNA and its way of doing things. The ‘books’ are guidelines, anyway. The only metric that matters is ‘are our customers happy?’

2. Respect the profession.

This one is more for those who are self-taught (meaning learned online and not in a university or professional program) product designers.

Seeing many designers starting out and having feedback sessions on projects and portfolios, I came to realize that many self-taught designers lack some of the basic visual communication principles, and basic technology, and human understanding. This happens since self-taught designers are their own ‘professors’ and their own curricula, therefore they can skip to the ‘good part’ which is designing cool-looking screens and writing vague case studies with solutions that lack the right basics, tech-savviness and are biased towards what they already created.

When I started out I too wanted to get on to the part where I create smooth prototypes and cool ideas. But very early into my journey, I saw that unless I am a visual and human-understanding genius, my solutions are subpar at best.

I then did what I do in running and training, I went back to basics. Typography books, human-mind research papers, medium articles about visual basics, interview methods papers, and ideation courses filled my time and it was worth it honestly because it not only gave me the strong foundation I needed to improve significantly but also to have that professional jargon of product managers, visual and UX design leads, developers and marketing managers. Except for my CV, it was almost impossible to detect that I did not go to design school because of the effort I made with learning from the basics, just like in the university.

Respect the field of product design. Understand that the fact that you can teach yourself to be a designer is amazing, but it’s not a sign that you can skip the basics and the foundations. People spend their entire life learning and improving in this field, so you can definitely spend more time on your ABCs. Have no ego, always learn and always go back to the start.

3. Don’t stay boxed.

As Product Designers, we’re actually taught to be problem solvers. Now, you might heard it a lot and it lost its charm, but it is still a very valuable mindset and tool for companies.

As a designer, I helped set up support systems, Employee onboarding processes, email triggers, and internal task integrations. It may not sound work for a product designer, but if you look at these with the same eyes you look at the company’s actual product, these are ‘problems’ that my toolset of problem-solving and technology understanding came very handy.

Helping other departments with problems that are not design-related wasn’t my main occupation during my day don’t worry. But, when I did have some spare time I helped out with any problem that is human-related and technology-oriented. I got my peer’s respect and appreciation and scored some extra ‘points’ of credibility, even in product design areas.

You are a problem solver. It’s not just a buzzword, it’s a tool with value. Use it.

4. Stay patient, stay objective.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned this year is the importance of objectivity. Yes, we are humans, we create things by spending hours and hours in front of a computer, attending countless meetings, going through many iterations and we tend to have an opinion on what we created (which is usually positive). While this is natural, it goes against the basics of designing for people other than us (also known as bias) which can create inaccurate solutions and can also bring us frustration when things change or don’t see the light of day.

This year, I will work harder to detach myself from my work, become an objective tool for “my clients”. The work that we do is ours, but it’s not for us. Moreover, patience is a key factor in how we feel at work. Things will take more time than you think, Improving a product is a messy process and there are many different forces in a company that may feel like a conflict to our design work. This is natural. Change your mindset to fit this and you will feel less dissonance.