4 Tips to Grow Your Career in Design
As the UX design industry expands, so do opportunities for designers. If you’re looking to step into a leadership role, you’ll need to have the curiosity, willingness, and desire to grow in this industry. Great design leadership means leading by example, working through challenges, and seeing the bigger picture and the role the design/product plays in the world. But how do you balance these roles and keep creatively inspired? Follow these four tips to stay connected and build your career in design.
1. Focus on creativity
All UX designers require a high level of creativity to do their jobs effectively. If you’re feeling creative, you’ll be able to collaborate well with teams and lead innovative designs. You can support your career advancement by building a better creative culture and encouraging others to do the same. Here are some ways to keep the creativity churning:
Nurture a creative work environment. UX leaders need to create a positive environment that stimulates creative thought and design. You should have a supportive space where team members feel comfortable exploring new designs and contributing freely. Let your leadership skills shine by following these practices:
- Offer positive reinforcement to other designers. Help team players understand the importance of their work. Avoid giving constant negative feedback that can stifle creativity and discourage innovative designs. Strive to create an atmosphere that encourages an open forum of design ideas and opinions.
- Give autonomy and ownership to other team members. Let other designers own their work and have the freedom to make choices to bring out the best in their designs. While a certain amount of control is good, too much domination over projects can diminish trust between teammates.
- Mix up your surroundings to unleash creativity. Allow team members the flexibility and time they need to create good designs. Try to get out of the office every once and a while to find the right atmosphere to collaborate. Be sure to take breaks to keep teams invigorated to design.
Find creative outlets to energize your team. When you have some downtime or experiencing a creative lull, step away from what you’re doing, and engage in creative design activities with other designers. Here are a couple of ways to enhance design learning and put the joy back into design:
- Playoffs by Dribbble is an online platform that allows you to upload a design and prompt the community to upload their own based on your design. It’s a great way to interact with designers, build off other creative ideas, and inspire your own creativity.
- Designercize combines traditional whiteboard exercises with retro gaming in a throwback analog design. Designercize is an excellent way for designers to test their problem-solving skills with random design prompts and different levels of difficulty.
2. Keep curious
A UX designer should always be curious about how things work and why they work a certain way. Curiosity helps you identify the problems and unlock the questions you need to ask to create a great UX design. When you approach design problems with curiosity, you’ll be able to solve problems and lead team members through challenges. Here are some ways to keep on top of your craft:
Continue to learn in the UX design field. There are plenty of online courses and learning resources at every level to help you stay current in the UX field. You can choose from online university classes to extensive online courses taught by UX design experts. Here are a couple of options to get you started:
- The University of California San Diego offers an immersive Interaction Design Specialization eight-course program that focuses on principles of visual design, perception, and cognition that inform effective interaction design. You’ll learn how to generate design ideas, prototype them, and use the prototypes to get feedback from your team, stakeholders, and users.
- Udemy online features a five-course UX and design series hosted by author and speaker Joe Natoli, an industry veteran with more than twenty-nine years of experience in the UX field. Courses include
Read thought leadership content within the UX space. There are many notable UX thought leaders that you can learn from and share their insights with others. Co-founder of the Nielson Norman Group, Don Norman is a highly influential designer in the field of UX and usability research who offers a wealth of information, from Ted Talks to essays and books.
Look at other people’s designs and ask questions. You can learn a lot by studying other designs and exploring subjects outside of UX/UI design like in psychology, art, literature, etc. to gain another perspective. Developing a sense of curiosity in other areas will help improve your designs and give you the soft skills to emerge as a leader.
3. Get inspiration from others
Inspiration can come from many places. Think about joining local professional organizations, networking groups, and online communities to connect with others who share a similar bond. Sometimes just spending an hour searching for inspiration can lead to fresh ways of looking at designs. Here are some different sources that can help ignite that creative spark:
Flip through old print design manuals. Old print design manuals offer a variety of typographies, layouts, and color schemes that are still relevant today. And there’s nothing like that moment of nostalgia that comes from looking through a vintage design manual that has a cultural significance that extends beyond design.
Check out some classic movie posters. Graphic design in film offers some of the most memorable and iconic design work in history. For graphic designers, printed artifacts that bring you back can move you forward in creative designs.
Listen to podcasts. Surprisingly, there are a number of podcasts that offer unique perspectives on graphic design. Design Matters is an excellent one that focuses on visual artists and designers but has discussions with other creative minds, like musicians and writers, that can offer tons of inspiration.
Browse your grocery store aisles. Go into your local grocery store and stroll down the food and beverage aisles. Check out the different packaging on products, from organic products to microbrews, that offer a wide range of typography and illustrations.
4. Act like a leader
Visualize the leadership role you want in UX design and outline the actions you need to take to get there. Be a thought leader within your organization and mentor others on the team. As a UX leader, you’ll need to have the ability to:
Establish, articulate, and drive a vision. Truly great leaders understand the importance that teams play in delivering outcomes and goals. You must be effectively able to communicate across different teams to achieve these goals. As a leader, you should be able to support your team and drive a vision that motivates and challenges them to create winning designs.
Act as a champion for UX design. One of the best ways you can become a champion for UX design is by teaching what you know. Contribute content to your knowledge base or lead learning sessions at your organization. When you host meetings, invite not only fellow designers but other teams to participate in the sessions and provide feedback for your cause. You can also identify other leaders in your group and build a team of champions to support UX design.
Stay Inspired
The opportunities in UX design are many. It may seem a tremendous undertaking to become a leader in the design space, but like many other skills, design leadership can be developed and learned. Continue to learn, stay inspired, and start acting like a leader now so you’ll be fully prepared to take on that leadership role.
About the author
Kim Purcell is a content writer at Neil Patel Digital. Her extensive background includes writing and editing for publishing, IT, and digital media industries, with a special focus on multimedia content and product development.
