EDC: Recently, many designers have asked me how to improve in my current design position. In various private letters, I see that many young designers have some common problems, so TODAY I want to write some of my own superficial opinions on this problem, hoping to help my friends think and grow up. 🙂

From learning design to working for 3 years, this period is the young years of designers. Designer to design this time there is enough interest and ambition, try to learn about or think of skills and knowledge to the real world, though not necessarily in the direction of the right to try, result not ideal, but the desire of young designers will make progress continuously through the wall to find the correct development direction and breakthrough.

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The first thing that comes to mind is: look, adapt

Young designers who enter the design industry soon are exposed to a real and cruel world. They feel 100% of the external information, including the knowledge learned in school, the experience of self-practice, the sharing of online predecessors, the guidance of work leaders, the debate of business colleagues, the feedback of customers and users, etc. Faced with such a variety of external information, young designers are easy to fall into two extremes: one is completely self-centered, overconfident, have an instinctive resistance to external information, and then do their own design; One is to be controlled by external information, lose the ability to think independently, and become a design tool to completely execute the instructions of leaders, business parties, customers and users. Of course, neither of these extremes is generally a recipe for young designers to work smoothly and progress quickly at the same time.

How to solve these problems? Designers can try the “look, adapt” approach. Look, it is time to calm down and look at the world around you, whether it is the product manager who brings demanding requirements and heavy business pressure, or the design manager who constantly asks you to change the draft, or the engineer who does not fully agree with your design idea and incomplete restore your design draft… Designers should calm down and look at these challenges. In the process of looking, they should think carefully about why the design process is not smooth, and take a thorough look at each difficult task point so that they can understand the causes and consequences, so as to lay a solid foundation for solving the problems in the future.

Young designers also need to see the wider world of product design. Do a product design, to see the good and bad of other similar products, which is worth learning from, which to avoid; Look at the wider range of changes and trends in the industry, users, etc., and see if your design is outdated, adaptable, and scalable into the future.

Look inside and out, and then think about how to solve the problem. At this time, it is too early to talk about seeking breakthroughs. Young designers are often overwhelmed by the huge amount of work pressure and challenges from internal and external diversity, and the highest priority is to solve problems. The key to solving problems is how to adapt to internal and external challenges, how to solve things, how to let oneself out of the complex tasks, can relax in the work at the same time independent thinking and innovation, so as to make faster progress.

Take a simple but unrealistic example of the difficulty of designing internal communications. Let’s say you want to make a mobile App with a single page and a single monochrome shape. You designed a red circle on a white background based on your understanding of the product’s appeal and your professional knowledge of design. At this point, the product manager said, no circle, square; The design manager said, no red, pink; The development manager said, “The pink square is not going to work. The big leader fills again, white background is too drab, want purple background…

There is a lot of conflicting information out there. In the two extreme cases mentioned above, you can choose not to listen to anyone. You must have a white background and a red circle. If you choose to listen to everyone, you have to draw a round, square pink shape on a purple background and ask the developer to do it for you, which I guess you can’t do… Take a hard look at the reason for each feedback. Why do product managers emphasize shapes, or is it because squares generate better clicks and revenue? Why did the design manager choose pink? Is it because red is completely different from the competing product and needs to be tweaked to express the uniqueness of the design? Why can’t the development manager develop it? Is it because the existing controls on the platform can’t build this design portfolio quickly, and the manpower shortage can’t increase the amount of development tasks? Why does the big leader want purple background? Is it because white is too monotonous, and the leader thinks purple is more in line with the temperament of the company?

See these problems clearly before you solve them. In any product design process, if you see the problem clearly, there must be a solution. You can choose to break through one problem at a time, and then make a compromise to come up with a commercially viable solution. Probably your last delivery is a gray background, the design of the green triangle, with your own purpose, and each feedback idea is different, but the solution to solve the product manager for click-through rates and revenue demands, the design manager to design unique idea, development manager for the platform control efficiency requirements, big leadership considering the temperament of the company, So this approach goes through the layers of design decisions. It’s a process of adaptation.

The design world is amazing, and there are no conflicts or problems that can’t be solved. On the contrary, conflicts and problems often lead to better results than consensus.

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Many designers ask me what books TO read to improve, so the second point is simply to write reading. Personally, I think young designers should not rely too much on reading when they are new to work.

There are two kinds of design books, one is technical, the other is theoretical/empirical. Technical books quickly read, know the basic meaning, you can immediately begin to practice. For theoretical/experiential books, young designers are not rich in work experience, so they don’t have a real sense of immersion in reading. Therefore, many good books may be very exciting when reading, but they will forget after reading, leaving no valuable thinking and memory.

Therefore, I suggest that young designers should keep the habit of reading and practice more, and learn, verify and reflect more in actual projects. At this stage, the practical value is greater.

Of course, the benefits of reading books increase as you gain more design experience. Work 0-3 years, 3-7 years, 7-15 years the method of reading a design book is not the same, later free to write how to read the last two stages. 🙂

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Third, I want to write a personal experience. In the process of progress, young designers will meet many excellent colleagues and formidable predecessors. Communicating with them is of great value to the growth of young designers. But remember, listen, don’t listen.

Listen to others’ experience, process and ideas with an open mind. From the inside to obtain the valuable part of their own, their own think several times, see how to apply to their own body, in line with their own characteristics, and then to verify one by one.

If you don’t listen, you can’t run away from others’ conclusions. Everyone’s growth experience is unique, and the success of each project has similarities that can be copied and differences that can’t be copied. It is important to be clear about them so that we can learn in a methodical way.

Listen and don’t listen, in other words, absorb knowledge, think independently, judge cautiously and act boldly.

Today, I am free on Sunday. I integrated several points I thought of before and wrote casually. I am sorry that the content is not systematic enough. 🙂

Thanks for reading!

thanks,

yoyo