8

Gaining “seat at the table” as early-career product designers

 3 years ago
source link: https://uxplanet.org/gaining-seat-at-the-table-as-early-career-product-designers-af9583ca50d9
Go to the source link to view the article. You can view the picture content, updated content and better typesetting reading experience. If the link is broken, please click the button below to view the snapshot at that time.
neoserver,ios ssh client

Gaining “seat at the table” as early-career product designers

You are an early-career designer entering a workforce with relative low design maturity.

You realize you need to grab a seat at the table to deliver impact. But to deliver impact, you need to grab a seat at the table.

Ha — breaking the vicirous cycle seems daunting, especially when you are both new to the field and the org.

vicirous cycle of “no seat at the table” and “no impact”
vicirous cycle of “no seat at the table” and “no impact”
Vicirous Cycle in low UX maturity org

Deliver results is the key to break the cycle

Deliver results build trust between you and stakeholders.

Working in a supportive environment helps a designer deliver best results faster. But even in a low UX maturity org, there are things inside your control you can leverage to deliver results:

Have an opinion, find a niche and find your apply to deliver results
Have an opinion, find a niche and find your apply to deliver results
Ways in your control to deliver results

✨ Have an opinion

Have right opinions and channel them to the right people

Start small & concrete. Start having strong opinions on UI or concrete user flow. For instance, is solid or outlined button the better option here? What copy can we write here to deliver the right message to users? You want to give strong rationales to show people you are thoughtful and care about things. Having the right opinions will slowly but surely establish your reputation as a UX designer.

🤔 But wait, I’m a “product/UX designer” not a “UI designer”! While the road of educating your partners about the value UX can bring is important, you want to deliver first to build trust. Having opinions on UI is a great angle here because those UI changes are concrete, actionable and visible. Once your establish initial trust by building out concrete UI, you’ll find it easier to opine on user flow and strategy decisions.

🤔 But actually, I don’t have the confidence to voice those opinions!

  • Fake it until you make it. Having a confidence posture and tone in delivering a message and convince people.
  • But you actually need to make sure your opinions are right. To do so, get more familiar with design patterns. You can infer how your products’ competitors make design decisions. You can browse and learn from design system libraries. Put in the work to make your opinions right.

Find the channel. If design decisions were being made without you — realize that someone must be making those decisions and discussing them somewhere. Find that person, ask them about the decisions, and when and where they are making them. Are there discussions going on on a JIRA ticket? Get yourself on the watchlist. Are there discussions in a secretive slack channel? Add yourself in.

✨ Find a niche

Be an expert in something, so you can help out your counterparts by leveraging your special skills. For this tip to be successful, this skill has to be

  • rare (in your company)
  • specific (in use case)
  • …and helpful (according to your counterparts).

I found my niche by knowing how to use our behavior analytics tools. This allows me to be the “go-to” person around this data tracking tooling. And I constantly pitch this tool to the product counterparts to set up success metrics, and evaluate hypotheses.

🤔 How do I find my niche if I’m just starting out? Start from what made you who you are today, and measure against what your company needs. My pathway looks something like psychology background → good data analysis skills → realize my company isn’t too data-informed → take on that responsibilities.

✨ Find your ally.

No two leaves are alike. Your PM and Eng peers probably have differnet philosophies around product managmenet.

Some folks believe it is Product’s responsibilities to own both the problem and solution space. Others find it impossibe to get to a solution without looping in designers. Folks in the latter category are more likely to be your ally in delivering quality results.

After you gain encough social credits to say “no” to projects, spend more time and effort in projects with your ally, and slowly build up to a culture where more and more Product peers feel comfortable with sharing that solution space.

Increase your peers’ perceived value of UX

As you deliver more result, you probably increase the perceived value of UX. So the next time you want to be involved in discussions, it becomes easier.

I’ve done all these things and yet don’t feel a change in culture

In that situation, consider —

  • Have I wait long enough to witness the culture change? Once a mentor told me, give it a year to see if you can change things; if not, try change where you work.
  • Are my design opinions strong? Am I finding that niche? Am I identifying the right allies?
  • What are the potential blockers, and can I influence those roadblockers? Is it design:product ratio? If so, can I advocate for more design headcounts added? Is there a sexism environment? etc.?

Good luck!

0*A0FSJRS_Sgggz4-W.jpg?q=20
gaining-seat-at-the-table-as-early-career-product-designers-af9583ca50d9
Credit to Pixar Purl

report

Recommend

About Joyk


Aggregate valuable and interesting links.
Joyk means Joy of geeK