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50 Notes & Quotes That Will Change You as a UX/Product Designer

 1 year ago
source link: https://uxplanet.org/50-notes-quotes-that-will-change-you-as-a-ux-product-designer-350c18023399
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50 Notes & Quotes That Will Change You as a UX/Product Designer

Yup. I shit you not. These snippets are from the designer series I did back in 2018. They’re timeless and bloody fantastic for all levels of designers. Get into it.

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Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Back in 2018, I decided to write a designer article series of 20 designers, 20 questions over 20 weeks.

I tracked down twenty amazing designers from all over the world and asked them the questions I really wanted the answers to.

I had no bloody idea what I was getting into.

It ran way over time, and I’m sure some (if not all) of the designers got the shits with me after a while. One jumped ship early on (I never heard from her again) and we lost a few halfway through as they were too busy.

Either way, I bloody loved it. I learnt (as did 1000’s of readers) so much about the world of design from such an experienced bunch of designers.

Here’s a bunch of brilliant notes and quotes from the designers of that series.

For all designers, this is one to bookmark. Enjoy.

1. Simon Pan

When I started out designing, this kind of self-loathing, imposter rhetoric magnified. I didn’t feel like a ‘real designer’ which made the work intimidating and me feel vulnerable.

Things got easier when I focussed on working hard, stretching myself outside of my comfort zone and looking for any and all types of feedback. Over time, I learned to trust myself better, and I’ve realised that natural talent isn’t a real thing — you rarely see the grit.

So trust yourself, because natural talent is bullshit. Worry less about other people’s success, and work harder on bringing and developing your best self. You are a real designer.

2. Andrew Doherty

Don’t wait for permission. I wish I knew this much sooner.

Everyone is faking it, and everyone is waiting to be told “Good job”.

If you wait for some magic document to arrive in your inbox saying“Congratulations, you did it, well done! Everyone likes you! You succeeded!”You will be waiting forever.

Just proceed with the best intentions, unapologetically, at full speed, and don’t wait for anyone to tell you that you are on the right track.

You’re a trailblazer; they have to follow you. If you follow them, you end up walking in a circle as a group.

George Bernard Shaw said:

The reasonable person adapts themselves to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to themselves. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable person.

3. Adham Dannaway

Study less and practice more.

I spent quite a lot of time studying at university, but I acquired most of my core skills through practising my craft, whether it was talking to real clients, building websites, doing tutorials or just tinkering with code.

4. Ben Huggins

The best possible thing you can do (and I wish I did more of) when you’re starting out is to identify talented people that you want to be like and do whatever it takes to work with them.

5. Chirryl-Lee Ryan

No matter what anyone tells you or what people think they know, just make shit!

6. Kymberlee Ide

To be successful in this career, you have to care…and you have to care a lot. You have to care about the users, the experience, the client, the industry, your impact, the process, the results, the benefits, the obstacles, etc. There is so much to care about, but in the end — you have to care.

Even though there will be many people who will try to force you into caring less for a million reasons including budget, timeline, resources — under no circumstances can you compromise on caring.

The moment you become complacent is the moment you will no longer be the key translator between the user and the experience.

7. Charbel Zeaiter

Your job is to make the mundane seamless and barely noticed. Sometimes the best design is no design.

8. Alessandro Floridi

Don’t fall in love with your ideas.

9. Leslie Chicoine

The problem is the solution, spend time making the problem crystal clear.

10. Buzz Osborne

“Slow down! The design/tech industry moves fast, so naturally, there’s a lot of stuff happening that makes you feel as though you’re falling behind the curve.

I’ve learned that the most important thing when I’m feeling this way is to slow down and re-focus on my craft… to stay inspired, passionate and conceptual.”

11. Nirissa Govender

“Whatever company you work at, whatever team you are part of, wherever you are in the world, always have a strong relationship with your devs.

You need their tech skills as much as they need your design skills. Awesome things come out of collaboration.”

12. Michael Wong (Mizko)

To create successful products requires team collaboration. No matter how great you are, you will always do better work in a team environment.

13. Leah Buley

Early in my career, a beloved coworker announced that he was leaving the agency we worked for to take another job.

I was crestfallen and confused. But we had so much fun!

There were foosball tables. Good coffee and snacks in the break room. Lots of time to chit chat and joke around.

His advice was that nobody will look out for your career for you, so it’s up to you to constantly monitor if your work environment is stable, healthy, and a worthy place to make your contributions.

He was alarmed by the amount of time we spent on expensive morale-building exercises and how little time we spent on actual productive, billable work.

So he was looking out for his career and getting out. I didn’t get it at the time. A few months later I was laid off. And then I understood.

14. Leslie Chicoine

Spend time staring at a blank page, practice thinking through or visualising solutionsbefore jumping into making them.

15. Kylie Timpani

Become comfortable with sharing your workeven if you don’t think it’s perfect. This sharing creates more space for the peer feedback you should seek and will help you to grow both in creative confidence and practical skill much faster.

16. Simon Pan

Always start at the end with the story you want to tell

17. Andrew Doherty

Everything is an augmentation of what already was. Once I accepted that as a designer, I felt a huge sense of relief and freedom wash over me, and I was able to relax just long enough to do some pretty cool stuff.

18. Adham Dannaway

I was once told not to take work too seriously as I’d miss all the fun. “

I’ve always been really passionate about design and work is quite important to me. I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself over the years to produce the best design work I’m capable of, and while it has pushed me to progress I don’t think the pressure and anxiety I created was necessary or helpful.

Removing the pressure and anxiety actually clears your mind and allows you to focus on work more clearly and get more done in less time while also enjoying the journey.

I’m still working on it, but if you find yourself getting too serious with your latest design project, take a step back and remember to enjoy the process.

19. Ben Huggins

A designer’s goal has to be to dig below the surface, uncover that emotional resistance, and work hard to address it.

20. Chiryl-Lee Ryan

A boss once told me he’d never seen me do anything ‘creative’. What he thought I lacked in creativity, I made up for in courage — I quit on the spot.

Bad leaders are the best teachers, and he taught me about the type of person I didn’t want to be, and the type of person I was determined to become.

21. Paula Mariselli

50% of a designers job is communication

I’d say it’s actually more like 80%. Communicating with peers, cross-functionally, and with leadership is crucial. Communication includes the range from progress updates and tactical decisions to big ideas and vision for the future.

22. Leslie Chicoine

Thinking time is invaluable.

I tend to spend the first 30 minutes of any challenge staring at a piece of paper and scribbling notes. One of my first mentors, Lane Becker, encouraged me to take this time to really think through what I know and don’t know about a problem space before I jump into any solutions. If you know the problems well, the solutions come more easily.

23. Buzz Usborne

Use real data.

My Design Director at Skype taught me the importance of not only using real photos and content in my concepts, but also to make sure numbers and maths was correct too. Designing as close to reality helps avoid a lot of the dead ends you find yourself in when designing for best-case scenarios.

24. Kaiting Huang

Lead at every level

…is one of the great pieces of advice I’ve ever received, though I forgot where it came from. I used to think that leadership only matters for people in higher management roles. However, the longer I became a designer, the more I see the fallacy in this thought.

A product designer (or interaction designer or UX designer) is essentially the “design lead” of a project overseeing the design process. This role also requires close collaboration with cross-functional peers (PM, engineers, writer…) or clients to co-shape the product vision.

The leadership could be demonstrated anywhere from “aligning visuals with the broad ecosystem” to “proactively bringing in user insights” to “driving and clearly communicating new products or features to the team and stakeholders”.

People tend to look for high-impact things to do to have an impact, but sometimes impacts can just compound organically when you think and behave like the leader disregarding how small the task is and what level you are at.

25. Graeme Fulton

Understand people (don’t be a dickhead)

26. Andrew Doherty

Incremental improvement is better than no improvement. Win the war one battle at a time. Play the long game.

27. Simon Pan

Approach any solution with a strong disbelief system.

I first heard the phrase disbelief system from Marty Neumeier’s The 46 Rules of Genius and instantly tried to embody it. Having a strong disbelief system means to be aware of confirmation bias based on the idea that ideology kills our spirit of inquiry. So rather than starting from a place of belief that you’ve created a good design solution, start from a position of curiosity and skepticism.

This becomes more challenging as you become more experienced because it’s much easier to reach for solutions that we have worked in the past. In other cases, we trick ourselves into thinking we are doing something on behalf of the user, when we are just entertaining our creative narcissism.

I personally fall into this trap all the time and wonder if this stems from reconciling a deeper desire for expression and autonomy with designing in a business environment. My advice here is to stay close to your users and continually ask yourself what would it take to see this fail?

28. Nick Babich

You aren’t your user.

While this might sound simple, this advice is of vital importance for anyone who creates products. We create products for our users, not ourselves! And our design decisions should be deeply focused on user needs, wants and desires.

29. Audrey Liu

Curiosity allows us to question existing solutions, uncover new opportunities, and maintain a growth mindset.

30. Simon Pan

Your work does not speak for itself. You do.

Many of us are taught not to brag, so when it comes to speaking about our own work we often hold back speaking about the value it brings, because we think the work will do the talking. This also assumes that someone is listening. Reconsider how can you make some noise? How you can tell stories about your work that connects on an emotional level? How can you show how you matter?

31. Nirissa Govender

Always document decisions.

We are human and we tend to forget, sometimes ‘conveniently forget’. So its best to get it down in writing, that way, you always have proof when it comes back to bite you.

32. Adham Dannaway

Have logical reasons behind your design decisions and be able to articulate them.

Design can be a subjective and creative art form, but it’s also very logical and scientific. While I like to craft beautiful products, I also believe that every detail of your product or UI should have a specific purpose and should earn its place.

33. Chirryl-Lee Ryan

Design is hard enough to explain without over-complicated design-speak. Try to imagine explaining what you’re doing to your grandmother.

34. Kymberlee Ide

If winning awards is your key motivation, you’re doing it wrong. Great design comes from wanting to make a positive difference — even in situations where it isn’t obvious — in someone’s life. Good design provides utility and creates value. Great designers pursue this.

35. Ben Huggins

Ideas aren’t precious

Explore lots of things. Then throw them away. Paper is cheap and artboards are free.

36. Stephanie Engle

Don’t try to solve everything, or you’ll end up with nothing”.

From that, I wish I understood earlier on that articulating the problem you’re solving, and principles are far more important than any hard design skill.

Problems are evergreen; tools and patterns are simply artefacts we shouldn’t be beholden to. The more senior you become, the harder it is to protect those core truths from the noise of expectations and responsibilities.

Sometimes it’s hard for people to break from solving problems using what we know, mostly because we take for granted that everything in the world was crafted from someone’s opinion too.

37. Nick Babich

Learn to ask questions and listening isn’t just to listen without talking, It’s all about hearing what the person is saying.

38. Ben Huggins

Learn and practice critique

Take the time to understand the healthiest ways to give and receive feedback. Help your team to do the same. I’ve learned a ton from Adam Connor and Aaron Irizarry’s Discussing Design.

39. Chirryl-Lee Ryan

A baby isn’t going to die.

Everything is urgent and due yesterday, but unless you are actually saving lives, your life doesn’t depend on sending that email. Prioritize enjoying life!

40. Kymberlee Ide

Brace yourself for criticism.

There is ALWAYS going to be someone who hates what you create, even if you’ve spent the last 12 months of sweat and tears on it. And over time, that someone will be you as good designers who grow and evolve become their own worst critics.

41. Alessandro Floridi

Pause.

I have learned that going crazy on a million of ideas it’s not useful. When I pause and take some time to zoom out from the path I have taken is where the epiphany happens.

42. Leslie Chicoine

Calmly and kindly repeat yourself multiple times.

Don’t get frustrated if you have to repeat a concept, request, or requirement a few times and a few different ways. After three times, call it out kindly. Humans don’t always hear things or remember things that aren’t top of mind for them, especially if they’re stressed or overwhelmed.

43. Kylie Timpani

Seek learning outside of design.

Some of my greatest growth has some from learning about topics beyond design. By all means, practice your craft but look beyond design to widen your perspectives. Areas that have helped me the most are business, psychology and code.

44. Graeme Fulton

Design isn’t everything

Design isn’t the only thing that matters — pricing matters, sales matter, code, and managers matter. Understand their needs, and help them bring in the value of design.

45. Nick Babich

Develop empathy.

Put your ego aside and learn to listen and care about others. This is a lot more than just saying ‘I care.’ It’s taking user needs as a basis for your product development.

46. Simon Pan

Don’t wait for answers.

When you feel a lack of clarity around what you should be doing and no one can give you an answer — be proactive. A critical time for proactivity, is at the start of a project where there is a lot of ambiguity or a false sense of consensus. If the problem is unclear, go find it. If the problem is framed around the business need, go find the area (if at all) where it intersects with a user need.

47. Andrew Doherty

Fight like a dog with a bone for the person who’s not in the room. The customer. And give them what they want, at all costs.

48. Stephanie Engle

Great designers are great at learning and riffing, balancing long and short work, supporting their team, partnering with other disciplines, and not taking themselves too seriously.

49. Andrew Doherty

Be like water.

Follow every path to every terminus, and truly understand the nature of the problem. Understanding the “why” of things is your superpower. It’s not a nice to have. It’s your job.

50. Graeme Fulton

You have to do what you care about and connect with … because otherwise you won’t see it through.

I like this advice because when I look back at things I’ve done well on, it’s always been because I enjoyed the process as much as the outcome.

It’s easy to trap yourself into working on something because it’s trending (e.g. bitcoin), or join a company because the name is popular and prestigious (e.g. Google/Apple). This type of thing can distract you from what you really want to do, so I find this a good question to come back to before committing to something that will claim your soul.


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