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Among all the stories I hear during my coffee chats with other seniors and mentors in the design space, I find the stories where people are successfully employed in the UX industry, only to lose their edge immediately after their first job to be the most tragic one.

“I’m passionate about solving user problems!”, they scream at the top of their lungs. Filled with adrenaline, they went through the tedious process to transition from whatever they were before to a UX professional, and they get stuck immediately after that.

We’ve all heard this somewhere before; lots of people transitioning into UX because they like it, and developing this sense of purpose wanting to be part of the process to better products, then having the reality of the job or industry hit them, and not knowing where to go next.

It wasn’t what they thought it would be.

It wasn’t something some of them were cut out for.

It wasn’t strategic for some of them, because they transitioned mid-career into an extremely saturated field where the competition won’t stop growing.

And then, for a lot of them, the interviews and job offers stopped coming.

The passion faded quickly once the reality of the industry dawns on them: A real life design career is nothing like the random case studies on your portfolios or what Youtube influencers say it is.

A design career is far more than working on the UX of multiple websites, but they don’t know how to get out of this loop to work on other things.

Be a generalist, cover every scope, do everything so you look employable.
These are the common strategies and advice that are preached by some mentors, but as evidenced by many still failing in the industry; this doesn’t really work.

The falsified rewards of being a generalist

Many influencers and bootcamp mentors hype being a generalist early career and using it as a USP to get higher salaries and more job offers.

“I used to get multiple job offers and hustled on the side because I generalised!”, they coddled, as their students looked in awe and develop a sense that they need to do the same to achieve the same results.

It’s valid to feel that way. After all, if it worked for others and the highly-regarded mentors — surely it is solid advice.

But the enthusiasm about generalising your skills will fade very quickly when the glamour of other people’s results is taken away from it.

Being a true generalist takes work; A lot of work. You need to do the market research to know what are the top skillsets and focuses of the companies you want to work at, and you need to put in a huge amount of effort to learn those skills and get the relevant experiences to be qualified for the job.

Being a generalist is not just following what trendy articles tell you to pursue. The reality behind the generalist route is far over-simplified.

Can being a generalist bring more income and revenue? Yes, it can.
Is it easy, straightforward and can be achieved in a few months? No, that is objectively impossible.

The term ‘generalist’ is being coined too casually.

Being a design generalist has a whole new definition now that the oversupply of (bad) designers has taken over.

A few years ago, designers were considered generalist (unicorns for the exceptional ones) if they could design, code and brand. If you wanted to stand out and expand your scope of work, you just learn to code well or brand well on top of your UX duties.

Now, you’re considered a generalist if you can research, design, and do UI. But wait a minute — Aren’t those the bare basics of UX?

That isn’t generalist, that’s just generic.

Even if you want to argue that there are disciplines within the UX scope, it takes multiple specialisations to be considered a generalist. Mastering UX research requires frequent hours of study in psychology and hundreds of effective experiments. Mastering UX design requires years of practice in product patterns and interaction design. Mastering UX copy is tens of thousands of words in writing to ensure clear and consistent communication across all products.

You can’t just call yourself a generalist if you barely have a few dozen hours of practice with these skills. Not only does it not look good on you, it is really unfair to the UX professionals that actually put in the work to be an expert in those areas.

Even GP doctors need to specialise in family medicine and a few other things before they can go the “General Practice” route.

You’re NOT a generalist unless you have deep knowledge in more than one discipline. So stop using that word to describe your current position if you only do basic UX.

Specialising is something mentors can’t tell you how to do

I keep telling people they need to specialise, but that advice doesn’t get very far because it’s impossible for me as a single human to point out exactly what people need to work on in their careers.

But I get it, we have a lot of career options now compared to a few years back. And according to Hick’s Law*, having more choices is overwhelming for people and causes them to not make decisions or make them slower.

*The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices.

Here’s your problem: You’re just going with the flow.

You don’t know where the market demand is outside the general UX/UI scope. You don’t know what you want for your career. So you don’t make any decision so you feel less accountable for failure if it happens.

Overwhelmed with the different opinions from design mentors and not knowing what to decide, you trap yourself by letting others decide for you instead of doing the market research of what UX skillsets and specialisations are sought after in your market by yourself.

Mentors and design leaders aren’t gods that can transcend locations and experiences. Even if we’re in your country, region, or city, we can’t tell you what you should do and where you should go in your own career.

Don’t rely on us to give you answers. In fact, stop relying on design mentors to give you a direction.

Inaction: That’s exactly how a lot of juniors today set themselves up for failure.

Job descriptions use the same title, but are ultimately specialised

Read any 5 UX designer / Product designer job description on LinkedIn right now and tell me if the job scope and role has the exact same expectations.

You will realise the answer is ‘No’. Every single job, even at junior level, has a specialised scope. Some roles lean more towards visual design, while other roles lean more into UX strategy and business. Finding a generalist role is uncommon and also can be concerning.

This might be survivorship bias, but I’ve never done an interview for a job position that didn’t specify exactly where the design role is going to sit. If you bothered to look at job descriptions when applying, you’ll know each and every one is tailored somewhat to the company’s needs and are rarely generalist.

“Follow the work.” Matthew said to me in one of our first coffee chats. And that’s exactly the advice I want to give as well, though worded differently.

You’re here in UX to work. So look for a job that needs skills and expectations best matching your experience, because you will be more likely to be hired.

Not all job titles carry the same scope.

Specialisation is a long-term career trend for design maturity

A timely example from my LinkedIn network. You’ll probably notice the same trend on job postings.

MAANG companies rarely hire generalist designers; with most of their job listings citing the desire for someone to be specialised in certain industries, products or functions. The same applies to any other company worth their weight in any industry.

You will also realise that Senior UX/UI designer roles don’t really exist. When you get to a senior level, you will look at management roles or product roles. Even more proof that staying in the UX bubble is not a career decision that makes much sense.

So, don’t think generalising will help you long-term, because you’re going to end up losing real job opportunities and career advancements from the lack of specialisation.

There are other design disciplines that got swept under the rug

When I first started in UX, it wasn’t the biggest focus or the trendiest discipline. For good reason. The design world is a huge bubble, and UX was but a tiny piece of that bubble.

Topics like Customer Experience (CX), Service Design, Enterprise Design are of much higher value because it could only be practiced by those with deep knowledge and track-records in certain industries. It also cannot be easily taught by bootcamps or formal education.

I would argue that these disciplines provide way more value and impact than UX could ever do, because they just cover a lot more ground holistically and is evidence that a company (and their design team) is actually design-mature.

According to an old study by Forrester, every dollar invested in UX brings a return between $2 and $100. The study was done in 2016, and mentions CX as the umbrella that holds the UX practice within.

Many developments happened in 2016, but the main focus of industry veterans then would be to get companies to buy into being human-centered. And I don’t have the details, but I would make a hypothesis that UX was created by these people for companies to make small investments to practice design in business.

UX was never meant to be the discipline to take over holistic design practices. It was meant as an entry-level investment for companies to grow customer-centricity into their business via simplified design principles.

Companies today, unfortunately, will find it difficult to get their 2 dollars worth if the design professionals they hire don’t have enough deep expertise in their work.

Designers are like amplifiers. As a good amplifier, we can help optimise the business by being the voice of your customers and being your eyes in the industry. Hire a bad designer? Significantly reduced impact.

How I found my specialisation early career

During my industrial design diploma, I snapped one day and thought, “Fuck this”, and I decided to pursue UX before my graduation.

Armed with absolute trash skills in design and barely any knowledge in UX, I went on a hunt to freelance for any company that would give me a chance. And that so happens to be a bunch of start-ups and small businesses.

In a sense, it did felt like I was working on a lot of products with no real direction. I was doing B2B services, healthcare, fintech, lifestyle and self-improvement products; All of which had completely different UX scope and used different technologies.

It made “specialising” in anything very difficult. How was I going to pivot my career when I’m practicing different skills and gaining bits and pieces of random experiences from my projects?

Like I mentioned in my viral article about portfolios: Presentation and storytelling is very important. And I needed to make better first impressions if I wanted more freelance gigs or an actual job.

So I unpacked my work and tried to find the similarities in each project or a recurring theme in my process*. And I found it: It was innovation.

Knowing where to look for jobs after that came easy.

*Yes, I’m telling you to affinity cluster your work, if that wasn’t obvious enough.

Diversify your work, but don’t generalise it.

It’s funny how two words can have similar meaning but are ultimately two very different strategies in this context.

Many mentors recommend generalising your work in order to figure out what you like and make your profile more attractive.

I don’t disagree with that advice, but I would tweak it a little bit.

It’s better early-stage to diversify the types of projects you do rather than to generalise your offerings.

Too many juniors and transitioning professionals think UX is a single, end-to-end process. Every generic portfolio contains projects that show the exact same design artefacts of personas, wireframes, and final UI.

You’re literally just copying and pasting the same method, but on different use scenarios. That doesn’t make you a generalist — and it definitely doesn’t make you attractive to hire.

What would work better is showing different use cases with very specific problems that need different combinations of your UX skillsets to solve. Two projects showing different workflows is better than three projects with the same end-to-end workflow.

Work smarter, not harder.

“Find your umami.” — A quote (and talk) by Vicki Tan @ Spotify

Umami is a Japanese term coined to define the “essence of deliciousness”. It is that inherent taste that is universally enjoyed, the ‘Oomph’ you get when you like your food, regardless of cuisine or ingredient.

Your specialisation is exactly like umami. It is the sweet spot where all of your skills blend together into one core theme.

When I freelanced for start-ups and businesses, I noticed that I was constantly working on new technologies like machine learning, chatbots, automation or whatever that was trendy enough to be picked up by entrepreneurs.

My knowledge in these technologies weren’t deep, and the list of stuff I’ve worked on kept growing. My curiosity for new technology only made my knowledge more vast, but not deeper.

But that was exactly where my umami is. The jack of all trades, master of none. Not a generalist, but someone who knows a bit of many technologies.

Manifest your dream career by visualising it

Using this weird skill I picked up from my industrial design program — I attempted to visualise my career using real life landscapes or objects, hoping to draw inspiration from this process.

And it spoke to me. My experience so far takes the form of Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Flats) in Bolivia. As vast as the eye can see, shallow enough to walk upon, and mirrors the skies with clarity.

That was to be the direction of my career and my North Star. And it worked brilliantly for me.

For those of you who don’t know what a salt flat is. Thank you Sausanne for the beautiful picture.

Figure out what you want your career to look like and manifest that for your own future. It doesn’t have to be abstract like my example, it can be in the form of a person you look up to, a place you wish to work at, or literally anything else.

It’s just easier to work on your future if you can see it. If you don’t visualise it for yourself, you risk trapping yourself with the success stories you see online, and chase after what you are unlikely to be able to attain and keep up with.

Closing thoughts

My biggest wish for any designer reading this right now is for them to figure out their specialisation and where they want to go in their career. The answer is already there, and you know yourself best; you just need to unpack all the work and experiences you’ve already gone through and make a decision.

Career strategy and planning doesn’t have to be an intimidating $5000 session with some career coach. Sometimes, it’s as accessible as sitting down, looking at your work and reflecting on what you have so you know where you should head next.

By no means am I discouraging generalist careers through this article. Everyone is different and will pursue a different career path, but I still stand by my opinion that most generalist designers today are actually just generic designers, nothing more. And unfortunately, it’s costing them job opportunities and their longevity in the industry.

If you’re one of them, start looking into your specialisation and see if job hunts will work better for you after. Visualise what your success is going to look like, experiment with your career, and I’m sure you’ll hit a home-run and join the many successful designers you see today.

If my article inspires you, please give it as much claps as you can! It helps me get the content out and let’s me produce more awesome articles in the future ❤️