My boss is gaslighting my design career...
As a UX designer, I struggled with an accounting feature due to lack of knowledge and specs.
Despite help, the process felt wrong. My boss suggested I might not be suited for this role and should rethink my career choice. How do I respond?
I understand that this might be disheartening to hear from your manager. I have been there, I worked in an agency - fucked up my first client and they refused to work with us. My manager gave me a good scolding but I was a fresher, I did what I could next - put my head down and worked.
Saying this, there are a few inputs I'd like to give:
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It's okay to fail sometimes especially when you're new to something.
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The process part is on you as a designer - none of us in our companies get enough time to do research and build LFW and HFW. Sometimes you have to do things on the fly and on your own time.
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If you had a hunch that the process didn't feel right, you should have asked for help and be pre-emptive.
As far as your response, you should fix whatever was made and learn from it. If you're passionate about design, take this comment as a challenge and prove him wrong by being a better designer than you are.
I agree with this. I have observed that while in some companies the managers ask for what research we did and in others they just ask how's the UI coming together. And honestly even as a fresher you can say that I need a bit more time to explore more UI options. See a UI oriented manager would like to see more variations created for the client. Now for you as a designer I understand that this is not a detailed work and it'll feel more like a sprint work and will lead to more redesigns because you are not sitting down and making a proper task flow or information architecture. So here the way would be to first following manager's way of doing things and then as they start trusting you, then to justify your decisions you can introduce the industry standard processes. And mind you, the extra work will require its own time, so be prepared.
Rest assured, you can always work on creating your case studies to apply for better roles.
It has only been 6 months since I joined this role and honestly the company skips a lot of design processes which I'm not in favour of. Do suggest how I should respond to this feedback. Or even to know if this should make sense to me
I have personally faced this. What i did was I didn't tell them but showed them. Took initiative, put in my extra time, did research & basis research i created design. Explained them my research & ideation and how many variations I tried and how i finalized this specific solution. Once you show them how research & initial ideation can help in creating good design, next time onward they'd understand it.
See, changes won't come in one day. Not every company follows the design process but you can change it slowly. Show results
See even if they don't change, you should do it for yourself. Companies will come and go, try to improve yourself, observe & learn as much as you can from your seniors.
Hope this helps Happy designing Enjoy the process