be true to your skills, learn learn and learn. 

from the best designers 
from the best blogs
from the best human, YOU.

Growth Manager

Salute the rank and not the person. The person is shit.

Product Manager

One of the best advice I got was to practice by copying the top trending posts. Try to create it pixel perfect. You will see a ton of designs from top companies. Once you start copying them you will get a sense of technique they have used and how to create certain things. Practice and practice until you can just see a design and immediately figure out the typography, hierarchy and other elements.  
  
 Obviously be sure to use it only for practice and don’t use it in your commercial projects as they are copyrighted contents.  
  
 Once you start doing it, you will see your designs improve drastically.

UX/UI Designer

Find your niche. Don't tell the recruiters that you can do everything like ui, graphics, 3D , video edit etc, you'll attract toxic places. Learn the basics well and presentation skills. Do not tell lies about your skills, they'll eventually get to know.

Always stay curious. Don't just agree to everything because there are rules that you have to follow. Keep innovating, be creative with your solutions and simplify experiences for people.

Product Designer

Do not be emotionally attached to your work. Whatever designs you make for a company, its their property and not yours. So no need to take feedback personally and multiple iterations are part of design as well.

Senior Designer

Just have fun and read this book by Austin Kelon “Steal like an Artist” it will change your entire perspective, it really helped me with everything from imposter syndrome to lack of ideas etc like stuff.

Software Engineer

Build outside your work too. Define yourself, not the brand you are working for

Consultant

Don't forget to take care of your health.

What would you say to a designer just starting out?

Operations Manager

What would you say to a designer just starting out?- Grapevine

been working at a product based startup as the only ui/ ux designer for over 6 months now. work is usually solving for and designing new features, or thinking redesign from user grievances. the products were already designed for them by an agency before my joining and feel poorly designed to me, but does the job for the users. decisions regarding usage and the how-tos of implementation are taken by the product leads.

in such a scenario, i don't see myself taking product decisions, but i try to suggest my ideas (mostly accepted) when we frame the requirements and solutions. how do i grow from just largely only designing what my leads tell me, to actually making an impact with the products we have?

background- i'm an electronics engineer, landed a design internship at a startup a little before graduation and they offered a full time role after. accepted it over my placement and it's been over 6 months in this role.

thanks & cheers :)

Growth as a designer?

Visual Designer

Hey Folks, Continuing from my previous post.
Any designer here who feels they are really skilled yet stuck doing mediocre work😶‍🌫️? I am looking for individuals who are designing for the passion of craft, individuals who gets to uncharted depths of user understanding, individuals who have realized they are more than just designers.

Comment or DM your portfolio or proudest work till date irrespective of your experience level. I will reach out to the right folks individually 🫰🏻

Giving exceptional designers a chance to shine

Question for senior designers and been in the industry for a long time. This will help others to make decisions in the right direction

If you have to start your product designer career again, what things will you do differently?

I've been in this field for about 15 years now and post-covid this field has become a borderline joke and I feel embarrassed about Design in India.

Do not think that Designing involves ONLY a lot of Visual Design work, importance to "craft", motion design etc.

The kind of work you need to do should involve a LOT of user research, planning, testing, domain knowledge, technical knowledge and actual hands on design work.  I don't get to do a lot of it today but back in the day it was all that we were taught by our Design Leads.

Now because of these influencers whenever I tell people that Design is innovative and based in Behavioural Science, they assume that my work is easy, doesn't take much time, I just have to design screens etc and I keep on explaining to them that you're wrong and there's more to it.

Thanks to clown influencers, kids think if they follow these clowns they can get into FAANG or some top tier company.

I'm really scared of the state of Design in India 5 years down the line when these design kiddies become more senior.

Former Design Head here, Here's my advice to designers today

Field is saturated and you will seriously struggle to find work. Not gate keeping, just laying out the reality. If you're up for the challenge then good, if not then you should look at some other fields.

Product design is kind of weird now and is tougher than you think. It is no more a creative field where you can come up with unique ideas or have fun creating stuff. It is intoxicating, tedious and requires constant fighting with the stakeholders, listening to your micro managers and implementing stuff they "ordered" you to do disguised as feedback. Did I say, it is mostly copy work nowadays and portraying it as a whole new feature/design that is unique to your org/team?

It’s 1% creativity, 99% stroking the ego of your managers and bosses just so you don't get laid off.

(Not at capgemini, burner account)

To all the new Product Designers/UX Designers thinking this field is easy to get into. This is the reality of our field

I’m an engineer currently trying to learn design to build my own thing eventually. I have little to no idea where to start from and what are the must-have’s

Please help me out by sharing what things you started with and they help you till date in terms of resources to get started

What design resource would you suggest?

Really excited to do this! 

Here's a little bit about my career:

- I dropped out of college to build a design studio with 20+ people for 4 years before leaving that to start another studio.

- I’ve worked across most major startups in Bangalore (not including brand names here for anonymity)

- I’ve worked across brand identity design, UX/UI, social media marketing, ad films, animation/motion graphics, and 3D

Happy to answer questions about design, freelancing, starting an agency/studio, the design industry, etc.

AMA ☞ Founder of a design studio based out of Bangalore

Founder

Welcome to Product Managers's Private Community

Curious if there are any PMs who started their careers as product designers or sth similar. If yes, would love to know your story. If someone around is has a similar story, would love to hear that as well!

Any designers turned PMs?

Worked on UX DESIGN, mobile apps, FE , micro service, devops, AR/VR, AI & ML.  Holds 25+ patents. 

AMA!

AMA - 19 years experienced VP

Executive Director

Welcome to Software Engineers's Private Community

Have you had experiences working with UX Designers which made you want to pull your hair out and smash your keyboard into the screen?

Have you instead worked with designer unicorns who made your life easy?

UX Designers who looped you in from the very start of the engagement, understood your tech stack and developmental constraints, reviewed designs with your team before pushing them to production, who crafted well-organised design systems and components which were updated in real time, making life easy for your FE developers and in time for each dev sprint?

Do you believe such designers even exist?

Please share your stories.

What do you hate about designers?

It seems unfair to me and others like me who are trying to get into the industry. People who are in the industry very well know that they didn't get an entry because they did some Jony Ive-level work. The majority of them simply got lucky in 2021. Now everyone wants superheroes in the name of product design. I wish I was doing the same job search in 2021, things would have been different.

Designers Rant

Hello
I have been working as a developer for almost 3 years now. I have been pursuing design at side and want to transition to design as career (UX/product design roles).

Need help on navigating roles and salaries from anyone who has transitioned/seen someone transition and has knowledge on this.
1. Apply for entry level roles or senior roles?
2. How to navigate salary discussions ( if recruiter says since this is your first design job we can only pay entry level salary X which is less than my current salary as a dev)?

Salary expectation in Dev to Design transition

How do you stay inspired and continuously improve your design skills?

It's it practice practice and practice or just whatever you did at work was enough?

Product Designers on GV, how did you guys proceed to refine your craft ?

I started designing around 2019, self start though i never thought this is going to be a real field designing screens but i landed here and eventually liked it. 

I started as UI/UX designer in a service based company with a mere package of 2lakh. And then after I left that company had a package of 3.5lakh.

I joined a new company 2.5 years back in a product based company 5lakh and after i got appraisal salary hit 9lakh a year.

Even though i have this much experience i am still struggling in designing a good screen as compared to Software development where you can join a good company and you can get a salary above 15 lakh for sure. Product design is hard and to be in the industry you really have to wake up and start learning whatever you have to come up with whether learning Android, web, ios , design patterns, design system or so. If your company does it or not .

After applying and rejected to different companies i am now concluding that your experience doesn't matter in this field ofcourse experience in domains works.

Trust me if you get less money, your opportunities are less. It's you who will have a good opportunity if you have good knowledge and skills.

On the personal side, i am rejected by girls who don't even do jobs ,  earning less salary, and don't even think about high salary girls.

I just wanted to flush out and want to start with a fresh mind, sorry for bringing this up. I will start again. I do again

Frustration and sadness

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?

My boss is gaslighting my design career...

How many of you are using it in your company?

What would you say to a designer just starting out?

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