personal
🌱 Atomic essays
Have you heard of the term "atomic essay" coined by the Ship-30-by-30 creators? It's a fascinating concept that I absolutely adore.
An essay is a long, serious document and must be written professionally and in a structured way. We need to dedicate lots of time to writing it, which is very hard for beginners.
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Interview
After being laid off, I went through numerous job interviews. I found it helpful to organize my answers to the interviewers' many questions using the STAR method.
In this post, I will help you to organize good answers to prepare for product design interviews with STAR method.
STAR Interview Method for Product Designers
STAR interview method is a powerful tool that product designers can use to showcase skills during job interviews.
The STAR interview method is a technique used to answer behavioral interview questions.
STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result.
This method is used by many employers to assess how well a candidate has handled specific situations in the past, as a predictor of how they may handle similar situations in the future.
After being laid off, I went through numerous job interviews. I found it helpful to organize my answers to the interviewers' many questions using the STAR method.
In this post, I will help you to organize good answers to prepare for product design interviews with STAR method.
You can improve anything with 30 min a day for 30 days
🌱 The Seinfeld strategy — Don’t break the chain encourages us to use a big calendar that has a whole year on one page to keep track of progress daily.
One year seems big, but we can start smaller: the 30 for 30 challenge.
30 minutes per day in 30 days is 900 minutes in total. You can improve anything in the world if you spend 900 minutes focused.
iA Presenter is impressive
The execution of iA Presenter is fantastic! I believe they will go much further soon. I’ve just got an invite to use iA Presenter beta version. I signed up several weeks ago for curiosity and because of many good reviews from beta users.
What I can say after trying it is: “Wow! Impressive!”
Systems vs Goals
I’m always failed at exercising regularly. It usually starts with passion, the first week is awesome and motivated. But the next week, it becomes less and less.
The day I become a better designer
The day I become a better design is the day I start writing. When I was at the early stage of my career, I worked in an outsourcing company. We design and develop websites and apps for clients.
The design process usually is like this: the client gives a brief, we ask to clarify the requirement –> We sketch wireframe for the first round of presentation –> We get feedback and doing visual –> When the design is finished, we handover to engineers to develop it.
One time, a client gave us a copy of the landing page and asked us to design based on that idea. “What?” I was surprised and felt frustrated because… I had to design based on the ideas of the other!
Being a generalist helps you find the right career choice
Being a self-taught designer has been something that made me unconfident.
I hated how I never specialized in anything in particular—illustration, UI design, typography, color, animation, coding,… whatever. I always saw my work as average but later realized that I acquired many more skills.
Things I wish I knew when I started designing
5 years in the design field is not too long. But it gives me many lessons that if I knew about it before, it will be a better designer than I am today.
1. Learn to code
Why not? Many discussions about whether designers should learn to code. Let think about the team you’re working with. Who are you working with? Yes, many people: Product Manager, Quality Assurance, Delivery Lead, Data Analyst, Back-end Developer, iOS Developer, Android Developer, Web Developer,… Half of the team are developers. How do you communicate your design when talking with them without base knowledge of coding?
2. Learn to write
Writing is designing. I mentioned it many times.
Let take Twitter for example. Try to remove all the text on the app, what left you can see and do you know they are they?
More than 50% of the interface is text. If you remove it, there is not much leftover. If you don’t care about the text, your design will fall apart.
And more importantly, writing will help you be a better designer.
3. Find a way to raise your voice
As a designer, you have to convince other people to believe in your designs, your solution. You have to raise your voice.
Raise your voice doesn’t mean that you should talk very loud, yell to other people. Speaking isn’t the only way to communicate. Body language is way, writing is equally important.
Find changes to raise your voice: speaking, or writing via slack, email, or document. Just pick one medium that works for you. You don’t have to be perfect in everything.
The goal is to speak up. Be confident in your design.
4. Share work in progress
Share your work with other designers and your team member earlier, you will get early feedback from them. So you change your design early, without throwing your whole month effort.
The more time you spend on your design, the more love you will take for your design. So it would be difficult for you to receive feedback and change your design. This called the IKEA effect. It not only applies to users who spend a lot of time creating their desired item. But it also applies to designers when we spend too much time on a design solution.
So share your work earlier, when it was a rough sketch in papers, or it’s a simple wireframe or an ugly design.
5. Be Confident
Confidence gives you the courage to tell your team why you’re worth it, what you’re worth, and what they are losing by not working with you.
The term “Fake it till you make it” is easy to say, difficult to do. But if you are not confident in your design, who else will?
Don’t worry if you feel like an imposter — it’s normal. Many people feel it, so you’re not alone.
6. Embrace feeling like an imposter
Don’t worry if you feel like an imposter — it’s normal. Many people feel it, so you’re not alone.
Embrace it and spend time learning more about design and the digital world of work. Be patient and give yourself a time to get your head around it. There’s no rush.
After being laid off, I went through numerous job interviews. I found it helpful to organize my answers to the interviewers' many questions using the STAR method.
“I feel sorry for those people who know exactly what they want to be at 19.” - Phil Knight (The founder of Nike)
7. Seek out criticism
As a designer, you need criticism. Constructive criticism of your design work is the best way to grow. Learn to seek out criticism and don’t take it to heart.
“You should treat your critiques as investigations or explorations and not conclusions.” – Mike Davidson (former VP of design at Twitter)
That’s it. Thanks!