A reflection of my journey in finding my creative self and an attempt to understand why and how creative identity can be hidden.

Impostor

“You don’t look like a designer,” someone told me at the conference. I clearly remember myself that day. I was wearing a boring striped cardigan and jeans and had an ordinary look. I remember being surprised to hear that observation; it never occurred to me that I should look like someone to be someone.

I was drawn to design while pursuing my degree in engineering, and I became a designer by creating designs. For some reason, that comment stuck with me and made me wonder if I really belonged in the world of design.

But why did that opinion even matter to me? Why couldn’t I just ignore it?

I never considered myself a creative person. Creativity wasn’t an integral part of my self-image. But it is a well-known fact (or at least I assumed) that designers have to be creative. All of a sudden, calling myself a designer felt like cheating. I was missing a core requirement!

For the next few years, I continued working as a designer, but deep inside I was always questioning my work, skills, and abilities. My inner critic had a very powerful argument to question my work: — Of course this is a terrible design. You are not a designer, anyway. You don’t even look like one!”

Somehow I never developed trust in my ability to create new and unique work, in my intuition, in my ability to come up with creative ideas.

Over time, I gave up design. I spent a few years exploring other options and tried to find myself in less creative roles.

But this detour in my creative journey didn’t end up well. I clearly remember sitting in front of my computer one day and convincing myself to write an email for a customer. My mind felt empty. I was literally forcing myself to do every single action: click an email icon, click, click, click …

I physically couldn’t do this anymore. I had been in such a state of mind for several months, but I would always find a reason to keep going — mainly by thinking about obligations to my team, company, or clients. But that day, I couldn’t convince or force myself to keep doing it.

My body and mind physically refused to follow logical reasoning.

I needed this crisis to finally listen to myself and to allow myself to follow my internal callings and instincts. I didn’t know what I should be doing, or what I even wanted, but it didn’t matter. I had to change.

Unique Blob and Normalcy

Growing up, we need some authority figure (either a parent or a teacher) to validate our aspirations and creations. Intentionally or unintentionally, we look for ways to confirm with the external world that what we create is needed and welcomed.

Some of us face excitement and encouragement in our endeavors and feel safe to explore further. Others among us face indifference and criticism and move away from doing things that we are naturally drawn to and focus instead on things that are considered normal and accepted in the environment we are in.

In childhood we show up to the world as we truly are — unique, inexplicable, authentic. We spend our time doing things that we are passionate about, things that bring us joy, without questioning our abilities or reasons for doing them.

In his book “Orbiting the Giant Hairball,” Gordon Mackenzie makes the observation that by the sixth grade, very few children will admit to being creative. He suggests that societal pressures trick children out of their originality in an effort to train them away from their natural-born foolishness.

“From cradle to grave, the pressure is on: be normal.” — Gordon Mackenzie, Orbiting the Giant Hairball

I imagine our original uniqueness as a whimsically shaped blob. Each spike represents something inimitable about us. This blob is capable of contributing something to this world that nobody else can. There is power and magic in this uniqueness.

As we grow, some of us, instead of developing our unique spikes, cover them with the sediments of what is expected of us–what is encouraged by parents, teachers, society. We are pressured to be normal.

Normalcy arises when you are wrapped in the layers of sediment that grew around your unique-self. Those layers consist of social expectations, accepted models of behavior, respectable or sustainable professions, right and wrong things to spend your time and energy on. We are incentivized by following rules — so we follow them. Layer by layer, we become semi-perfect spheres: uniform and consistent.

Normal is safe, normal is predictable, it has a place in society. Our parents and our teachers shape us to be normal so we can get along in society and sustain ourselves in this world.

Creativity Artifacts

Where do my creative callings come from? How is it that something that is now such an inseparable part of my self-image wasn’t there before?

In the book “The Crossroads of Should and Must,” Elle Luna (elle luna) suggests reflecting on questions such as: “What activities brought you joy as a child? Did you prefer to spend time alone or with others? If you’re not sure, consider asking your parents. By exploring our childhood interests and tendencies, we may uncover clues about our true passions.

Growing up, I clearly remember that I had a notebook full of poems that I wrote. I was writing essays with thoughts and reflections on the books I read. Not because I had to but because I wanted to. I remember having a scrap book with a bunch of sketches of dresses and suits I drew when I decided that I wanted to be a fashion designer.

Alongside all these creations, I remember my experience of sharing them.

When I brought my poems to my father, he barely paid attention to them. He was watching TV and just briefly glanced at my notebook. I’m not even sure he was listening to one of the poems that I tried to read to him.

I don’t remember anyone asking me what I was writing all the time so I didn’t think that my essays deserved any attention. Also at some point we were forced to write essays as school assignments, and they had to follow a certain structure and format, so my attitude to writing shifted from “I enjoy reflecting on what I read and writing my thoughts” to “Writing is hard and boring.”

I was around eight years old when a real artist came to our class and taught us how to draw a real portrait. Not a comic-cartoon-looking face, but a realistic portrait. I was super excited and I carefully drew a portrait of my mother. I don’t remember how good it was, but I clearly remember how much effort and love I put into it. I remember how thoroughly I drew mom’s curly hair and high forehead and tried to pick the right shade of green for her eyes. I approached my mom in the kitchen while she was cooking dinner for us and showed her my work. She laughed at it.

I don’t remember my reaction and I don’t remember making any decisions like ”I will never draw again,” but I clearly remember feeling disappointment and disbelief in my skills.

The Journey

After years of denying myself a right to be creative, I finally came to admit my creative callings are part of who I am. The journey of exploring my passions–things that fire me up, bring me joy and meaning — led me to the fields of art, illustration, design and visual thinking.

I again felt like an impostor, an alien in the world of creatives. But this time, I also felt supported by something deep inside, and I felt firm determination and confidence to find my place in this creative world, to learn skills that I am missing, to reach for help when I need, and to pursue this journey no matter what.

This time it wasn’t just a choice: “I want to be …”. It was a clear realization that this is who I am.

Why Bother To Know Your Blob

Growing up, I deposited all the necessary sediments and became that rounded blob that meets the expectations of my environment. But after a while those sediments of normalcy started to suffocate me, depriving me from the source of my energy, motivation, senses, and meanings.

Me reclaiming my true self was not the choice I made. Sooner or later, I would come to realize the disconnect with some cherished part of my earlier and true self which were preserved under those sediments and still alive. It took courage and persistence to find ways to re-discover my spikes, embrace them and start to re-grow.

I could choose to silence and ignore this inner self, and maybe I would be very successful in cementing those sediments for all my life. But I always would be aware of the presence of the unique blob deep inside of me that is waiting for the right moment to be discovered.

It requires courage, perseverance and resources like time and money, to be who you truly are instead of who you think you’re expected to be. If you have family obligations or people dependent on you, you may not be able to quit everything and follow your bliss.

But you at least need to know it.

”It’s hard to make anything meaningful if you’re unwilling to consider and question your identity.” — Adam J. Kurtz

When you know who you are, you know your unique blob, from this state you can accentuate the spikes instead of covering them up or choose which sediments of normalcy to deposit. And this time, it will be welcomed sediments, layers of norms and skills that you choose to grow and that are tapped into your one-of-a-kind self.

Things that you can create in connection with your true self, your unfathomable magic, are much more meaningful and fulfilling. You will gain the confidence to pursue things that are hard, the passion and limitless energy to follow your dreams and goals, and perseverance to make it through challenges. Not to mention, enjoyment from every moment of what you do.

You will become a much happier human too!

Thanks for reading! If you like visual stories about design and creativity, similar to this, you can subscribe to my newsletter at Substack.

Thanks to Minnow Park, Shelagh McLellan and Alicia Kenworthy for reviewing the initial draft of this essay and providing awesome feedback.

Discovering Creativity: On Your Unique Blob and the Threat of Normalcy was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“Why is receiving critical feedback always so hard?” — I have been struggling with this question for a while and I think I found several tactics that work. In the essay for Co.Design by Fast Company I am sharing few tips on how to receive criticism and don’t feel stuck, unworthy, or incapable.

Design is subjective. There are no right or wrong solutions. There is always a spectrum of options and possibilities and with experience, we learn how to make better decisions earlier in the process.

Regular, candid, and critical feedback enables us to see shortcomings in our choices, pushes us to explore other ideas, and shows us new perspectives. Essentially, the more feedback you receive, the better designer you can become.

And here is a tricky part: While you can learn how to give good feedback, receiving it may always be hard for you. Some people can take criticism and move on, others can get hurt or start to question their abilities and skills and give up. We are all different. But in general, as designers, we learn how to be sensitive and open to other people, so we can design better products for them. The exact skill that makes us good designers also makes us terrible at receiving feedback.

In this article I want to focus on the techniques that work for me when dealing with critical feedback on my design work. Read the rest on Co.Design!

Glad to share my interview for Design x Us ! We chatted with Tasnim Merlin about my journey in design, what brought me to Google Health, what it means to be a healthcare designer and of course about visual thinking and storytelling and how it can empower designers!

—

Can you tell us about your current role as a product designer at Google Health?

We are exploring the use of AI to assist doctors in diagnosing eye disease, identifying cardiovascular risk factors and signs of anemia from the eye, and improving breast cancer screening.

In one of my recent projects, I was designing a tool that uses AI to provide a real-time assessment of diabetic retinopathy, so the patient wouldn’t have to wait months for an ophthalmologist to review their retinal images.

Diabetic retinopathy is a complication of diabetes that can cause permanent blindness. Blindness can be prevented if disease is detected early, but it is often undetected because of limited access to eye care specialists. It is a huge problem for countries like India or Thailand, where there are only about 14 eye doctors for approximately 50,000 diabetics. This is about half the ratio in the United States. It’s fascinating to work in the space where technology improves the people’s health at scale.

At the core, my role is figuring out what product we need to create to solve a problem and how to make that product a standard part of patient care, then designing it and bringing it to life. All of this is a tight collaboration with product managers, scientists, clinicians, and researchers.

A big component of design work in healthcare is making sure the product is safe for patients and aligns with regulatory requirements, which are quite strict for anything that can influence health.

Read the full interview on Design x Us!

Design critiques create space to improve designs and allow participants to gain confidence presenting work and articulating design rationales. Despite being an undeniably useful ritual, often they fail because the process stays the same while the team and project evolve.

At Google Health, we’ve learned that taking a more collaborative and iterative approach to critique can make it more meaningful and enjoyable long term. Here are a few steps we’ve applied that we hope can be helpful to you and your team.

Step 1. Understand team motivation and concerns

One of the challenges we faced with our critiques in the past was keeping them relevant when both the UX team and the project’s complexity started to grow — fast. It became tough to keep everyone up to speed on larger consumer journeys. Often, people would leave meetings feeling drained, overwhelmed, and frustrated that they weren’t able to provide meaningful feedback.

When we decided to restart the process, it was clear that first we needed to understand what had gone wrong in the past to enable us to address these challenges early on.

So, before launching your crit practice, have a conversation with the designers on your team to better understand their motivations, concerns, past experiences, and expectations.

Helpful questions to ask:

• What was your worst critique? What was bad about it?
• What was your best critique? What was good about it?
• What will make this meeting worth your time?
• What will make it a waste of your time?

This step is important to not only understand the needs around feedback sessions, but also to send a signal to your team that this is a shared practice everyone can shape and influence. Thus, when you schedule a kickoff meeting, designers will come with the right mindset, eager to co-create the critique together.

Step 2. Collaboratively define goals and principles

Once you’ve identified potential challenges, it’s time to bring everyone together around a common purpose, and get excited about future critiques. Holding a kickoff meeting is a great way to do this!

The kickoff will ensure that everyone has an opportunity to speak and that you’re all aligned in shared goals and approach. It provides a space to acknowledge struggles and begin developing a shared vision.

Here’s a sample plan for a kickoff meeting:

1. Generate ideas

Map out common needs for each of the following questions:

• Why do I want a critique?
• What is important for me as a presenter?
• What is important for me as a participant?
• What worries me?

2. Develop guiding principles

Guiding principles show how your worries and vision will be addressed in the critique format. How will you make sure that the presenter and participants get value from this meeting?

For example, one of the biggest worries of our team was the high overhead involved in preparing for a meeting. In the past, some designers had to follow rigid requirements and create a one-pager describing their project. To address this issue, we agreed that one of our principles is:

“Minimal preparation or none at all. Show what you already have!”

Another worry was that the presenter may be afraid to show weaknesses or uncertainty, so we agreed that we will establish a culture of psychological safety and learn how to deliver and receive feedback respectfully.

3. Map out logistics

Agree on the schedule and pace, and find two brave individuals to sign up for the first and second time slots. It can help to connect the critique to another routine so it is easier for folks to prioritize this meeting. With my team, we schedule it right before our weekly “Studio” — a team hang that everyone already loves and usually attends.

Create a signup document (we use Google Sheets), and assign someone to make sure that the upcoming time slot is claimed. In most cases, this will only require reminding designers to sign up. However, sometimes they will have to reach out to folks and together brainstorm on what project may benefit from feedback and help to prepare. Over time, you won’t need to remind them anymore, but at the beginning a little bit of encouragement is absolutely crucial.

We use the same signup document to capture our purpose, principles, rules, and notes. This document becomes the one-stop-shop for everything related to the critique, so it is easy to recollect what our primary guidelines are and make sure they are still true for our team’s needs.

Step 3. Critique your critiques

One of the tenets of our critiques is “Never established” — meaning that everything about this meeting is subject to change. We should continue to experiment with the format, tools, and feedback strategies.

As your team, projects, and company are always in flux, you need to keep your approach flexible as well. Your practices may perfectly suit your team’s needs and styles today, but what if things suddenly change? Say, if you all find yourselves working from home, you’ll have to find ways to run remote sketching sessions. And if a new designer joins the team, you’ll have to re-establish that environment of trust and safety.

For that same reason, it’s important to always have a way for your team to express their concerns and share ideas on what they want critiques to be. We achieve this by sending out a short survey after each session, and having a retrospective meeting after every tenth.

The following are examples of survey questions:

• Was the last meeting a good use of your time?
• What are your suggestions for future presenters?
• What are your suggestions for future participants?
• What would make our next one even better?

It takes time and requires commitment from the whole team to build a successful design critique culture. Don’t stop if you don’t get it right the first time!

Keep restating the purpose, and build continual improvement into your process so that everyone on your team feels invested in it. Before you know it, your critique practice will become an essential part of your design culture.

Many thanks to Abi Jones, Rebecca Ackermann and Sara Gabriele for providing helpful feedback on the article before publication!

A Collaborative Approach to Shaping Successful UX Critique Practices was originally published in Google Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Five Figma templates and a guide to make your next remote retrospective awesome

Running a retrospective meeting is a great way to celebrate a team’s achievements. It’s also a safe environment where everyone can speak up about the things that are bothering them and share tough feedback without blame or judgment.

In this post, I share five frameworks that I’ve found helpful in making retrospective meetings (retro) effective and fun. I created a Figma template for each one so they’re easy for you to run remotely.

Why are retrospectives important?

With my UX team at Google Health, we usually run retro after a research study, quarterly for UX critique and after new product releases.

Retrospectives help us find ways to improve collaboration, design processes and project outcomes.

For example, during our latest retro for UX critique, we found that the notetaking role feels like a burden. It’s distracting for the person taking notes and not very useful for the presenter, as notes are often difficult to interpret or match with the part of the design they’re referring to. After a discussion, we decided to remove the notetaker role from our critiques and record meetings instead. This should have the added advantage of making everyone more proactive in leaving digital comments in Figma and the presenter’s deck.

By finding and fixing little things like that together, we’re collectively making our critiques more enjoyable and useful long term.

Retros based on 2Ls and 4Ls

Duplicate Figma template

The 4Ls stand for Liked, Learned, Lacked and Longed For. It’s a format that covers both positive and negative project aspects and encourages continuous improvement.

What the 4Ls stand for

• Liked — What did the team really appreciate about the project or its phase?
• Learned — What new things did the team learn?
• Lacked — What things could the team have done differently?
• Longed For — What things did the team wish for but not get?

How to run a 4Ls retro (use for a 10–12 people team)

1. Give your team members 3–5 minutes to silently put a sticky note on their individual Figma board for each category, what they Liked, Learned, Lacked and Longed For.
2. Divide the team into four sub-teams, assign an “L” board to each and give them 10 minutes to cluster the notes into themes.
3. Ask each team to present their themes (10 minutes).
4. Select the five most important items on either the “Lacked” board or the “Longed For” board then, as a group, decide how you want to resolve them. Put notes on a “What’s next?” board (20 minutes).
5. For each action item on the “What’s next?” board, assign someone to be responsible for making it happen (10 minutes).

For smaller teams, I’ve found, it’s more effective to shorten this format to 2Ls: Liked and Lacked. Limiting yourselves to 2Ls leaves more time for deeper discussions and brainstorming.

How to run a 2Ls retro (use for a 5–6 people team)

1. Give everyone 5 minutes to jot down what they Liked on a sticky note on their individual Figma board. Then ask each person to share their note and explain any details.
2. All together, cluster the notes into themes (5 minutes).
3. Repeat Steps 1 and 2 to create a “Lacked” board (~10 minutes).
4. Select the five most important items on the “Lacked” board and, as a group, discuss how you will resolve them. Put ideas on a “What’s next?” board then discuss each action item and assign someone to be responsible for making it happen (20–30 minutes).

Sailboat Retrospective + “Life on Mars” Theme

Duplicate Figma template

The Sailboat retro allows a team to think about project impediments, risks, good practices and where the team wants to go.

What each item represents

• Island — the team’s objectives or vision
• Rocks — the risks the team might encounter
• Anchor — everything that slows the team down on its journey
• Wind — everything that helps the team reach its objectives

How to run a Sailboat retrospective

1. Start by placing a sailboat, rocks, wind and an island on the board.
2. Ask everyone to use sticky notes to write down project vision, risks, ideas on what slows team down, what helps to achieve the objectives. Then post stickies into the different areas according to the picture (10 minutes).
3. Discuss and make notes on how to continue the practices that are written in the wind area, how to mitigate the identified risks and what actions can be taken to fix the problems. Select the five most important problems (30 minutes).
4. Create action items for each problem and assign someone to be responsible for each action item (10 minutes).

Life on Mars theme

Duplicate Figma template

I created the “Mars” theme as a fun variation of the Sailboat theme. You can discuss the project in relation to three topics, using corresponding visuals:

• What makes human life sustainable on Mars? Meaning, in project terms, “What keeps our project going, what we should continue doing?
• What threatens life on Mars? Meaning “What should we stop doing?”
• What should we do to protect humans? Meaning “What action should we take to ensure progress?”

Start-Stop-Continue Retrospective: Weather Theme

Duplicate Figma template

This is the most popular retrospective meeting format; it helps teams to focus on concrete actions they can take to improve collaboration, processes and results.

I created this “Weather” theme to make retro a bit more fun. Just grab any icon and put it next to your sticky note to emphasize the meaning and draw attention.

What these categories mean

• Start — activities/practices that the team wants to bring to the table
• Stop — activities/practices that have not brought value
• Continue — activities/practices that the team is doing well and wants to keep

How to run a Start-Stop-Continue retro

1. Give everyone 5 minutes to jot down on their Figma board what they think the team should start doing. Then ask each person to share their note on a “Start” board and explain any details.
2. All together, cluster the notes into themes (5 minutes).
3. Repeat Steps 1 and 2 to create a “Stop” board (~10 minutes).
4. Repeat Steps 1 and 2 again to create a “Continue” board (~10 minutes).
5. Assign each team member a certain number of votes that they can use to indicate their preference for a sticky note or group. After voting is complete, sort the sticky notes based on the number of votes each received (10 minutes).
6. Discuss the top five sticky notes and create action items for each one. Assign someone to be responsible for each action item (20 minutes).

Running retrospective meetings regularly is challenging; they can quickly become boring or may seem a waste of time if you use the same framework every time. Changing up the format, experimenting with themes and making it feel like a game will help you keep your retros effective and enjoyable.

Additional reading

• What is a sprint retrospective?
• Atlassian play book on retrospectives
• 5 fun sprint retrospective ideas with templates
• Making agile retrospectives more awesome
• The 4Ls: A Retrospective Technique

How to Run Remote Retrospective Meetings With UXers was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Finding focus and being in the flow become much more difficult once we switch to WFH mode. Some of us don’t have private space for a full day of work, while others need to take care of kids and constantly change gears. On top of that, we’re distracted by disturbing news and anxious about the future.

During the first couple of weeks in WFH mode, my productivity dropped significantly. I couldn’t focus on design work at all. I started experimenting with techniques that could help me adjust to this new environment. In this blog post, I’m sharing what I tried and what helped me to be more productive.

1. Create a physical environment that sets your mind to work mode

It’s easy to blame the smell of fresh bread or construction noise for being distracted. But, in reality, most distractions are internal.

Even while I’m writing these words, I’m noticing that my mind is jumping from topic to topic: “I have a meeting in 30 minutes that I need to prepare for…”; “What about that Amazon order that I placed a week ago?”; “A cup of tea would be great now”; etc.

Despite these being internal distractions, I’ve found that adjustments to your external environment can help guide your focus.

Several ideas to try:

• Turning on a desk lamp (or lighting a candle). For me, this has become a visual trigger and a reminder that I should be in work mode. Its light separates my desk from the rest of the world and makes the entire desk space calm and tranquil.
• Using a Pomodoro timer with a ticking sound during work intervals. Ticking is helping to bring my attention back to the work tasks. I am using this amazing Pomodoro app for Mac.
• An interesting idea that one of my colleagues suggested is to keep a random sound on while working. It helps reduce the distracting impact of any random salient noises. Spotify has some great “Cafe sounds” playlists and I recently found “I miss the office” web app that generates office noice.

2. Plan your design work to fit the time of day when your energy is highest

One of the misconceptions that I had in the past was that I could do work that requires focus any time of the day, provided that I was in a quiet place and I had 2–3 hours of uninterrupted time.

Technically, this is possible, but if my energy is drained, it’s harder to focus and be efficient. I noticed that after a full day of meetings when I finally got the chance to open my Figma project, I could stare at the file for a long time trying to gather my thoughts together due to fatigue.

Think about what time of the day your energy is highest and plan deep work around it.

For me, this is AM time, which means that I try to push all meetings to the afternoon and to do all routine work at the end of the day. I block out my morning calendar with events like “Work block (prefer not to have meetings)” or “Focus time (don’t schedule).” Alternatively, I use the task itself as a title, which is most effective at keeping people from scheduling over that time.

3. Adopt a “one thing” planning approach

This one is inspired by John Zeratsky and his “One Big Thing” practice.

An important thing to embrace about focus is that our capacity for focused work is limited. In fact, most people are capable of only 1–4 hours of concentrated work per day. So it is better to use this precious energy on the most important projects first.

With this in mind, every evening, when you wrap up your day, plan the next one and try to identify the one thing that you have to do tomorrow.

Usually, I review my inbox, personal planner (I use Asana), project trackers, and calendars, then I write down one big thing and 3–5 smaller things.

I prefer to use physical space for this planning (usually my notebook or Post-it notes) so that the next morning I know what to focus on right away, without hunting through multiple to-do lists and getting distracted. I don’t always do the big thing first. Depending on my schedule I may start with the smaller to-dos and move to the bigger piece when I have an uninterrupted chunk of time.

Last but not least: be kind to yourself.

There are days when you won’t manage to get any work done, despite having a perfect plan and nice, solid blocks of uninterrupted time. Learn to be OK with not being able to focus and give yourself permission to sometimes just let go and simply be ready to try again tomorrow.

Many thanks to Mathias Fleck for reviewing this article before publication!

How to get focused on design work was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you are starting your design career or thinking about what is next, you are maybe wondering if joining a big company (like Google, Uber, Dropbox) or a startup (20 -200 people) or maybe a design agency will be better for your career and professional growth.

I have worked at an agency and with startups for a long time and am now working with Google. I am familiar from the inside with each environment and wanted to share my perspective on what each of them can bring to your design life.

Startup

Mid-size startup could be a very good starting point if you just graduated or have switched to product design from another profession.

The best scenario is when the team already has a senior designer (often it could be a founding designer) so you will have an amazing opportunity to learn from them and create a lot of good and bad designs, get feedback and grow quickly. Most likely you will be doing user research, tracking product metrics and often you may be working very closely (or directly) with the CEO which means you will be involved in shaping the product vision, which is super exciting.

Apart from that, often you will be doing all types of design work beyond product — you maybe asked to create an ad banner for the marketing team, design rollup for expos, work on websites, create fun swags for your team etc.

Overall, I think startups open up great opportunities to try yourself in different roles across the design process and better understand yourself — what you love and what you hate designing.

Additionally it is much easier to get a job offer from a startup, especially in Silicon Valley. They are competing with the huge giants and often can’t offer you the same level of compensation which mean competition is a bit lower. Apart from that, based on my experience, sometimes startups’ founders don’t know how to hire designers — they are pro in hiring engineers because this is where all things start, and designers are a closed book for them. So they will be relying more on their intuition and the potential they see in you and less on a rigorous interview process and your past experience.

Agency

I think working in agencies could be beneficial at the beginning of your design career. Usually you have an opportunity to get your hands dirty and work on different problem spaces and product domains. It is never boring and each new project is like a new life — you are starting from learning a completely new domain, building relationships with new teams, widening your horizons and diving into new unknowns. You have design team around you and you can learn from the team, get feedback and ask for help.

As a downside often once a product has launched you won’t control what happens with it, you will have less opportunities to see how your designs perform in the real world. After a while you may stuck in the “agency’ mindset with the client driving lots of design decisions and agency designers just executing them.

Tech Giant

Your experience will vary depending on the project you have joined, your team and the overall company design culture.

Working in a big company has its own specifics — you need to collaborate with many people outside of your immediate team, make sure all stakeholders are aware of decisions you are making and get their buy in. Usually you will be creating less and talking more. This is fantastic opportunity to grow your leadership skills, become pro in communication and create products at scale.

Also even if you are the only designer in your team, you still have the power of the whole design team and lots of opportunities to learn and grow professionally: find a mentor, ask to access someone’s source files or design documentation and learn from that.

It is hard to get an offer from a big tech company if you are at the beginning of your design career (exceptions — designers who got a chance to work as interns). So don’t waste your time if you are just starting, apply for a big company when you have 3+ years of experience and a solid portfolio with 2 impressive products you have designed.

Visual summary

The diagram below aims to answer two questions:

• What is the best place to understand what I love and what I hate designing?
• What is the best place to grow professionally?

As you can see, a tech giant will be a great place for growth but you may not have a lot of freedom to try your hand across different phases of the design process and most likely you will be growing your skills towards one specialization. In the beginning of your design career I believe it is great to have more diverse experience and startups provide better opportunities for that.

Please note that this summary is my subjective approximation of what each environment could look like. It may vary from company to company. For example, an agency could provide lots of opportunities to experiment and if a startup has a big design team, the mentorship parameter will be much higher.

Do your research and choose wisely!

Startup vs Tech Giant vs Agency: what is the best place to grow professionally in design? was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Jakob Nielsen’s general principles for interaction design were published 25 years ago and today they are still relevant and useful in design work.

We collaborated with Google’s UX Researcher Kris Liu to create this handy visualization of 10 Usability Heuristics.

I hung this poster next to my desk and while working on mockups often glance at it to make sure I don’t forget something important. Also when I need to explain design decisions to other designers or engineers ten heuristics are very helpful!

Here you can download a PDF version of a poster and brochure.

10 Usability Heuristics Visualized was originally published in Sketchit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I am often asked recommendations on what course to take to learn UX design. I have several favorite online resources and books that helped me in my UX journey (I am planning to write a post about this), but one of the most useful courses I took remains the Interaction Design Specialization course taught by Scott Klemmer on Coursera.

It teaches you how to design great user experiences, from finding the need, through UX research and iterations, to the final design that will delight your users. It is great foundational course on interaction design!

While taking this course several years ago, I was sketching every lecture and later professor Scott Klemmer included my sketchnotes to the course itself.

Since that time I got lots of “thank you” Linkedin messages and emails from people around the world who found my sketchnotes useful in their learning journey. I am really grateful for all your emails, it is great to see that my sketches are useful to so many future designers!

If you want to have all sketchnotes from the course in a single PDF, you can download them via link below.

Sketchnotes of Interaction Design Specialization

It is free, just put “0” in the price field and press “I want this”. I use gumroad as a handy way to see the interest in my sketches.

Happy visual learning! :)

Sketchnotes of Interaction Design Specialization course on Coursera was originally published in Sketchit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I captured the whole course of lectures in one fun, visual format that makes it very easy to explain some of the concepts or method of design thinking to a colleague or a friend.

You can download all sketches in PDF here. You will receive all 12 lectures in high resolution.

📩✏️ Subscribe to my visual note-taking online course to learn how to make such illustrations by yourself.

Design Thinking Visualized was originally published in Sketchit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.