How I plan a career in design
By: Milind Kaduskar
Tags: User Experience Design, Design, Career, UX, Growth

How I plan a career in design

I’ve been asked this question a few times now, and each time it’s led to introspection that has shaped how I think of not just my past 12-odd years, but also the coming decades of being a designer. I’m sharing this understanding here in the hope that others may find it useful.

It’s a deeply personal process

It’s tempting to want one’s pay and prestige to grow constantly. However, incessant growth of pay and prestige should not be the drivers of a career. This might perhaps be the most important realization I’ve had — a career is a tool for intrinsic growth, not for the advancement of an extrinsic perception.

Intrinsic growth is authentic, infallible and governed by oneself. Pursuing intrinsic growth can never lead one astray or make one feel guilty. Achieving intrinsic growth makes one a better person and others around them are better off for it. Extrinsic growth is superficial, erratic and governed by others. Pursuing extrinsic growth can make one lust after vanity, commit acts one doesn’t feel naturally inclined to, and make one feel detached from one’s true self. Achieving extrinsic growth often leads to the side effects of losing people and becoming isolated in one’s pride and insecurity of losing the extrinsically assigned value.

Design is part logic and part emotion. In a domain like this, authenticity is important because one’s true, emotional self is invested in one’s work. It’s impossible to detach work from life as a designer, so one’s values in life and work must be one and the same.

There aren’t mutually exclusive sets of goals that map to intrinsic and extrinsic growth. Any goal for growth could be intrinsic or extrinsic. A good thumb rule to identify them is to ask oneself — did the goal arrive first or the opportunity? Intrinsic goals come first and one creates situations to achieve them, making them naturally authentic and healthier pursuits. Extrinsic goals are manufactured as personal goals but are based on what one sees around them, or on validation created by extrinsic structures such as ranks at school or promotions at work.

It’s a wave function

An oft-seen fallacy of youth is to see everything as a linear progression. I have been guilty of it too. When one is young and inexperienced, all plans for the future appear as though they’ll advance in just one direction because there’s just so much left to explore. However, the most important experiences in life are often cyclical, running in phases like wave functions.

The idea of a career progression has reinforced upon us a linear view, serving companies well because it forces employees to chase after higher and higher rewards, ensuring that they constantly add more and more value to the company’s stock. Adding the same amount of value consistently isn’t seen as good enough. If you’ve been in business meetings, you’ll have noticed that folks don’t discuss how the revenue is growing, but how the growth in the revenue is growing. This is seeking growth for its own sake, making growth not the means but an end in itself. It’s a vain pursuit.

Progression must be sought not for one’s career but for one’s own person.

The prerequisite for planning a healthy career is to see it as a cyclical process that strives for personal growth.

The phases of a career

Personal growth is achieved through two kinds of phases that one cycles through in a design career: Structured growth and Unstructured growth.

Structured growth

In the majority of cases, this is where the cycle begins. Structured growth is a phase where one seeks guardrails, guidance and safe spaces to make mistakes so they can learn new things. This phase is often marked by a feeling that one does not know what one does not know. During this phase, one learns by watching others a lot more than by doing.

It is important in this phase to surround oneself with experts in the domain, find mentors that are a great fit (remember — just because you respect someone for their work doesn’t mean that they’re the right mentor for you) and spend time with others who are equally or more talented than oneself.

A good example of structured growth is what one achieves by going to a good academic institution, or joining an organization that’s recognized for its talented pool of employees. A certain level of pedantry and paternalizing is a necessary evil of this role since one often borrows from others’ values to build their own understanding of personal values during this phase.

The end of this phase is marked by what one often might articulate as “I’m feeling too boxed in.” Terms and phrases such as “pigeon-holed”, “bored”, or “stuck in a rut” begin to come to one’s mind. One begins to feel an itch to break free and explore on their own. This is when one is ready for the other phase: Unstructured growth.

Unstructured growth

In many ways, this is the exact opposite of the previous phase, and environments that foster such growth are harder to come by. In this phase, one hungers for freedom and actively repels any kind of framework or restrictions. A need for ‘going back to the first principles,’ ‘wiping the slate clean’ and so on marks this phase.

An important aspect of this phase is that the stakes must be high. The risk must be real. Indeed, it is the need to test one’s preparedness acquired during structured growth that often fuels this phase. One cannot achieve unstructured growth by simply pursuing a new hobby while holding down a safe day-job.

A good example of unstructured growth is found in entrepreneurship and self-initiated projects. No matter how difficult or risky one’s career decisions feel in this phase, one revels in the freedom to make those choices without the burden of a larger system breathing down their neck. Often, in this phase, one is even unable to explain or rationalize their career decisions but makes them anyway.

In this phase, one does not seek mentors, guides or even peers who are talented unless one is clear that one needs them. This phase is marked by knowing what one does not know, and one learns by doing rather than watching others work. This is when one gets their hands dirty by accepting any and every kind of task that may pertain to their domain.

Designers who start a product or a consulting company, those that decide to earn a living as independent artists or those that actively seek out jobs with low security or pay driven by ‘some other feeling’ are often looking for unstructured growth.

The end of this phase is marked by expressions like “I’m feeling like I’m at a dead end” , “I love this work but I feel directionless” or “I feel like it’s time I thought ‘what next?’” One begins to crave stability and grows weary of the chaos around them. A strong need for focus becomes palpable. This is when one is at the end and the beginning of the cycle, and one finds ways to go back into Structured growth.

The role of instinct

While I’ve laid the two phases out as a clean and simple cycle (and admittedly, my own career path has indeed followed that cyclical process), I don’t believe it’s always that clear. Everyone walks their own paths that are unique. A common aspect across all healthy careers though, is the ability to trust one’s instincts.

Being aware of the ‘Structured’ and ‘Unstructured’ taxonomy may allow one to retrospectively make sense of their past but to be able to ensure that one’s future stays healthy, it’s important to develop a strong connection to instinct which then allows one to feel the driving emotions that lead to the change in one’s phase.

I know of several colleagues who sadly have lost touch with their true selves, giving into their status quo and buying into a linear career path. It doesn’t matter if they’re stuck in the structured or the unstructured environment. Being in any phase for far too long or committing to it far too soon is guaranteed to wilt one’s creativity.

An important tool that allows one to stay true to their instinct is what I began this post with — the realization that this is a deeply personal process. Companies, communities and the society at large are designed to impose their values and goals upon individuals because that’s how these collectives survive. While it’s important to participate in such collectives, one must remember that they’re all voluntary memberships and that they need to serve an intrinsic, authentic purpose in one’s life.

The key to planning a career in an emotionally driven domain like design is to find collectives with values that match one’s intrinsic values rather than modifying one’s values to fit with those of the collective one happens to find themselves in. Participation without choice is arrest, and that’s not a career — it’s imprisonment.