Lessons learned through coaching UX/UI designers
By: Anmar Matrood
Tags: Product Design, UX, Career, Design, Coaching

Are you having a hard time finding a UX job in 2020 or almost 2021!? I hope that this can help. It’s time to look back at the most useful things I’ve learned during the last four years of mentoring and coaching other designers.

I‘ve coached different designers both on a personal level and in groups. Whether you are looking to shift your career to UX/UI or are looking to get a job in this field, here you will see the options you have to achieve that goal.

Mentoring vs Coaching

Mentoring vs Coaching what is the difference?

In simple terms:

Mentoring — Result-driven, yet it has a more holistic approach, targeting deeper thoughts with usually long-term goals. Such as becoming a design leader.

Coaching — Result-driven, traditionally more often targeting shorter-term goals, such as getting a job or setting up a portfolio.

→ This of course doesn't mean that mentoring and coaching can’t happen simultaneously or overlap in some areas.

Designer groups — Who is this for?

Designers intend to have different coaching needs based on their goals, generally, I have coached the following design groups.

Career Shifters

01. Career shifters

Definition : people shifting from one career e.g. accounting to UX/UI design.

: people shifting from one career e.g. accounting to UX/UI design. Usual motivation/questions: a previous passion for design, frustration with current career, an increase in salary, finding a junior design job asap, understanding what a UX/UI designer’s day looks like and questions like do I need a design degree?.

Junior Design Graduates

02. “Junior” Design graduates

Definition: designers that recently graduated from a university or college.

designers that recently graduated from a university or college. Usual motivation/questions: breaking the “ you need experience as a junior, but no one is offering the experience for a junior”, getting a career started, creating a great portfolio with no real cases, understanding what recruiters are looking for.

03. Graphic, visual and motion designers

Definition: designers in another discipline other than UX/UI.

designers in another discipline other than UX/UI. Usual motivation/questions: understanding if UX/UI is really that different, how to shift into UX/UI, do I have transferable skills and shifting from a graphic/visual to a UX portfolio.

What it takes to learn design

Do I need a design degree? Is amongst the first questions I get asked. The answer is always: it depends. I will explain why you might or might not need it. Lisa Angela explained the problem in design education here amazingly. We constantly hear about the greatest entrepreneurs and designers like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and countless others that are dropouts. Mostly out of context and without providing what they did instead.

Nonetheless, it’s fortunately 100% possible to make it being a dropout, but not always. I believe that it takes one of the following three things to learn design.

Self-study

For 30y+ career shifters and graphic/visual/motion designers

Disciplined self-study — If you have a job, you need to self-study, read and design every evening and weekend. That is a huge sacrifice if you ask me, but that is what it takes. If you don’t have a job, treat UX learning as your job, that means 8 hours of learning, designing and reading every day — that will fast track your career.



But, how quickly can I learn design doing it full-time? That depends on where you came from. Did you come from a graphic design background? Perhaps 3–6 months would suffice. Are you coming from an accounting background? 12–24 months is more realistic. These are arbitrary numbers based on my experience with other career shifters. Remember that motivation is not discipline. Ask your self if you are willing to commit to such drastic change and are you the type of person that can self-discipline without the need for accountability? If yes, go for it! You can definitely do it!

⚠️ → With disciplined self-study, there is no guarantee that you will be hired, unless you have a great portfolio that is attractive to recruiters and designers alike! Even then, you are up against some steep competition with younger and qualified designers.

Design Degree

For 20–30-year-old career shifters

Design degree — Are you in your 20s? Is it free or cheap to obtain a design degree? Then, yes do it! That is still one of the best ways to get an education. This way you don’t have to defend why you don’t need a design degree to be a great designer. This way you will have greater career opportunities, especially when it comes down to older school companies. This does not mean that all design degrees are useful or up to date with the industry, in fact, most of them aren’t. Nonetheless, most recruiters put a degree as a condition.

⚠️ → You still need a kick-ass portfolio that exceeds “course work” and preferably contains real-life work examples. Ideally, this is done during studies, alternatively, see who you can help around you. Friends or family with small companies — even if it’s for a lower fee?

Coaching or Mentoring

For all designers from all levels

Coaching — Find a design coach or mentor. Easier said then done. It’s quite important to mention that 100% of the information you will be receiving from the mentor, you can find online and in books for free. However, this will provide you with the deepest insights into other aspects. Not all mentors are created equally, study who you want as a mentor. A mentor can introduce you to the correct people and send you in the right direction. They can greatly shorten the path to success.

Most importantly, a mentor holds you accountable for design and learning tasks and provides you with the motivation needed to continue. It could be that your mentor sets up a kanban board with a structured to-do list for you. Coaching/Mentoring can last anywhere from two weeks to years.

⚠️ Though a coach or a mentor can provide you with a strategy, training, and perhaps introduce you to the correct people, all the work still needs to be done by you. Don’t expect them to write your bio on your behalf. You are the brand, only you can sell your self!

Cut out the buzzing noise

Focus on the basics — Designers need to cut through the Buzz noise.

Just like every other industry, the design industry is buzzing with upcoming trends and jargon, that seems to make or break, where in reality it’s not important to focus on as of now. It’s important to stay current and knowledgeable about the changes, yet it’s more important to focus on the basics.

If Design was a building, the basic design fundamentals would the foundation and design trends would be the upgraded light switches. In simpler terms, here is what you should focus on in the following order:

Design — Design thinking, creative problem-solving. Read every design book you can lay your hands on. Visual research — Get inspired, train your eyes to understand good design. Typography — If people can’t read it, it’s art, not design. Layout Composition — Direct the users where to look at, and what to do. Colour — Good luck :) Interactions — How should a user get form point A to Point B? Design Sytems — Understand how to build them, and how to work with them. User Research — Designers can be intuitive, but never accurate until you’ve conducted research Public Speaking — You need confidence, as a UX/UI there is no escaping this Workshop Facilitation — There is no escaping this either :)

Highlight your weaknesses

Understand and highlight your weakness upfront

Never hide your weakness, it’s very apparent. Instead, highlight it and speak about how you’ve overcome it. If you haven’t overcome your weakness yet, talk about the steps you are taking to compensate for it.

Example weakness 01

If you don’t have a degree, state that upfront, instead, do mention all the other things that you do have!

Example weakness 02

If you haven’t done any user research before, talk about it, and mention what kind of research you have done in the past. Think about transferable skills from a previous career(s).

Example weakness 03

If you haven’t worked in a particular industry such as UX/UI for financial services, mention that upfront, instead, talk about your other expertise that might be beneficial to that employer or client.

Why should I?

Isn’t easier to undermine and not talk about your weakness, instead focus on your strength? Not exactly, it’s quite simple, if you acknowledge your weakness upfront, your client or future employer doesn’t have that point as leverage to use against you. In my case, I’ve lived n Finland for the past 6 years. Yet, my Finnish sucks! That’s something I’m not proud of, however, it’s amongst the first things that I mention. Then I try to talk about what I’m doing to improve (not enough), and what I have to compensate for it.

Find a mentor

Where to find a design mentor?

That is a tough question and rather dependent on where you live. Ideally, you know someone that you look up to and they want to mentor you. That would be quite unlikely however and a match made in heaven. Luckily there are many other alternatives. For example, I had a business coach, Keir McLaren all the way in LA, whilst living I was living in Helsinki.

ADPLIST is one of the websites that offers mentors for free. It’s, however, safe to say that most mentors that offer their services for free, won’t have the time to give repeated 1-on-1 sessions, but sometimes that is all you need.

Springboard, General Assembly, Career Foundry UX Bootcamps that can catapult you years ahead.

Designed is another website that offers mentors in design around the world.

LinkedIn if you see a designer that you admire, you can simply connect and ask! I contacted Keir McLaren after seeing that he coached Chris Do. It was an instant match. In fact, that has inspired me to coach others!

Behance/Dribble/Instagram. Again, if you see a designer or a mentor that you admire, simply send them a DM/PM!

Hit me up :) I can’t promise that we will be the right fit, but I promise to try to send you in the right direction. If we are a right fit, then 🎉🎉🎉

🙏 Thank you!

Thanks for making it till the end of this, now that you are here, I would love to connect with you. You can find me on LinkedIn or follow me on Instagram.