How to Become a Product Designer Without Formal Training
By: Allan Yu
Tags: Design Thinking, Product Design, Design, UX Design, Designer

Learn visual design

Learn to use Sketch . It’s the most popular tool right now for visual/UI design, and you’ll find plenty of tutorials online. It’s free if you’re a student. Full disclosure: I use Figma, which behaves very similarly to Sketch, but isn’t as popular.

It’s the most popular tool right now for visual/UI design, and you’ll find plenty of tutorials online. It’s free if you’re a student. Full disclosure: I use Figma, which behaves very similarly to Sketch, but isn’t as popular. Choose one screen from one app or site you use every day. Recreate it in Sketch — exactly as it appears in the app or site. Take special note of colors, vertical & horizontal spacing, font, and font size. Repeat.

Recreate it in Sketch — exactly as it appears in the app or site. Take special note of colors, vertical & horizontal spacing, font, and font size. Repeat. Read Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton. Understanding typography is extremely high leverage when it comes to upgrading your designs from amateur-ish to beautiful.

Understanding typography is extremely high leverage when it comes to upgrading your designs from amateur-ish to beautiful. Learn these key terms: visual perception, gestalt principles, and accessibility.

Learn user research

You’ll hardly ever design something just for yourself, so it’s essential to understand how other humans think and see the world. Experienced designers maintain a healthy amount of skepticism towards their own intuition and consistently rely on feedback from user researchers and others to check themselves (lest they wreck themselves).

There exists many research methods with fancy names, but there are the three I’ve only really had to use: surveys, user interviews, and user testing.

Learn how to set up a proper research study and how to avoid asking leading questions . Understand how researchers recruit people for studies. Learn about qualitative vs quantitative research.

Understand how researchers recruit people for studies. Learn about qualitative vs quantitative research. Learn these key terms: User interviews, usability testing, contextual inquiry, heuristic evaluation

Learn about Design (with a capital D)

Designing digital products is still very new, but rooted in the much older industrial and graphic design.

Start paying attention to good design in your everyday life. You’re constantly surrounded by the work of designers. Identify your favorite chair, building, poster or app. Then, ask yourself why it’s your favorite.

You’re constantly surrounded by the work of designers. Identify your favorite chair, building, poster or app. Then, ask yourself why it’s your favorite. Read Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. It’s not specific to UX or screen design, but many design principles are universal. It’s considered essential reading for all designers.

It’s not specific to UX or screen design, but many design principles are universal. It’s considered essential reading for all designers. Watch Abstract: The Art of Design on Netflix.

Watch Helvetica. A whole documentary about a font? Yup.

Things you don’t need to do to 🙅‍♂️

Here’s a list of things that many junior designers think they need to do, but aren’t requisites for landing your first job. I’d recommend focusing on the above first.

Code

As a designer, you won’t need to code in your day-to-day, but you will work closely with software engineers. Some designers know how to code (I do a little), but many do not. People that can code and design have horns on their foreheads, and we call them unicorns 🦄.

Be a strong visual designer

I’ve worked with brilliant designers across varying levels of visual design skill. It’s an important part of a designer’s skill set, and it’s helpful for winning over non-designers who equate visual design to all of design. But you can get far in your career without being an ace visual designer.

Don’t be discouraged by the delicious eye candy you see on Dribbble. Experienced designers know to take it for what it is–great visual design inspiration that’s often over-designed, impractical, and unrealistic.

Blog, tweet, and network

You don’t need to act like your design heroes to become a designer. It was a long while before I realized that the majority of good designers in the industry are not visibly active on social media. They do great work at their companies, are great leaders within their teams, and go home without tweeting about it.

Recognize selection bias. The most visible designers you see are the ones that put themselves out there, but they are just a small sample of the design industry as a whole.

Pretend to be an expert

Hiring managers don’t expect junior designers to be design experts, so don’t try to sell yourself as one. They’d rather hire someone who’s self-aware and honest about their skill level, than someone who’s unconsciously incompetent.

Make work you’re proud of right away

“I know what looks good, I just don’t know how to make my stuff look good” -You, probably

There will be moments when you’ll be staring at the pile of poop on your sketch file, wondering if you inherently lack the magic possessed by the wizards that made that cool thing you saw on Dribbble.

Remember, your first few projects will suck. They just will. Every person in a creative role experiences this. But crappy projects are not roadblocks. They’re stepping stones; you simply don’t become an employed designer without them. So finish those ugly mockups with gusto and move on. It won’t feel like you’re making progress, but you are!

Things to know about your first design role

What is in-house design?

Unless you work at an agency, your job likely won’t be designing new apps or sites every month. In-house designers like myself work on a team to support one app or platform. The bigger the team, the smaller the scope of your projects will be.

The size, or scope, of your projects and the amount of time and effort you’ll be expected to put into them will vary. Some might take a day to design, build and release. Others may take months. Here are some common examples:

Small project: Designing a way for users to turn notifications on or off

Medium project: Designing how users will add, edit and delete images attached to their messages

Large project: Designing how new users get set up on an app for the first time

What is enterprise software?

You probably have ambitions to work on cool consumer apps you use every day (e.g., Instagram, Airbnb, or Reddit). The reality is that you may start off at a less sexy enterprise software company, so learn the difference!

Enterprise software companies are business apps used to run companies. Software for human resources, project management and IT are examples. Instead of designing for broad groups of people, you may be designing for accountants, HR managers or IT managers.

Enterprise software design generally lags behind consumer software design because many companies are slow to abandon legacy features and products. There are many exceptions. However, the selective user base and complexity of enterprise software can present satisfying challenges for designers, especially those just starting out.

In summary