Navigating my design career

A reflection on key moments in my career so far

Hi, I’m Maureen and I work as a product designer and design content creator. The Cursor Magazine is my online publication on design, workshop facilitation and career.

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In this newsletter we talk about:

• Feeling stuck in a job

• Finding my spark

• Adapting a business mindset

Ever since building my portfolio on Readymag, I’ve discovered their blog and editorials that I quite enjoy reading. Their latest editorial shares designer’s milestones, from negotiating your salary to being a design leader and from dealing with depression to finding a design mentor. It’s an interesting read and made me realise that many things you experience as a designer are quite common!

It made me reflect on my first five years working as a designer. There have been some key moments in my career that really accelerated my growth as a designer. These milestones weren’t really concrete goals I was working towards, rather I realised their impact looking back on it.

Maybe you recognise these moments. Maybe they’re still ahead for you. Nevertheless, I hope that this personal reflection on my career so far can make you feel like you’re not alone, inspire you or help you in the future.

Feeling stuck in a job

When I reflect on the past 8 years of my career, I find that there are different types of jobs.

There was the Toxic-Startup-Job that motivated me to change careers. The First-UX-Job, which was demanding, exciting and lead to exponential growth as a designer.

After those first exciting years in a new field and having switched jobs, I found myself in a Comfortable-But-Boring-Job. I felt stuck. I experienced something that came very close to bore-out: feeling under challenged, useless and demotivated. I once felt confident as a designer, but during this phase I questioned everything. It was quite a stressful time for me.

It’s hard to motivate yourself to change things when you feel stuck. Even though people around me kept telling me to quit my job, I kept telling myself it wasn’t so bad. Looking back at that period, I now see how unhappy I was. The moment of realisation that I really had to change something came when I started to feel very anxious on Sunday, because the thought of going to work on Monday would trigger so much stress.

It took an internal change within the company to find my confidence and motivation back. This change to a new team came with new projects and responsibilities and was a way better fit for me. I truly enjoyed my new role and in many ways, this was The Dream Job for me. What a stark contrast - and all of that can happen within one company!

If this sounds familiar to you and you have to convince yourself daily that your job isn’t “that bad”, know that there are alternatives. Discuss your options with your manager and be open about how you’re feeling.

Another thing that helped me to ‘get out of my funk’ was discovering what part of working as a designer really excite me…

Finding my spark

There are so many responsibilities on your shoulders as a designer. It can be scary, because developing depth in such a wide array of needed skills is difficult. It is also an opportunity, because you get to be involved in basically the complete product development cycle. From research to concept, testing to implementation - it’s really one of the things I find most exciting about my job.

Starting out as a designer, I expected to be most excited about the visual design part. I’ve always had a big interest in graphic design and taught myself Photoshop from the age of 12 already. A specialisation in UI design seemed obvious. To my own surprise, the thing that I find most exciting about working as a product designer today is not the visual part. Quite the opposite - it’s the research, facilitation and bring people together where I found my spark.

With the years I discovered those things that I truly love to do. The things I could do all day. Finding your spark is incredibly motivating. It helps me to be more intentional about my career growth and gives me direction which skills to invest in, which projects to look out for, even which companies to work at. My spark is what informs my future plans.

With every next step in my career (new project at work, new role within a company, switching companies) I ask myself: Where can I find opportunities to do more of what I love and what I’m good at?

Adapting a business mindset

I never considered myself a business-minded person until my hobby of creating and sharing design content online actually became something I made money with. All of a sudden, I was building something for myself. I had to negotiate brand partnerships, understand all the paperwork that comes with being a freelancer (yay taxes!) and think about how to grow my little business.

This has helped me become a better designer, because now I understand that design really is a balancing act of offering what customers ask for, what’s profitable for you and what’s possible with the resources you have.

TodayI use my business mindset to make better design decisions. I don’t just let user insights inform my work, I also try to understand how the company’s internal challenges, visions and strategies have an impact on my work.

I really hope you liked reading this! This newsletter is sponsored by Readymag, an online designtool which you can use to build presentations, portfolios or websites.

My personal website is build with Readymag and I’ve been a fan of them for a while already. Thanks Readymag!