 Do you want to level up as a junior designer? In this video, I'm going to show you how to supercharge your career and take it to the next level. Yep. I'm Chris. I went from zero experience to head of design in four years. From a digital marketing freelancer earning minimum wage to a head of product design for Thailand's first FinTech Unicorn earning six figures. In this ADP list mentoring session, I'll share my secrets for UX designers career growth. Stick around until the end where I share how juniors can use workshops to supercharge their career. I was asked by a ADP list mentee, do I have any advice for junior designers that are self-taught? We touched on these topics. I'll just quickly talk to you about my journey and then we could break into how you can get there. So I have no design skills, right? So I didn't start from a design background, I didn't start from UX background. I'm a business major. I basically just loved it, right? So when I found it, I was like, okay, what's more? So I went down the rabbit hole that you're going down now where it's like, all these things, how does it work and where do I fit in? I think eventually I found something that was really strong that I did is I could basically design a product really, really quickly, skipping a lot of the UX parts. But that's basically one of my superpowers and how I worked with people really well. It could be like, okay, you need a product, let's do it, right? And then I would figure out how to get there. But the earlier my career, what I did was like, I got a job at a company and I was in charge for designing their products. So I had a lot of practice, right, of actually just the UI stuff. But then I was like, actually, we're not doing this properly. There's a bunch of UX stuff that we're leaving out. So I try to do that as much as I could. We grew the team to five people, but we still weren't good enough based on what the industry said. So then I found another job and this was one of my best jobs that I had because they were very skilled, right? So I had mentors at work that could show me these things. What frameworks and methodologies should I learn? First step is learning the frameworks and methodologies. Like let's just say personas or heuristic evaluation impacts an effort prioritization matrix or some of these things that are baseline UX things. Figure out what framework you need and when. And this stuff I'm still learning on because there's so many different frameworks. So really it's just kind of honing in on the framework thing. At the beginning and then trying those frameworks within the projects that you are at work and really not asking permission, right? So let's just say your boss says, yo, we need to design this mobile app. Okay, here's some basic information. All right, do it. You don't want to jump straight into UI. You're gonna be like, okay, well, what framework do I need? First is always the persona. How do I understand that? Okay, actually, even before the persona, let's just do a workshop because I have no idea what you want me to do, right? So there's a whole framework around a workshop and then you just follow kind of intuition and experience of the frameworks that you want to try and you want to use. And the best framework out there in my career is Design Sprint, right? There's a book called Design Sprint. It's free online, at least you can find out. But basically it puts the whole sort of product design process without any research into your hands. Why this is good and why companies love it because they don't need to spend extra money to do research, right? Because they don't give a all they care about is the product. So you're like, okay, I can do that. So then it's a step by step process. It's so easy, man. As soon as you get it, you can basically fast track to designing products based on assumption because most of the products in the world are based on assumptions. But the good thing about this is you're spending minimal time on design and assumptions and you're actually putting it and getting real valuable feedback. I think that's really the loop that people want to go through. So yeah, that's where I worked and then basically from there on other parts of my career went. When should you start freelancing? As a junior designer, what I did early in my career is not only did I find work in something that paid me for design, right? I got paid for design. That was always one of my goals. I was like, I'm gonna get paid for this. Awesome. I'm doing what I love and I'm getting paid. And then I found out different ways to fast track my experience because my work would be designing this sort of HR solution. That wasn't really what I wanted to do. So then I found and I freelanced as much as I can for I wouldn't say that much money but I did like extra projects on the side to try different things that work wouldn't let me try. I basically just kind of super charged my experience by doing that. You can do that through free work, friends and family want a website done, mobile app, whatever, right? You can find it in your network. There's always someone that needs UX. There's always someone that needs design. So you can always find that. And if you're willing to do it for free or for really cheap, you can fast track your experience and then you can put that in your portfolio. Things you want to try because maybe a client's like, I really don't know how to do this. Please show me. Then you can be like, okay, well, I've never done a designer sprint before but this person's paying me to do a design sprint. Let's do it. And then there you go. There's your first sort of case study of doing it. What type of company should I work for? Find a company with great culture and good design processes. So the companies you can work in on another note, it could be like product companies and agencies. I would advise you to do both, right? Product, you go deep. Agencies, you go wide in terms of problems. Find a company that gives you the tools to be better, they have things in place. They have a good design culture and that you could then be like, okay, this is how it's done. And then from there, you've done a bunch of stuff and then you've learned what good design culture and processes look like. Then you can start to mess around with what you see on the outside, right? But the first part where you are in your career now is really learning frameworks and experimenting with ones that you think are good and you can do it really well. That's where you are in your career. Once you can do those things, then you can sort of apply to that other company that does things really well in lots of different areas and you can sort of add value, right? You can come in as a lead or as a manager. And then from there, you learn their toolbox to add to your skill sets and then you can then run your own thing using everything you learn from your previous history. So like that would be my journey. I think this is what online courses and boot camps don't go deep on. I mean, they give you like end to end, but they don't value the frameworks as well as they should be because what framework gives you is a mental model of how to solve problems. They just like solve the problem. And you're like, I don't get it. Like, when do I use this? When do I don't use this? And it's like, there are key situations where you should use it and there's ones that you don't use it. To learn the framework correctly, you should be teaching your colleague. Be like, okay, let's just say you want to be expert at heuristic evaluations, right? So do that a couple of times. Do multiple projects. Figure out what works, what doesn't. And then be like, okay, man, like if you want to do it, I'll teach you. So then that forces you to really think about what you're teaching and how to use it. When do we apply these different frameworks and methodologies? This is where framework comes in, right? Okay, so first, it's like all about understanding the problem, right? Whether it's research, whether it's speaking to people, whether it's interview surveys, workshops, personas, whatever it is I need to do to understand the problem. So that's where you kind of display your framework knowledge. And then it's like, okay, so now I kind of have a rough idea of what it is and I have some artifacts. I can then play in my playground. I could IDA, I could whiteboard, I could bring people in, I can do co-design, whatever the brainstorming part of that solution is. I could paper prototype. And then it's like, okay, now I need to execute this. How do I get feedback, right? And there's only a few ways that typically our industry gets feedback, right? It's just like through like basic user testing, the surveys, you know, contextual inquiries. There's only a few things to do, but then like you get that feedback and you say, okay, well, what do I do next with that? Do I need to fix it? Do I need to completely pivot? A lot of people will, you know, follow the design thinking framework, but really the steps can be reduced. And yeah, you just have to figure it out. The best answer that any designer gives you is, it depends. When they ask you like, what process do you follow? It depends. Where are we in the phase of understanding the problem? Where are we in the product cycle? So you can just start asking them these questions, like, you know, give me an example and then you can kind of like tear them down because it's one of those questions that don't merit that much value if the problem isn't defined well enough. And just to basically kind of like, oh, do you know that you need to do research? Do you know that you need to brainstorm? Do you know that you need to test? Do you know you need to get feedback? Yeah, I know all of that, right? So that's basically what they're testing you on. So you can just say what I just said, or it's like, here's how I do it, right? Like, I know what I need. So here's how. And then you can kind of like map out each phase of the process given your understanding of the process. So workshops basically, you trying to get people into the room and collaborate together, get knowledge that's already existing about the product or the problem to agree on some things that we can go forward with, right? So first is around, what problem are we trying to solve? Because everybody has a different problem. Marketing, product, engineering, design, business, they all have different problems. Business has a, I wanna make money problem. Engineering's like, I wanna design systems that are better, product is like, I want the most users. So you all need to agree on a bunch of similar problems or at least what was to focus on. And then, you know, through prioritization, it's like, okay, well, what's the most important problems we wanna solve? And then it's also, you know, bringing out assumptions. Like, okay, so you wanna design this product. Who's it for? Marketing might say something different because they have buyer and customer personas, whereas UX has UX personas, which is different. For example, your mom might be paying for your university course, but you're the one, you're the user. You're the one going to the university course, right? And that happens in all sorts of products, right? So these personas are fundamentally different. So we have to draw out the assumptions of like, okay, our assumption is that someone would use this dog walking app or, you know, like who's gonna use it. Also our assumptions of that it will be successful. Our assumptions that we would use a specific type of technology. Our assumption that it's gonna be responsive versus a native app, right? These are all the things that we need to understand before we start designing, right? And then it could also be bringing people into your process. With design, it's fundamentally collaborative. We do not have all the answers. What our job is to do is to get the answers, right? So what a better space than get everybody in the room and say, okay, guys, give me your answers to the problem in different ways. And then we can agree on which ones we think are correct. And then I can then take that idea that you guys have and then put it into something tangible, like a prototype. Otherwise it's difficult. I think we've all worked on products where, you know, the product manager says this and then you go design it and then the engineer is like, no, this doesn't work. Or it's too hard, right? So you're trying to bypass that by doing it before, right, doing all this upfront discovery work, right? So there's a lot of different types of workshops. But fundamentally, the outcome is the same, right? It's like getting a better understanding from different perspective in order to execute the design process. So a lot of times when I do workshops, it bypasses all research we research after, right? We say, okay, if you guys want this, we can do it. And then we do it. And then we're like, okay, now it's time to figure out if our guessing or assumptions were gonna work. Why are design workshops so important to a designer's career? If you want into supercharge your career, running workshops regularly with CEOs or people on your team, like start from people on your team, even friends, but up to like executive levels, that's where you're gonna make the most money, guaranteed. And let me tell you why. It's because basically you've moved from execution to strategy. Why workshops is like that? Because what you're saying is like, oh, you have a problem. I can strategically help you guys get to where you wanna go. Whereas if you're just doing design, you're always the guy seen at the end of the funnel, right? You're the last one they involve, right? So you wanna be at the beginning to do this. I think, yeah, my go-to advice is for people that wanna climb up and be seniors is to do workshops. The absolute easiest one to run is brainstorming workshop. Let's just say you have all this understanding and research and personas. Even if you don't have that, you know what you wanna design. You're saying, I need to design an app, a chat application, okay, cool. So let's bring the people that are close to design or on the team. Okay, let's brainstorm how a chat application works and what features you need. So it's simple, right? Everybody just draws stuff, writes stuff. And then you can do it in literally 10 minutes. There's a design activity called crazy eights where you come up with one minute per idea. And by the end, you have eight ideas. If you have 10 people in the room, that's 80 ideas. And that's the simplest running that workshop. All you need to do is give some real easy instructions and why you're doing what you're doing and how to do it. And then at the end, you just have a bunch of things you're like, look, I just run my first workshop. So I started consulting a couple of years ago and in my consulting life, I used to, no, well, I did freelancing throughout my career, but in my consulting life, I've never designed products, right? Like I'm only the guy at the beginning to bring everything together. There's someone else designs it, right? That is better use of your time if you just wanna be in and out. Because I mean, like, are you gonna be designing things when you're like 50 years old? A lot of people say yes, but more people say no, right? Like you're not gonna be as good at the tools. So eventually you're gonna have to move to be more strategic anyway, right? And the closer you are to the people who make the decisions, the better you can influence them on the way you think about design or anything. So it makes sense. It's not that I don't enjoy, you know, UI and actually physical design, but eventually the best use of your time is to kind of put those things in place to make the designer's job easier. And you know, if you wanna be a lead or a senior or a manager, those are the same things too. Yes, get really good at your craft, but realize that your job won't always stay the same and it will morph into this kind of more strategic role. And I found I was just better at that as well. So there are plenty of like graphic designers and artists and UX designers that just like to work on the product itself. I'm not one of them. And you know, if you work for like a Google, so let's say Google pays their engineers really well and the guy who basically invented Gmail gets paid a million dollars a year, okay? Design doesn't have that at the moment, okay? If you're a designer, your top barrier in terms of being an individual contributor, the one designing a product is probably like, I don't know, 200K a year or so 300K, let's just say 300K a year, right? So design doesn't have that, but as a design leader, the ceiling is way more, okay? So you can work for like a 10,000-person company and be the head of design or VP of design and you could actually earn that without being in the product. I haven't seen individual contributors in design earn as much money as their engineering counterpart, right? And that's just the reality of how the industry works. It probably will change, but I don't think it will change in the next five to 10 years, I could be wrong. So we wanna future-proof our careers in that way as well. I'm getting, I'm saying this to excite you, but there's of course a lot of work in understanding frameworks and UI design to get there. But the earlier you do workshops and stuff, you can figure out if you like it or not and you can start to build those strategic relationships. If you need some career coaching, let's set up a call. Link in the description. For everything else, hit the big red button. Bye!