 Hey, in this video, we're going to talk about the difference between junior and senior UX designers. If we can get through it with this f***ing bird outside going crazy... No, look, there's a bird right there. It's a f***ing bird! We're also going to talk about how to go from being a junior UX designer to being a senior UX designer. All right, let's go. He does the thing here with the... I think the bird is okay. There's a bird, but it's fine. There are birds everywhere. Hey, I'm Jonathan. I've been a UX designer for the last 10 years here at AJ & Smart. Hi, my name is Tim. I am the product design director at AJ & Smart, and I've been working in the design industry for over 10 years. In this video, what we're going to be doing is kind of going through... Well, first of all, we're going to be describing, I guess, what we would consider the difference between junior and senior, how we kind of define that at AJ & Smart. We'll also go through some company job ads and talk about kind of what we see as common themes across junior and senior. And then we'll talk about sort of what we would say are some good paths to moving up the chain, you know, from junior to mid-level to senior. And make sure you leave a comment down below. Let us know what situation you are in. Let us know if you're a senior. Let us know if you're a junior. And also let us know what your opinion for moving up the ladder in terms of career is. We'd love to hear that as well in the comments. So, Tim, what would you say is the difference between... Like what... Like some differences between like a baby junior and an adult. Yeah, they're not always babies. Sometimes they are. I would say one of the main differences is the amount of responsibility that you have. It's not necessarily the skill as a designer, because as a designer you are just expected to have a skill. And of course you will get better, but it's also the ability to prioritize, right. I mean, this is something that I often see juniors struggling with. I mean, I know for sure that I also struggled with this when I started out working. It's something that comes with experience. And I think it's these two things. Responsibility, being able to prioritize, and almost like being able to manage yourself as well. Yeah, I think that's really good. That's what I would say as well. I would say that a junior is not someone who you can just kind of say, here's the basic task and then let them go and do it. Because you probably have to be a lot more specific with the priorities and with the exact individual tasks. And you do need to, at least at AJ and Smart, when we're talking about a junior, even though we give people a lot of responsibility here, the senior would always check up on the work of the juniors before it would go to a client, because the junior may not have the full context of the product that we're working on. And also being realistic, they haven't had, usually haven't had enough experience in the industry to be able to spot patterns of how to deal with clients and how to deal with specific types of projects. A junior might come in with really excellent visual design skills, but not really know how to maybe solve a product problem. So like if a client comes to us and says, hey, we need to increase the engagement in our app, the junior designer would not be expected to figure that all out by themselves. A senior UX designer would kind of figure out the blueprint and the junior designer would be expected to make that blueprint, kind of execute that blueprint within a tight scope of work. So the way I would look at it is that a junior designer doesn't necessarily have all the skills required to take on an entire project by themselves and really hand that off to a client and get it signed off. That's kind of a messy answer, but that's, I guess, the way we would treat it. And just adding to this, I think one thing that a lot of junior designers are also struggling with is kind of like seeing the bigger picture. So they're very focused on specific things, but they don't necessarily think about the questions and challenges that are connected to this thing that they're working on. And this is sometimes why they come up with something that looks really cool, really fancy. But then when you actually ask them a couple of questions, like how would that work in that specific case or what would a user do when they do this or how would they interact with that thing? Usually they don't really have any answers because they haven't thought about these questions. I think this is completely normal and it's something that you just build up over the years, I think. Yeah, I've seen cases where I'll get a design back from a junior and it will look really great, but then I'll be like, okay, so there's three different button colors on this page and there's like three or four different button styles. Can you tell me what is the reason behind this being purple and this being just an outline? And why is the animation like a swipe from the left overlay when you tap this link or a swipe from the bottom overlay when you tap this link? Because it looks cool. Because it looks cool. Because it looks cool. Or because they've seen it in another app but don't know what their design system is behind it. So often I would say that a junior designer, at least we don't expect them on day one to know all of these things and it's sort of their job to understand these things while they're doing the work. As a junior designer, you might still dabble in motion graphics and stuff like that and then you find out what you actually like and this is kind of like the path you're going on then. That's a really really good point. I think that's what people don't realize when they're juniors is that the worst thing you can do is to not understand your skill level and to like to kind of overblow it because the thing is senior designers notice that immediately. Even if one thing that I notice that happens actually is sometimes a junior designer will go into a very large corporate that has very little design knowledge and this junior designer will get promoted within this company to being like a senior and as soon as that junior designer moves to more of a real product environment if they want to continue their career they're knocked back down to junior or they're like, holy crap, I thought I was a senior but actually I'm really just starting again and even within AJ and Smart I've seen that happening where some designers on some teams even get the feeling oh I've been told that I'm actually mid-level now but when they talk to then the senior level designers at AJ and Smart it's like no you still have another year and a half to really understand what you're doing so I think that in like kind of acknowledging that you are a junior designer and embracing the fact that you can ask questions all the time is a good thing the junior designers who don't move forward are the ones who are protective about their skill level and they're like well I don't want to show people that I don't know stuff so I'm just going to kind of just do my own thing and not ask questions just make stuff up just make stuff up I mean the interesting thing to me is also that when you're a junior you are really you really want to not be a junior anymore so this is why sometimes you see people kind of like promoting themselves when they you know like they work for like two years as a freelancer sorry as in a company then they become freelancers and suddenly they're like senior creative director or something like that for something super specific and I mean honestly I think it's totally understandable because you want like this it actually shows that you have ambition but at the same time you have like looking back at my own career like the time I spent as a junior designer when I completely resented being called a junior was actually one of the like the most interesting times of my career because this is when nobody really has like these insanely high expectations of you and you can still experiment and branch out and try different things and people you it's also way easier to delight and surprise people as a junior if you're going to your boss and you tell them hey look I made this prototype you didn't tell me to do this but I just did this on my free time and they're just like blown away so let's maybe have a quick look at the some junior roles and job descriptions and what they would actually say and let's see if we agree with them so let's take a look at this one junior UX designer here in London at source 35k a year okay your responsibility as a UX digital designer will include building website prototypes design and wireframes using the latest techniques working closely with development resources to achieve the best possible results in web projects from conception right through to delivery yeah let's see that's also interesting keep abreast of the latest development trends so this sounds like it's very it's a very technical UX position here so probably working in like an actual development team so here the software necessary must have experience of working with sketch, envision, adobe xd and adobe creative suite I mean I would say this is pretty much a standard thing this job could describe anything yeah honestly it's like nothing in I mean maybe this is interesting experience with side maps and wireframing I remember the first time I did a wireframe I knew I knew the term wireframe and I knew I could use Omnigraphil I don't even know if that's around anymore to do that and I just love doing these wireframes and I went I don't know like the fact like the granularity I put into these is was pretty much on a like screen design level so they looked really really cool and nobody told me to do that but it's kind of like that was one of my first steps into UX design and I think maybe let's take a look at I would say that one is the good thing here is that we're sort of describing what a junior designer does but most of these ads probably won't so this is interesting because this one is they're just talking about themselves there yeah so this one is interesting because this is a junior graphic designer so it's already but they have to be it says you'll be working on UX yeah exactly so you can just tell often people who are writing these job ads they have no idea what they're doing they don't know how to write job ads and honestly we don't either that's normal so that's somehow sometimes where you have you as the person applying kind of needs to do the work actually let me move on maybe let's go to the economist one there's one down here the economist there yeah junior customer experience designer okay that's interesting and it says here you will contribute so you're not actually doing it you're just contributing yeah form design specifications or briefs IDA designer prototype enter entries experiences and new features that can be validated with users working with different levels of fidelity as appropriate I think it's a that's pretty much what even seniors yeah yeah I think but maybe but maybe but maybe this is actually a good point because what I remember when I I started out as a designer fresh out of university and looking for jobs I thought like this is impossible like I can't do anything that's on there how am I supposed to find a job like I don't know what like what do they expect me to do like do like a complete website from start to finish it sounded to me like that when I talk to them I mean usually usually you meet with like a creative director or somebody like that and then you show them their your portfolio and usually the portfolio you're really proud of your portfolio looking back my portfolio was so bad it was so horrible like I wouldn't have hired myself today I have to admit that looking back my portfolio was so bad it was so horrible like I wouldn't have hired myself today I have to admit that because I it was just this mess of like you know like different creative projects because this I was still at the stage where I didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do but the nice thing was this really experienced creative director asked the right questions and I mean I also bullsh** it a little bit like he asked me can you code websites and I'm like yeah of course I can I can't code websites obviously I can code websites obviously who can't okay so that I think that's I think we've seen basically that the ads are pretty general but one thing I would say and I think you mentioned that also Tim is like I would almost say it doesn't matter what it says in the ad yeah like I would still apply even if it says that you have to know HTML and CSS and I didn't I would still apply I always still apply I would just look at oh they're looking for a junior designer I know the basic definition of that I would always still apply so I think that you shouldn't be turned off by these various of course that you know what the people writing the job ads are not the people who are doing the hiring I mean also they want to have their dream candidate that actually can do everything is paid on a junior level but is basically as skilled as a creative director they never turn up anyway exactly you never find these yeah like honestly we write like so how job ads are written are they copy and paste them from other job ads that's how job ads are written it's like whatever you know that no one really knows where the original stone tablet job ad came from but I think that I think that's how it happens what would you define as a senior designer yeah 10 yeah being being skilled on you know like a like a craft base is definitely still important but you're taking almost like a step back and looking at things from a kind of like a broader perspective you have to be able to communicate your decisions you have to be able to talk to clients and also have like the necessary business etiquette to talk to clients without making them angry that's it that's a really big one that no one thinks about it's also something that nobody really teaches you in any kind of like design school or something how would you learn do you think you just can learn that from experience yeah I mean honestly I learned by making a lot of mistakes as a junior where a senior took me to the side and said this thing that you just said in the presentation that was really bad when you just spat on the floor yeah I would just spat on their face and said I don't I don't respect this company no I think it's it's a necessary skill and you will build it up the more you you know like work with clients and as a junior you don't necessarily you're not necessarily invited to these client meetings and you should actually also be grateful for that because it's also shielding you from a lot of harsh criticism that a senior designer definitely has to take in without feeling personally insulted so you should be able to handle negative client feedback as well and also like in your head already processize like let's like unwrap this kind of like criticism I'm getting now like what is like the actual thing now that is the problem and how can I fix that being able to you know like just being being able to have like several things going on at the same time without freaking out I think that's very important because you need to be able to if I look at a normal week for you like Tim will be prototyping coming up with concepts also coordinating the project as a project manager but also then being the person that the client is talking to and also being the person who's arranging the design team to make sure it's the right team so a senior whereas a junior would be just one of those team members doing the tasks that have been given out the senior is the person who has to invent the tasks create them work with the clients to figure out what those tasks even could be and I think that's a huge difference between this it's two completely different worlds maybe one interesting thing we didn't talk about yet is this jumping between different companies because that's usually how you like I think it's very rare to you know like have your boss come to you your junior designer and then you're now mid-level because that also means they have to pay you more yeah and they are not going to do that also it's not it's not you know like because they're you know mean or I'm the boss he's just trying to be nice they're usually they're usually very intelligent and they don't have extremely intelligent I think they're extremely intelligent no but it's just they also don't think about that they they're just happy that you are you know like you're doing a good job you're dependable and all of that stuff it's it's kind of like your responsibility to be ready to make that jump and it's I mean in the kind of like agency industry it's usually but it's just switching to another agency making a clear break talking like because you kind of like have a legacy in that company and people will maybe have a tough time you know thinking about okay he's not a junior anymore I shouldn't give him or her these tasks anymore like they can actually now take on more stuff yeah um yeah I mean just something to think about maybe because I I know that all my except in this company actually all my kind of like promotions came from me just moving from from agency to agency that's very interesting yeah yeah but um so that's maybe also why it takes so long to actually get to senior because you actually have to stay in these companies for like two years three years because you also you can learn from we're back to talking about juniors doesn't matter so the thing is you can learn from being exposed to different work environments as well and I think it's not something you can have a shortcut or hack for I mean it's oh wait actually there is a shortcut I would say and that is working at an agency where you can be part of a lot of different projects yeah and even even some agencies do um things where they'll plant a design team inside a corporate environment okay so let's actually look at some of the tips for how you would go from a junior to a to a senior or junior mid-level senior and I guess these are just kind of our own you know subjective tips but they've worked for us and we've seen them working for other designers so one I mean I they're not in any order I'm just let's maybe just say some stuff I think one thing for me there's like obvious things there's like the foundational stuff that everyone has to do this is called hygiene factors it just means if you're not doing these you're not going to get forward anyway so there's no point in trying the other stuff and I would say starting off the basics you do need to be interested in the topic and you need to be interested enough to read listen to podcasts look at the tech news look at the new patterns understand this sort of design world you're working in you need to have an interest enough to do that on in your spare time because if you don't then you're just relying on learning all of that on the job which is a great place to do it but you might not learn the theory behind it so I feel like if you don't do the basic homework regularly and if you don't make learning part of your regular routine then I think it's very difficult to move forward and I see people getting stuck right there at the very start yeah it's it's also connected to this attitude of no like thinking you know it all and I actually don't need to learn anything anymore but I think another thing that is really important and it's it's as basic as it gets it's it applies to pretty much every job where you can have a career it's just being dependable and actually being responsible for your own conduct and if somebody tells you hey can like can you finish this for me and how long will it actually take actually giving a realistic answer and then like doing everything you can to actually fulfill that request because like this is one of the easiest ways to kind of like get like on a you know like like a dead end track when people give you jobs and you don't actually perform and you can't get it done in time I mean and you don't yeah give them a warning on the way that you're going to be late it's like the the day before the pitch presentation it's like oh I actually didn't finish any of the didn't start yeah I didn't actually start I had stuff to do don't have a lot to top yeah yeah so if there's anything that blocks you from actually achieving results for your company or your team you have to bring that point up because I mean nobody will be able to nobody's going to look out for every junior if they're you know like doing a good job I mean you are now working and you're responsible for doing that yourself yeah it's a really really good point I think that I think yeah a lot of one I think a piece of career advice in general is that you shouldn't rely on the company to solve your problems for you because the company is just one place where you are at right now but your career is you and I think what I've noticed with people who tend to take a long time to move forward is that they plug into the company's systems and they get irritated when they're not getting what they want from the company that they're in and instead of just learning and asking questions and trying to make the best out of it they just start to get annoyed and start to complain and start to like be like oh you know this company sucks and like oh they're never going to recognize me and it's like the stupid thing about thinking like this is that really self-fulfilling prophecy yeah you'll be at a different company eventually and then you'll be starting that from scratch this company entity doesn't exist it's really you in a place that's paying you some money while you're trying to figure your out and you need to be the person who has like the proactive mindset to figure the stuff out for yourself and I think relying on the company to figure out where you should go next so I mean that's one thing that I think that when I speak to people who are very frustrated about where they are they spend more time thinking about how to talk about how frustrated they are about where they are than actually trying to learn how to get out of it so I think that that's one thing as well is really I mean my point is really messy now but it's that you shouldn't sit around being frustrated being a junior being at a company and being pissed with the company when you have the option to go everywhere in the world to any company you want and it's really just your career and your personal skill set that you need to work on also I mean nobody wants to give cool projects to people who who are resentful and unpleasant to work with and that's just a that's just the way it is that's also another thing I mean that's like a I think one thing that I've noticed from juniors who are successful is that they are humble about asking questions so a good a junior that I know is going to be on a path to success is a person who really asks the right questions and asks the and really and it's not just you know getting pissed and angry about something that's not working but they're going to people who they know have the answers and they're saying hey look one thing that I'm really struggling with in the company right now is this this and this what would be your advice to get there you never you almost never hear people doing this and when they do I'm like this person is going to be so fast up the career ladder and I think that's a really really interesting thing simple hack is really when you join a company going up to people don't go up to Tim and say hey how do you turn on flat how do you turn on a laptop or something or where do I I don't know don't go up to Tim and ask him that you can you can do but go up to Tim and say hey look um what like when you were kind of moving from junior to senior what we're so you know like these kind of questions that we're now talking about in this youtube video you can ask people in your company and the crazy thing is no one does this it's so weird juniors are people who are struggling within companies they often tend to go inside themselves and rather complain with other juniors than actually try to get advice from the people ahead of them me today I've been in the design industry for 10 years I still ask people like hey I don't really know how to do this how would I do this how would I do this and I think it's don't worry about looking stupid because as a junior no one expects you to know this stuff anyway so it's good to just use that opportunity to ask the questions right still just rambling also also makes you seem a lot more motivated yes to learn stuff and it's more enjoyable to work with people like that yeah almost like rewarding them with like for example asking them to come come to a client yeah and this is um maybe another thing that a lot of junior designers are maybe tempted to you know like do too many different things at once and never really becoming good at one thing so I think you should really think about like how you can contribute the biggest value in your company like for example I mean I'm assuming that you're already a really really good designer and that you're doing a really good job building skills on top of that and not just you know like I you know like doing like a mini course on web development and then it's like this thing that like it's a skill that nobody can really use like you're not really developing it but if you want to do if you want to go down that that route then really commit to it become really really good at it but then maybe you won't have time for example to think about like how can I learn to present my ideas so maybe that's already like where your career will have like different branches and I don't think like you can try things you can try things if you don't like them no worry you tried it maybe it's not your thing but then you can focus on other things that you enjoy like for example presenting ideas helping helping your senior designers with making deliverables ready for developers or things like that and if you are then kind of like developing these skills into something that is really solid and people can trust you to deliver on that that's also going to be a huge bonus I think because that is really really rare like having somebody who's extremely skilled at their job but they're also able to perform and other functions that that are related to that and bring value to the company as well so maybe to wrap it up I'm going to ask Tim one last question so what would you say for anyone who's watching this video who feels like they're really stuck as in they've been a junior for over two years and they're kind of they're watching this and they're like yeah but I am annoyed like everywhere I go I'm a junior like what would you say to someone like that? I mean I think one good way of approaching this could be to think of where do you actually want to be because I mean it's like like nobody's going to hand you any kind of like promotion you actually have to make a case why for example you deserve to be you know like a mid-level designer or something like that so I would really just take a sheet of paper just almost like write bullet points on what is it I'm actually what do I actually want out of my next career step and then see how you can get there maybe you will not really get there 100% but at least it will give you like some direction and honestly I mean one one thing also to consider is really if you feel stuck maybe really just look for something else I mean it's sometimes really good to get out of your surroundings and try something different experience another work culture maybe think about you know like talking to other designers from other companies going to meetups all of these things it's I think nowadays it's so it's so much easier to find a new job because you can actually like go to some kind of conference and talk to executive creative directors from giant agencies and I actually know a couple of people who found new jobs doing exactly that so this is one thing yeah I would do I mean I think it's better to change your situation than being like completely frustrated in it likewise if you think I actually don't want to have like this crazy career I don't want to become a creative Eric I'm happy doing my design work that's also completely fine but then don't be resentful that other people will kind of like pass pass you by in terms of salary and yeah exactly so this is just also like a trade-off that you have to decide if it's worth it like if you want to have a less stressful career with less responsibilities more free time for your own things the trade-off is that you will not actually reach like a higher level of of you know like your career so this is this is such a downer yeah I think the only the only thing I would say is that it's good to understand if you are feeling stuck try to be real about what you're not good at and what I would do is in the company that I'm working at even though you've probably built up a lot of frustration and you don't trust the people working there anymore I would try to find someone I trust or try to find a designer and just say look I realize that I'm not moving forward and I'm not asking you to give me any solutions what I'm asking you is to tell me what do you think that I am very weak at what are my weaknesses as a designer and you might find out that some of those things are built into your personality for me one weakness that I have is I'm not detail oriented I'm a person who's very easily distracted there's a bird right there I don't like working on small details so I would never be a great kind of UI designer because I don't care about the pixels I don't care if something is like this or whatever so I think that you know if I didn't know that then I might be stuck in my career and now I figured out that I like strategies so I've gone around so what I would do if you're stuck if you're feeling stuck is to ask people try to get an honest answer around what are you not good at and if you cannot act defensive when someone tells you well you kind of don't understand this or this or this don't even answer back sometimes people ask me what are questions like that and then I give them the answer and they're like yeah well I didn't have time because well you know well so don't don't act like that just accept it and try to understand that you might have something in your personality that's just blocking you from going forward which you might not need to deal with there just might be another path for you thanks so much for watching this extremely long video about junior senior UX designers we hope you enjoyed it give it a like if you did and make sure you leave a comment down below let us know what situation you are in let us know if you're a senior let us know if you're a junior and also let us know what your opinion for moving up the ladder in terms of career is we'd love to hear that as well in the comments we also have a lot of other content coming out every week we've got a weekly podcast every Monday called the product breakfast club get it on any podcast app you have we have daily vlogs on Instagram at AJ Smart Design check that out and we've got just a ton of stuff going on in our Facebook groups our main Facebook group called innovation hackers if you want to connect with other designers it's a great thing to check out so really hope you enjoy that thanks so much for your time and have a great day so in this video if we can get through it with this f***ing bird outside going crazy like all the doors are closed but we can still hear this bird we like Tim's in the toilet I think the bird is okay there's a bird but it's fine there are birds everywhere there's a bird right there no I want to do it again okay I want to do a do over hi man okay okay okay I'll f*** it's not a bird it's not a bird Tim can you do that again please yeah of course hi my name is Tim I'm the product design director at AJ Smart I've been in the design industry for over 10 years and worked in different agencies companies places as a freelancer as well and um you know what is the point of