IC VS Manager

The following is from an email I wrote to my manager 3 years ago about my struggle in the career development as a designer. Ironically, a few months after sending this mail, I accepted the manager position. I was not completely willing to take the job, but I told myself to be open to any possibility. Three years later, I still miss the days as an IC, but I am finding new purposes as a manager.

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Why I want to stay as an IC?

For me, Individual contributor (IC) and manager are two entirely different careers with different skillsets. I think many designers like me at some point would like to focus on their craft and want to deliver impactful design, which requires a lot of energy and attention to the execution. Late-stage IC work, in my understanding, tends to focus more on connecting dots by communicating ideas among cross-functional partners rather than execution. It’s totally fine, as this still heavily focuses on delivering product innovation. 

Managing people and engaging with politics in particular can be exhausting, even though they are not entirely bad things. It may not be the interests of many people, and certainly not something everyone is good at, especially for designers who has tremendous passion in design and take pride in their work. Many of us who immensely enjoy the tangible output of our work more than we like the idea of helping define career paths, providing opportunities and cover for teammates, or negotiating career pathways for those we work with.

But why would I also fear to stay as an IC?

First, there seems to be a lack of an unanimous and clear gauge of IC designer impact, so it’s really difficult to see a clear future if I want to be an IC within the company for a long term. We can see many designers shifting to a managerial position for salary increase and bigger impact, but not many examples of high-level ICs. So it’s natural for some designers to consider the option if they want to advance to more senior levels.

“How much is enough?” That’s something I struggle with. Performance reviews are an art, not a science. That means that the process for advancing in one’s career is far too opaque and circumstantial. Design impact from an IC can be even more abstract given the nature of design, as it is often subjective and too dependent on stakeholders to be realized in actual products. The story might be different for people managers as they have more tangible measurement like satisfaction rate or team scope, etc. 

Second, there is also shared corporate or cultural assumption that moving into management was the only path to leadership in the workplace. Staying as an IC might not get fair resource, scope or reach to drive enough impact to justify career advancement.  Move into a management role to become a formally recognized leader may help you drive bigger impact. Our studio also has this mapping to the product teams that are responsible for really different products or parts of a product. Sometimes, the product team shifts so the design shifts with it. This might greatly impact the role of an IC. It doesn’t feel like there’s any other way to grow and do meaningful work at-scale with our current setup. But being a manager and leading multiple products seem more stable to weather through this kind of shifts and still deliver impact.

Third, peer and social pressure. With other designers stepping into the role of managers, there is definitely pressure for the same level ICs. If you stay as IC, does it mean you’re stuck? What will your partners or outsiders think? Will they treat ICs equally and with the same respect? I think a reverse question to test this perception is “can a manager move back to an IC role? Will this move be perceived as demotion?” These may seem all external and imagined factors, but if we have ways to recognize IC contribution and reward them, they will be more confident and willing to stay.

The above is my personal struggle on this matter. 

At last, I want to share a bit what kind of IC I aspire to or look up to. These are the standards I hold myself to:

1. Design leadership - clear and acute product vision, strong perspective on design, great user insight, extensive domain knowledge.

2. Design influence - ability to influence stakeholders to buy in, design knowledge sharing internally or externally, ability to rally other designers to innovate.

3. Excellent craft - great execution skills, delivery with function and aesthetics, ability to define framework, style and direction. 

4. Business impact - deep understanding of business, delivering on business results with design, moving industry forward. 

What do I look for in a junior designer?

I have interviewed many candidates for our studio lately, and one of the most asked questions is what is expected from a junior designer. During 1:1s with some of the designers in our team, I also had similar questions or confusion about the expectation and growth of junior designers. So I wrote down some ideas about my expectations here, to either provide some answers or spark further thinking.

I do have a lot of expectations for those who join our team, as they are all very talented and can do great work. But here I want to focus on 5 key points:

1. Willingness to solve small problems

2. Execution of details

3. Appreciation for good design

4. Open mind for critique

5. Pride in your craft

Let’s go over them one by one.

1. Willingness to solve small problems

Yes, small problems. You are not expected to solve complex problem at this stage. As a junior designer, you are assumed not to have the experience, skills, or the context, especially in a big company or organization. Therefore, you are assigned to small tasks or projects, which are based on the internal evaluation of your capabilities.

But often time small problems also mean “boring” problems. Things like tuning the corner radius, testing different elevations or just replacing some content in the mocks. You may feel your talent is wasted. Sometimes you may feel like you are repeating the same thing, or don’t see the value. All those years in art school, and rounds of interviews, come on, I am more than that, I signed up for greater projects, or end-to-end experiences.

It’s perfectly normal to think this way. We all believe we can do great things. But having a big ambition does not equal to having craftsman’s hands. It takes time and patience to really become an expert in any domain, accumulate the experience and get a full picture. Unless you are a true genius, the “10,000-hour rule” still holds some truth for many of us. In fact, any complex problem or projects should be broken down into smaller ones to solve.

It also takes time for you to try different things to calibrate your self-evaluation of what you can do best. So put your preference aside first and start small.

Tips

• You may not like it, but embrace the tasks and just go heads down on finding a good solution.

• Always ask for the whys or more context and try to understand the problem. You may be surprised by the rationale and meaning behind those small tasks.

• Be patient and believe the things you do now will open many doors in the future.

• Talk to your manager or lead about your feelings or check in regularly to see how you perform to see if you are ready for move into the next level, or to a different area.

2. Execution of details

“God and the devil are in the details.” At this stage, I would encourage you to sweat as many details as possible in every piece of your design. This helps you build the habit of paying attention to little small things that, in many ways, define the quality of your work. I always love the analogy of high-end products. They look and perform almost the same as the cheap knockoffs. But you can easily recognize the difference by the details.

Details greatly affect the aesthetic and functional aspects of your design. An example below is from Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. We removed the border of the People Also Ask module which resulted in a significant increase of revenue. This may seem random but one thing we cannot ignore is that small detail does make a big impact. And it may challenge some of our common assumptions as well.

The People Also Ask Feature on Bing.com. Before it’s wrapped in a card. We refreshed the design and resulted in significant gain in terms of engagement and revenue.

Details can go beyond your actual design, things like how you organize your file, or the way you architect your auto-layout in Figma. I do think the attention to all of these will carry you a long way.

Tips

• Iterate on the details if you feel like it. Don’t easily pass on any little detail just because you think it’s too small.

• Look for those designs with lots of details and learn from them. Try to recreate the same effect so as to understand how every detail comes together.

• Iterate on one variable at a time in your design, and then copy and paste the group to tweak on the next variable. You will get a rich combination of all the possible treatments, among which you may find the right solution.

3. Appreciation for good design

I expect junior designers to have a crave for good design. Ask yourself how much time you spend each day looking for inspiration and immerse yourself with nice work from other designers.

You need to have a ton of input before you can have a decent amount of output. As you devour more and more, you will develop that acumen of spotting good design. At your junior stage, it’s still a bit vague, but you will sort of feel that later in your career.

As junior designers, you may feel like you need to prove that you are creative and can come up with new ways of doing things. Quite the opposite you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, simply because there are so many matured patterns and best practices already there. Try to learn more and build on top of others. One of the best ways is to imitate the design either from your colleagues or works you see elsewhere, just as Picasso put it “great designers steal.”

Tips

• Reserve time each morning to browse some latest designs from the community such Muzli, Dribbble or Behance.

• Screenshot or bookmark any design you love in case you want to reference them later. Use tools like FigJam to document the flow of the experiences you like.

• Share those design you love with other to see how others feel about them to get a more balanced view.

4. Open mind for critique

In the front line of execution, all of your work will go though many rounds of reviews. A lot of critique or feedback will be bombarding you. You have to be open minded to all of them, otherwise you will feel exhausted and discouraged easily.

This is a great time for you to hone your skill of listening and build the empathy required in good designers. One angle might be limited to a complex problem, and often times, our own assumption can be wrong. So you will need more input from different perspectives. You may be surprised that others may not think in the way you expected. And that may also be how your users think as well.

There will be situation where you feel the feedback is off the mark. One way to think of it is to just focus on the intention of the feedback rather than on the actual content of the feedback. Because due to lack of context, the person provided that feedback may not fully understand the situation thus the content of the feedback may not be valid. By focusing on the intention of the feedback, you will become more empathetic about the confusion from others and let you find the right problems that cause that confusion.

Tips

• Refrain from being defensive to other’s feedback and let other finish their comments.

• Follow up with the person that provides you the feedback and dig into their intention more.

• Remember it’s your decision to take or reject feedbacks since in the end it’s your design. But always try to accommodate feedbacks in your design before you jump to a conclusion.

5. Pride in your craft

This is not limited to junior designers but for all designers. We should be proud of what we do. Designer is a tough job and it certainly requires a lot of passion to carry you along the way. I want to see the pride in you when you show me your craft, which means you love what you do and try to deliver the best possible results. And you are not easily beaten.

To be frank, not every project I worked on makes me proud. But as a designer, I think I should always try to create things that I am proud to show to others. This mindset keeps me thinking, is it good enough, am I satisfied? It becomes an internal force that pushes me to always reflect and rethink if there is a better way. It keeps me going, as a designer.

Tips

• Keep this in mind because you will be proud of yourself later: do things because it’s right, not because it’s easy.

• If a project does not pan out the way you’d have wanted for whatever reasons, then make a design that truly reflects your vision or point of view and move on.

• Share more of your work or learnings and be proud of yourself on the stage.

How I learn and grow as a product designer?

I am a self-taught product designer, with no formal training in any kinds of design or arts. I started as a project manager in a design agency. Thanks to the environment, I could immerse myself in a visual world. During that time, I thougt myself design tools like Photoshop, Illustration and a little bit of HTML and Javascript by online video courses. Even though I was never an expert in any of those tools, I got a basic understanding of how design is done. My product design capabilities grew a lot during my 7 years of working in the agency, from brainstorming ideas with designers, pitching them to clients, working with developers for implementation, to launching those designs to the market.

5 years ago, I was fortunate enough to join Microsoft as a product designer. Working in a big company is totally different experience, but how I grow my design skills remained relatively the same. Here I summarize a few key practices that I use in my daily work to keep learning.

“How I learn and grow as a product designer?”

The first thing is to consume good design everyday. I would spend at least half an hour everyday browsing through websites like awwwards, Godly, It’s Nice That, or Instagram etc. By immersing myself in all of the visual design or interesting product ideas, slowly my sense of design builds up. I not only consume visual content, but also read as much as I can and watch a lot of documentaries to build up my knowledge of the world. I believe that a lot of the things are connected and designed. The expansive consumption helps me connect the dots.

• The second is really to make designs, as many as possible. I actually sketch and make a lot of mocks whenever an idea hits me. Figjam is great tool to document ideas. I don't mind sharing really early ideas or design with others. It’s a great way for me to gauge my design direction and how people feel about it.

• In order to make a lot of actual designs, you have be matery of your tool. Figma is my tool, so from time to time, I watch the Figma Youtube channel to learn a few tips.

• I would also spend a lot of time tweaking small details of my design, like spacing, font-size etc… I would always revisit my previous design and see if there is a better way to it. In retrospect, you would probably find the area for improvement and at that moment, you realize you’ve grown a little.

• I also keep a close eye on the competitors/industry of the products I design. I often “steal” first, then add my own spin to it and iterate on.

• I would force myself to create beautiful documents every time I can to hone my visual skills. For example, the ppts I present are usually have some kind of visual theme.

• I also learn from talking to my fellow designers. I enjoyed the 1:1 with them as I learn from their problems or the opinions they share. I feel through their lenses, I can see things differently.

Hope this helps. What’s your ways of learning and growing?

On design portfolio

I reviewed quite a few design portfolios recently as our team is on an urgent hunt for talents. I want to talk about some common problems for those portfolios and what I wish they can have.

One of the biggest problems is that many portfolios are trying to sell me how wonderful the projects are instead of showing what a great designer she/he is. They contained lengthy project background, templated with the same design process or flooded with information about user research, but failed to tell what type of designers they are. Sometimes I almost felt that they are looking for investors instead of looking for a job.

This makes me question the designer’s ability of problem solving because he/she does not really understand what the purpose of the portfolio is for. In my view, the portfolio is to showcase what kind of designer you are and why they should hire you. Also to strike an impression, it’s really important to think about what you want the interviewer to remember you for.

So it’s critical to pick carefully the projects or case studies that can showcase who you are. I mean, in the end, interviewers are looking for a candidate with the fit capabilities. Think about what your key strengths are and what projects can showcase them. Nowadays, we are increasingly looking for design talents that can wear multiple hats or have multiple skillsets as full-stack product designer. So here are the things for consideration: picking something that shows your product thinking, something that shows your visual chops, and someting that showcases your collaboration and communication with partners or stakeholders.

For a particular project or case study, here are what I want to learn about and might be reference: a paragraph to tell what it is, what problems you are solving, a paragraph to show your role in it and why your involvement makes a difference, some key screens/steps or the golden path, what the key results are from the design, and what you learnt from all of this.

At last, be concise and visual about it. When I screened the portfolios, I just flipped through them quickly until I find something that catches my eyes. I am only human and I think a lot of interviewers would act like me. So making your portfolio concise and visually appealling will always give you some advantage. Another thing is if it’s in PDF or PPT format, avoid using weird size or long portrait layout. Just keep the normal 16:9 ratio so it’s easier for screeners to follow on their computer.

Hope it’s helpful but also hope that my team members will never need to reference it.