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:
Willingness to solve small problems
Execution of details
Appreciation for good design
Open mind for critique
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.
