Hi there! If you’re looking it this, you either asked a question about tips to get started as a designer, or perhaps sent me a message on ADPList. I put this list of the most common questions I typically receive in the hopes it may help you on your journey toward becoming a product designer.
Disclaimer: Keep in mind all of my advice here is from my perspective and personal experience and certainly may not apply for everyone or every situation. When it comes to portfolios in particular, the tricky reality is that different hiring managers and companies may be looking for different things, so there isn’t always a one-size-fits-all approach here. So with that in mind, please don’t just take my advice — do lots of research and find what works for you. Everyone’s path is different. That said, I hope you find some things in here helpful!
Tip: if you’re reading this on desktop, you can mouse over to the left side of this doc to see a table of contents so you can skip to areas most relevant to you.
Career
Any advice you have for me in starting my career in Product Design?
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with the amount of things there are to learn as a Designer. From sketching, to wireframing, to research, to prototyping, to storytelling, to pixel perfect vision design — it can feel like a lot sometimes. And that’s completely normal! In fact, my friend Joel gave a talk on this called Full Stack Anxiety, which really resonated with me as a way to normalize the feeling of being a little stuck on what to focus on at first.Â
It’s hard to give generalized advice here, but I recommend a few things:
Focus on making things: I’m a big believe in learning by doing. Wherever possible, say yes to projects for friends and family, or maybe even get creative and find freelance work on craigslist. It’s ok if you’re new and still learning. Building up a portfolio is an important first step in landing a job, so you’ll want to think about how to get some projects going. If you’re anything like me, I have a really hard time being self-motivated, so I often like the pressure that having a real client brings(akasocial accountability). Another way is to literally pay for a class of some kind if you can afford it(aka financial accountability).
Practice the basics: The first thing I notice in portfolios tends to be visual design and attention to detail. Steve Schoger has a ton of great resources for this on his website. I’ve also heard good things about ShiftNudge, a newer online class. One time a friend recommended:“Trytracing apps!”. Literally open up screenshots of well designed popular apps(really anything Apple makes is a good start), and draw on top of them in Figma to start to learn things like: What type choices are they making? What sizes usually feel nice? How far apart are things spaced? Are they using a grid system?
Hone your process: One of the most important things to do in any process when starting on a design project is to ask lots of questions.“Who is this for?”,“How do we know this is a problem?”,“What's our timeline / what resources do we have?”,“What's the most important task someone needs to accomplish on this screen?”. The list goes on. All of this is to help you hone in on your process for approaching design projects. Before you put pencil to paper, make sure you truly understand what it is you’re trying to accomplish!
What was your career journey?
The TLDR; looks something like:
1998 – 2006: Started designing apps and websites for friends and family. I remember really enjoying playing around on DeviantArt while I was in middle school and high school. I particularly loved how tools like Homestead and Geocities made it easy to build websites without coding experience, while easing you into basic HTML/CSS in the process.
2011 – 2015: Worked as an Interaction Designer at Google, primarily working on Search with some projects on Gmail, Chrome, and Material Design as well. In the last 2 years there, I started managing designers while working on the Google Search app.
2015: Took some time off between jobs to travel and freelance, which included some exciting work with Framer in Amsterdam.
2017 – Present: Moved back to SF to manage the design team at Figma. We were only ~30 people in the company when I started and about 4 designers, and now the company has grown to 1000 people and 40 designers. What a ride!!
If you’re more the audio type and looking for more detail, here are some podcast interviews:
When crafting a portfolio, is it better to put your best 2-3 projects on there or to put all your projects on there to show a breadth of work?Â
Personally, I think showing your best 2-3 projects is a better approach than showing ALL projects. Quality > Quantity. I’m perfectly fine seeing just two great projects you’re really proud of, rather than have to sift through 10 projects not being sure which ones I should be paying attention to. If you feel all 10 are worth showing, that’s ok too, but perhaps consider organizing your portfolio such that the top or most recent 3 are clearly shown, and maybe have a“see more” so as to not overwhelm people at first.Â
One pro tip: customize the projects you show depending on the company you’re applying for. Does your dream company only focus on mobile projects? Only show mobile work. Are they more about data and dashboards? Show data and dashboards. Are they more visually oriented? Process oriented? Consider researching the designers and hiring managers at the company and seeing what their portfolios looks like, or what they appear to value, and match accordingly.
In general I think it’s usually more effective to aim big for a few companies you really care about, and tailor your application to them if you can, then it is to go super wide. I remember when I was in college looking for internships, I used to make custom PDFs(these days a Figma link or a twitter DM could also work) that were highly specific to why I thought I could be a good fit for them. It wasn’t a copy pasted cover letter where I just swapped the company names, but something truly tailored. Related: this person made a custom resume that garnered 300k likes on twitter, which I think gives credence to this approach.
What are some examples of an exceptional portfolios?
Keep in mind, portfolios can take many forms depending on where you’re at in your journey. An“exceptional” portfolio, while great to aspire to, is certainly not something I expect from someone at the beginning of their journey. That said, here are some of my favorites:
Career
Any advice you have for me in starting my career in Product Design?
What was your career journey?
Portfolios
When crafting a portfolio, is it better to put your best 2-3 projects on there or to put all your projects on there to show a breadth of work?Â
What are some examples of an exceptional portfolios?