As a Junior Designer, I am constantly looking for tips to help me develop not only as a designer but as a person! In my previous article/blog or whatever you want to call I shared some tips that helped me out whilst progressing towards a Junior Designer role. Now I will share a couple of things that has further helped me on the job.

1. Build up your confidence

When I say build up your confidence I don’t mean walk around your work place like you know and own everything. I just mean have some confidence in the work that you produce, yes sometimes the work that you produce may not be the best design solution to the problem that you and your team are solving but that’s the whole point of being a Junior Designer, you’re allowed to make mistakes. For every mistake you make, you learn something new.

(A very nervous me presenting top secret work to 25 + people)

Now not only should you be confident in the work that you produce, you should also be confident enough to speak out when doing group tasks, admittedly I sometimes keep my mouth shut so that I don’t embarrass myself but in reality who cares, you’re there to learn the most you can so just say what comes to mind. Bare in mind that you won’t be the only one learning a lot.

2. Get involved

Get involved with other designers and ask them questions, emailing or tweeting at designers is a great way to build up your knowledge, most of the time they will reply to you with useful advice and information. Not only should you get involved online, you should also attempt to attend as many design related meetups as possible. Networking and meeting with the people who do what you want to do is fun and a valuable way of informally sharing thoughts and ideas!

3. Remind yourself that you’re solving a problem

I previously mentioned this briefly the last time I published something on here. A huge part of designing is that you’re attempting to solve a problem, as a young designer I often find myself straying towards the ‘shiny’ end product rather than focusing on whether or not I am meeting a real user need and solving the problem at hand. If you can get yourself in the correct mind set and focus on the problems that you as a designer are trying to solve then hopefully you’ll become a lot better (a lot of this I am still trying to do). Please do not mistake this for me saying that you should only focus on the problem, there’s also a challenge in making it look nice for the user!

4. Receiving feedback is good

When I first started designing I sometimes found myself getting annoyed at what other designers were saying about my work. I couldn’t turn the feedback that I was getting into something useful. And by useful I mean using feedback as a way of progressing as a designer. Feedback is often mistaken for negative criticism when in fact it is beneficial towards you and your work!

Another thing about feedback is, don’t make it personal. I read this example somewhere which said

don’t say:

I don’t like that blue.

Say:

does that blue work, and do the users like it?

It’s not about stating your personal preference it’s about asking yourself and your team wether or not what you’ve designed meets the users needs and solves the problem you’re tackling.