HOW TO PRODUCT DESIGN PT. 1
This is the first part of a 3-part article.
Part 1 is an honest and direct survival guide that will walk you through the most common feelings one has when starting to design. Hopefully it will give you the necessary tips for surviving the hard start.
Phase 0 — Relax. This is doable.
0.1. The first shock
Everyone is familiar with the blank page syndrome and how paralysing it can be…
You have this whole project ahead of you, and it actually needs to be done — and done well — in the end, and you are the one who has to do it.
0.2. THE Syndrome
The initial shock takes us to another well-known syndrome which you may feel — especially if you are a Junior Designer like me and are cohabiting a Team full of Principals and Seniors and Managers that could probably do your 3 month workload in 3 weeks:
the impostor syndrome
It is the feeling that people hired you or chose you because they thought you could do this but you feel like you most definitely cannot… because you lack the skills and certainly lack the required IQ to do it. You feel like a fraud and you’re living in constant fear that people are going to realise it and you are going to be fired immediately, on the spot.
You breathe and keep repeating to yourself that this is not true. Our brains have this tendency for self-sabotage as a way to protect us from eventual failure… we are collecting all the memories we have of anyone that ever discredited us and using them to attack ourselves. This is why building a rational confidence that you are capable is a key factor for achieving the best professional version of yourself.
Everything is okay, I promise you can do this.
0.3. Let’s take this step-by-step
First: if you have never done this ask someone with more experience to be your tutor during this project. It is good to have someone who can mentor you and guide you through your first adventure.
If you cannot afford the luxury of guidance, buckle up! It’s going to be a bumpy ride but you are going to come out of this a Design Hero worthy of your own Marvel movie!
Second: organise the project in major steps and then you can add any subdivisions according to its complexity and add or cut some steps according to your project’s specific scope nature or constraints. The perfect formula does not exist, don’t be afraid to get creative.
Third: overcome all of these fears and self-sabotage by discussing the project and asking questions, less as if you were talking to the people who hired you and pay your salary and more as if you were approaching the people who are countless times in the same situation as you and that will always be happy if you improve because it means the whole team is improving too.
Fourth: a good night’s sleep, confidence in your awesome brain & lots of water to keep you hydrated ;)
Fellow Millennial/Gen Z tip: do yourself a favour and drop the all-day-coffee-drinking trend. This trend is silly, very unhealthy and it will work against your productivity. Too much coffee makes you anxious, leaves you unable to focus or think clearly, makes it harder to retain new information, makes you moody as hell
…and honestly, working on eight different things at the same time like you are an octopus on Adderall can only lead to poor quality results and no one wants that, especially you.
