How to leverage your existing experience to switch career to product design
Although switching careers is never easy, recognizing the areas where you have a head start can boost your confidence and how you present yourself when applying for your first design job.
Product designers are in high demand right now. And this trend shows no signs of slowing. Over the past decade, most companies realized that their digital product must be user-friendly. Even in the AI era, when controversial jobs become automated, the demand for product designers only rises.
However, switching to a product design career still feels very daunting. Besides the tremendous positive outcomes that product designer career promises, there's also high risk and unpredictability. Many of my students fear wasting previous education or work experience. However, the best thing about a product design career is that everyone here comes from a different background and brings something new into the industry.
How to become a freelance product designer without experience?
There's another way of looking at things – the experience you bring from your previous career will almost always be valuable as you switch to product design. There are always transferrable skills that can come from all fields, from coding to social media marketing.
Here are a few tips on leveraging existing skills to support your new career as a product designer.
Soft skills
To succeed as a product designer, you need a wide range of soft skills — from communication to time management. The great news is that soft skills are often very transferrable. Here are a few examples of skills you're likely to bring from previous work.
Communication
Product designers must communicate their ideas clearly and concisely to others, whether by explaining the reasoning behind design decisions or annotating screen designs before passing them on to a developer.
Career changers with an experience in sales, marketing, or customer service have an advantage. The same is often said of teachers, pharmacists, and line managers! Consider times in your job when you presented a project or encouraged others to support an idea.
Empathy
"Empathize" is the first stage in the design thinking process. Product design is a user-centered discipline, and understanding user needs from the first person is crucial to problem-solving success as a designer.
Many professions necessitate a high level of empathy. Overall, experience in any customer-facing work will have enhanced your ability for empathy and your grasp of how to act on such insights. Jobs in healthcare, education, and customer service provide an excellent foundation for a career in product design.
Collaboration
Collaboration is required at every stage of the design process, whether it's coming up with ideas (brainstorming), performing research (working with users), or passing off work to a developer (discussion to solve problems and constraints that arise).
Whatever business you come from, the information and experience you got from working with people who think differently than you have considerable worth.
Leadership
The same is true for leadership: product designers are frequently project leaders, especially in small teams. Your leadership experience does not vanish simply because you are changing careers. Highlight your leadership accomplishments on your resume, and hiring managers will grasp your new design skills in the context of your overall skill set.
Hard skills
Often there's less overlap in the hard skills required to work as a product designer. However, some areas transfer well to help you develop your product design career.
Research
Although they are commonly referred to as product designers, a big part of a generalist product designer professional's role is research. Bigger companies may also hire for more specialized "UX Researcher" positions, so if research is your thing, you may want to explore focusing later on.
Research in product design typically takes the following form:
Competitor analysis — looking at similar organizations in the market, understanding their offer, and evaluating their strengths and weaknesses
Surveys, interviews, and observations about user's wants, needs, goals, and pain areas related to the product
UX analytics, where you'll look into usability, identify trends and patterns, and gain insights about your users
You'll be well prepared for the principles of UX research if you have a background in academia or scientific study. Many other professions, however, contain research components; you may have also conducted organized research during your degree, even if in a different area.
Writing
The web is 90% text, and copy for apps and websites — including the small snippets that go into forms and buttons — is an essential component of any digital product.
Before the user interface design can take place, you must usually write content, and in small teams, the product designers often do most of the writing. Indeed, there is a separate role — UX writer — for designers or writers who want to focus on producing interface copy.
Suppose you come from a background in copywriting, journalism, marketing, or other communications. In that case, you likely have strong writing skills that you can use to boost your skills as a product designer or UX writer. Companies recognize the importance of this role, and the number of open opportunities is likely to increase over the coming years.
Wireframing
Wireframes are outlined or sketched versions of screen designs used to experiment with flows and build multiple user interface options. They are typically the responsibility of the UX designer, as they are used to creating and testing early prototypes of digital products. Still, product designers are also very good at it.
Although wireframing appears to be an extremely specialized product design skill, having a background in technical drawing, architecture, illustration, or graphic design will significantly assist you with wireframing, mainly because you will have an excellent sense of size and scale.
Similarly, someone from these disciplines will be highly familiar with the feedback cycle and iteration involved with prototyping and testing.
Summary
These are just a few product design skills that your previous education and work might prepare you for better than you imagined.
Although switching careers is never easy, recognizing the areas where you have a head start can boost your confidence and how you present yourself when applying for your first design job.