Artiom Dashinsky

Master the 12 skills by which top companies evaluate UX designers
Knowing every Figma trick doesn’t get you promoted. Learn 12 skills that do, like presenting, mentoring, giving feedback, and improving processes.

An industry-backed approach to growth
Based on how more than 50 companies evaluate designers and employees, including Etsy, Medium, Dropbox, Square, Figma, Zendesk, Intercom, and Coursera.


This book will help you:
- Set career goals within six design career paths
- Learn which skills top companies require designers to have at each level
- Build an actionable growth plan to reach your next level
- Improve 12 crucial design skills with actionable frameworks
- Put the above into practice at work to get promoted faster

Get answers to these questions:
- What career options do I have as a designer?
- What career path is right for me?
- What are the steps to reach my career goal?
- How do companies evaluate designers?
- What are my skill levels?
- What competencies should I be working on?
- How do I get a promotion?
- How do I practically improve my skills like mentoring, giving feedback, presenting design, and improving processes, etc?

What’s inside
- More than 60 concrete action items on growing your career
- Six templates and canvases for career planning
- Printable PDF canvas for your growth plan
- 14 recommendations for additional resources

The Path to Senior Product Designer: An Actionable Growth Plan for a UX Design Career

Friedrich Schuler

(...) Here are a few reasons why designers suffer from a lack of career advancement.

4. Shared competencies between product managers and designers 

(...) When your role is minimized in this way, to creating UI, you move further and further away from the arena of strategic decision-making. As a result, your impact and influence within the organization is reduced. Lower impact means less growth opportunities.

5. The legacy of the dribbblization of design

Ironically, because we've been focused on improving our UI skills, we've neglected those skills that will help us change that perception and prove our value to businesses: communication, stakeholder management, ownership, strategic thinking, and hiring.

https://developer.squareup.com/blog/squares-growth-framework-for-engineers-and-engineering-managers/

"Becoming a manager is not a promotion. [...] We define a promotion as moving up a level. When an engineer first becomes a manager, they remain in the same level and move laterally to the engineering management track. Again, we don't want to incentivize becoming a manager solely for career advancement."

https://airbnb.design/defining-product-design/

Airbnb's VP of design, Alex Schleifer, says a similar thing about Airbnb's design team approach: "

Management is not a promotion, but a separate track (...)"

Switching to product management (employee)

chapter, many of the responsibilities of designers and PMs intersect.

(...) Out of all the full-time employment options for designers, the PM role provides the biggest potential for future growth. Product positions have a higher ceiling than design positions for long-term promotions inside organizations. It's more common to see a director or VP of product or even a CPO positions for designers.

(...) Here is the list of design competencies [in order of importance]:

(...) Although it's impossible to progress in your design career without strong craft skills, the same is true if you lack soft skills. The tendency is for craft-led designers to be overtrained in hard skills and undertrained in soft skills

The assessment you did (...) with your manager, is already a good indicator of where you should focus your growth efforts. Start with the competencies that have the biggest gaps; those in which you are the furthest from where you want to be.

Implement the process improvement framework. 

Next step: check if the organization already has a process diagram.

(...) 5W1H is a set of six questions: what, when, where, who, why, and how. It's used in journalism, research, and police investigations for information gathering and problem-solving.

Apply the presenting framework or its elements when presenting work. 

Next step: start using it at one of the next recurring meetings (design critique meetings, approval reviews, etc.). 

Start consciously asking yourself what the reason is for your design decisions. 

Next step: practice it while work- ing on your next design.

Next step: start communicating it at one of the next recurring meetings.

by Tom Greever to learn more about presenting.

The Path to Senior Product Designer: An Actionable Growth Plan for a UX Design Career quotes

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