The Road to Become a Product Designer

An overview on what helped me along the way

A few days ago, I was on the train and I started reflecting on my journey to become a Product Designer and to the position I have today.

“How does one become a Product Designer?” It’s not as easy as reading a soup recipe out loud. The truth is there isn’t “a” way to get into the field. As I try to answer that question, I’ll give you an overview of my own endeavor into product design, and I will highlight a few things I believe helped me along the way.

Creative beginnings

I’ve always been creative, ever since I was a kid. I really liked drawing and I also loved car designs as well as animated movies. For some time, I wanted to be a “car designer”, and then also a “character designer for movies”. They are pretty different fields, but both tie back to the desire of “designing things”.

Fast forward many years to college, and I got into a Fine Arts degree. I decided to fully explore such creativity. There, I experienced many disciplines, from sculpture to painting, to digital media.

Stumbling upon “User Experience”

At the time, I also started volunteering for a platform called Fandom, helping people make their “wikis” look better. In 2015, mid-degree, Fandom invited me to an event they were hosting in San Francisco, California, to celebrate their volunteers and community. They wanted our help to continue improving the platform.

I remember entering their offices and being in awe. I was experiencing the American start-up culture for the first time in my life. Open spaces, a gigantic canteen with beer, coffee, and loads of snacks… and there, the team wanted to ask me a few questions about the platform. They put me in front of a bunch of words written in cards, and asked me to group and classify them. I was experiencing the first card-sorting test of my life, and I loved it. I loved it so much I started googling info about these and I somehow started learning more about the world of User Experience Design.

Learning

As I finished college, I knew digital media was more my thing, and I decided to enroll in a UX/UI Design bootcamp at Ironhack. I tried to stay super engaged and motivated during the bootcamp. I was a sponge, absorbing everything I could. I freaking loved it!

Ironhack was a great environment for me back then. I met amazing people from around the world, went to events, networked, and grew as a person too. To me, the journey into User Experience, Product Design, or whatever you want to call it… was also a journey of personal growth and discovery.

Getting into the field

Ironhack offered the opportunity to meet a few companies once the bootcamp finished. There, I met a bunch of interesting teams, from IBM iX to Camaloon, to VML. In the end, I joined the field through a 3-month intern position where I solidified my learnings working with a real team.

After that, I joined the team at a big tech company, which allowed me to learn a lot about the business side of things, and the intricacies of managing stakeholders, and collaborating with enterprise clients. It wasn’t easy, as sometimes that meant less pushing pixels, and more transcribing workshop stickers into shareable documents.

You see, the field of User Experience Design / Product Design can have a lot of nuances, at least in my home country, Spain. The role isn’t (or wasn’t) as well defined as it might be in the US. Currently, I’m super lucky to work for a sublime international team at Flodesk with a very well defined role, but my beginnings involved working with more local teams. The job requisition for “UX Designer” might be very different from team to team, if it even exists. For instance, when working at that first big tech company, they hired me as a “UX/UI Designer”, but that job description didn’t exist from an HR point of view. To HR, I was a “front-end designer”.

So in a world where you’re constantly fighting to define your role and explain it to others, you’ll need to keep looking for the spot where you feel comfortable. Is it at a role that leans more toward the discovery side of things (running workshops to map processes, find pain points, and propose high-level solutions)? Is it at a role that leans more toward pure UI production (“the visuals”)? Or is it at a company where you can own a wider spectrum of tasks?

Maturing my skills

After that job experience, I joined a smaller design agency as “Product Designer”. There I was able to led design for a few start-up companies around the world. I found my craft was in building digital products, from thinking about user flows to crafting beautiful buttons and components.

After a while, I joined the team at Typeform. This was the first time I was part of an in-house team, solely focused on its own product. Here I was able to grow vastly. In a big part thanks to the fact that I worked with an amazing design team that had more seniority than I had. Working with so many different people, from Product Managers to Data Scientists, to strategists, and all sorts of engineers… it felt really nurturing.

I spent over two years there before deciding to join a smaller high-performing in-house team at Flodesk, and here we are today!

So how do you become a Product Designer?

Back to the starting question… well, there is no clear answer to that. Maybe a better question is “what helped you along the way?”

• Learn the basics first. To become a Product Designer (or get into a similar design role where you’ll work on user experience and interfaces), I believe you’ll need to first learn more about the field. Whether that is through a course, a bootcamp, or self-taught… it’s your choice. A related background can also be helpful. If you feel like you’re a creative person and technology interests you, you might be onto something. Read foundational books like The Design of Everyday Things or Ruined by Design.

• Find a mentor or references. This was crucial to me. Finding the right people to learn from can make a huge difference in the outcome of your career. Try to find designers who work at companies you like and reach them out. Ask them for a bit of coaching, guidance, or feedback. Find designers you like on the internet and follow them on Twitter (X) or other design platforms. This will help you refine your work and stay up to date.

• Practice outside of work. I believe my skills improved because I kept practicing in my own time. I would try to copy a design, learn how it worked, and then create something new from the ground up with all those learnings. Sketch ideas in a notebook, or drop them into a design file when you have more time.

• Stay very engaged and proactive. People won’t be giving things away for free, and things won’t land on your lap out of pure luck (well, it could happen, but it’s not like that most of time). You’ll have to work hard to make the right connections and absorb as much as you can. Always go the extra mile if you want to stand out.

I believe this summarizes things pretty well. I hope that you enjoyed the read, and see you on the next one!