What kind of designer / researcher are you?
Advice on how to find your answer and deliver it with conviction
Since August 2020, I’ve been a UX research mentor with UX Coffee Hours — spending 40 minutes every Friday morning with anyone who wants to book a slot with me, focused on whatever’s on their mind. Once, I had someone who wanted practice being interviewed, so he did a quick portfolio presentation and then I grilled him with follow-up questions! Most chats are with grad students about to finish school or folks who are transitioning into UX research.
After nine months, I’ve realized there are a few things I tend to repeat every Friday… things that apply equally to researchers or designers looking to get started with their careers. What follows is a summary of the best advice I’ve received and tactical tips based on my own experiences job hunting and reviewing resumes.
- When asked to “tell me about yourself,” be ready with a succinct, well-rehearsed answer.
- When figuring out how to describe your design/research practice, ask people who’ve worked with you for help!
- Study job postings and LinkedIn profiles for additional insight into how you can articulate your design/research practice.
- Strive to be as intellectually curious about design/research as you can possibly stand.
- Ask juicy, specific questions — not boring, standard ones.
- Increase the odds of getting an enthusiastic reply by reaching out to junior and intermediate practitioners — in complement to more senior folks.
- Showcase the breadth and depth of your experience, just not both at the same time.
1: When asked to “tell me about yourself,” be ready with a succinct, well-rehearsed answer.
Of all the questions you might get in an interview, you can bet that there will be some variation of “tell me about yourself” or “how did you get into design/research?” Do not leave your answer to chance! Instead, practice, experiment, hone, and refine it — by yourself or in UX Coffee Hours chats and other informational interviews. Figure out the key points you want to mention regarding where you’ve been, where you are now, and where you want to go. Think about the common thread that carries through everything and find a way to articulate and emphasize that in your answer.
If you are pivoting into design/research, please don’t sell yourself short! Instead of avoiding what you did before, consider how that past experience feeds into the practitioner you are, and tell us how it makes your current design/research practice unique! More often than not, people will be open and eager to hear about your winding path into UX design/research; they probably even took a winding path of their own to get where they are.
Ideally, your personal narrative is concise, strong, memorable. As Deborah Alden once told me, the person interviewing you is unlikely to be the only one who will decide whether or not to hire you, so the easier you can make it for them to talk about you to the rest of the decision-makers, the better.
For example, I can rattle this off in just a few minutes:
“My undergrad was in graphic design, and I spent three years working as a graphic designer for an indie music festival. During that time, I had the freedom to use my design skills to work on other projects that would influence and contribute to festival goers’ experiences. This was my first foray into service design, even though I didn’t have the language to describe it as such back then. After that, I decided to go back to grad school to be involved further upstream in the decision making process. I was focused on getting my MBA but ended up doing a dual-degree at the Institute of Design (MDes and MBA). There, I focused on service design, design research, and business. After graduation, I freelanced for a bit before taking a role with Doblin, an innovation/design consultancy. Over three years I helped them build out the first Canadian office. I most recently moved to San Francisco because I wanted to work in a more mature design scene. I’m currently working as a senior UX researcher for Amazon’s UX Lab, an advanced concepts group within the Devices org.”
2: When figuring out how to describe your design/research practice, ask people who’ve worked with you for help.
I finished grad school eight years ago, but I still remember the nerves my classmates and I all had as we prepared for the spring recruiting season. I also still remember Deborah’s perfectly timed presentation Understand, Own and Unleash Your Superpower. Instead of feeling competitive against my classmates, Deborah advised us to lean on each other for different perspectives on what made each of us and our burgeoning design/research practices unique. I took her message to heart then, and I hope you’ll have the courage (and generosity) to do so now, with your own classmates or colleagues.
Ask people who have worked with you to describe, in writing, what they think your design/research superpowers are. What are some reasons you like working with me? What role(s) have I filled on [Project X]?
You may be surprised to see what your colleagues choose to focus on. They might mention something that you actually took for granted! For example, “One thing that you may not naturally call out on your own, but which will differentiate you and serve as an asset to future teams (whether you enjoy it or not I don’t know) is your writing. You are extremely capable of writing at the right level and clearly communicating concepts without jargon.” Or, maybe they will talk about something that you’re already proud of, but in an especially vivid, well-written manner. The answers you get will provide a nice perspective on the designer/researcher you are becoming. You get to choose if there are aspects here that you want to double down on; you get to crib the specific language people used if they’ve done a better job describing you than you could yourself!
Don’t be shy asking classmates, professors, colleagues, managers for this kind of feedback. You literally have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Bonus tip: if you can, tell the person you’re asking for feedback what you think their superpowers are. By sharing first, you might increase the chances they’ll take time to give you something back. Even if that doesn’t happen, I’ve found that the exercise of reflecting on my classmates’ superpowers was itself useful in further clarifying the nuances and differences of how our design and research practices had evolved and were best suited for different types of roles and companies.
3: Study job postings and LinkedIn profiles for additional insight into how you can articulate your design/research practice.
I have a funny little habit that started in grad school and continues to this day, even though I’m not actively looking for a new gig: I collect job postings so I can analyze and learn from them.
Once you’ve collected a few job postings to compare and contrast, look at the types of responsibilities and qualifications listed. Do you notice any trends or patterns in how roles in a specific industry are described? Are there any key activities that you would love to do or really don’t want to do? Are there any differences between North American job postings and European ones?
In addition to job postings, I have learned a lot by studying other designers’ and researchers’ LinkedIn profiles. I pay attention to phrases that resonate with me, things others are doing that I want to do, and things people say that I don’t like — then I ask myself why. All of this has helped me refine the way I talk about my craft. Here are a few people on LinkedIn and one design studio that I still enjoy to this day.
A few years ago, I taught an undergrad Design Management course that actually featured an assignment called LinkedIn Lurking, so my students could reflect on what kind of designers they wanted to be based on studying others’ profiles!
4: Strive to be as intellectually curious about design/research as you can possibly stand.
When I led recruiting for Doblin Canada, one of my favorite application questions was: “What book(s) have been influential to your design/research practice and why?” In reviewing candidates’ answers, I paid attention to who answered with generic, “obvious” (still good!) books versus more niche ones (e.g. Creative Confidence versus Mixed Methods: A Short Guide to Applied Mixed Methods Research). This was a way for me to assess the maturity of a candidate’s design/research practice. Similarly, when I’m talking to someone and mentioning different thought leaders in our field or established studios/consultancies, I’ll notice whether they already know what I’m talking about or not.
Even if you consider yourself a junior practitioner, you can still strive to be well-read and develop your own opinions and reactions to what you’re reading and listening to. By being thoughtful in this way, you can build self-awareness of your own practice and abilities that more properly contextualizes what you think you can do now versus what you hope to get better at with time and experience. All of this will both make you a better practitioner and demonstrate to potential employers how committed you are to improving your tradecraft.
PS: I’m intentionally NOT making a list of resources for you to check out, since there are so many great roundups that already exist.
5: Ask juicy, specific questions — not boring, standard ones.
This applies to the questions you might ask me in a UX Coffee Hours chat, the questions you might ask at the end of a job interview, or the question you might pose in a “cold call” request for an informational interview with a stranger.
The more specific you can be with your questions the better. Please don’t waste your opportunity asking a question that you could have learned with a Google search! When I get a really intriguing question in my inbox, I am more likely to take the time to talk. You’ve made me curious, and I’m interested in thinking about the question you’ve posed. In conversation, the questions you ask are yet another way to show someone how well-read or thoughtful you are — and how much homework you’ve done to prepare for the discussion.
Let’s dissect some questions…
- “I just finished my MDes at the Institute of Design with a focus in service design and I’m really curious about how the practice has evolved so differently in the US compared to in Europe. Can you tell me why service design in the EU is different than in the US?” This is an actual question I used to solicit informational interviews while on a self-initiated EU service design tour. I believe I was successful in getting coffee chats booked because service designers were genuinely interested in thinking about my question.
- “I noticed that you worked as a graphic designer before transitioning into design research. Can you tell me more about that?” I wish more people would ask me this! It shows you did some research on who I am and indicates that there is something a little more specific than I might be uniquely qualified to discuss with you.
- “Can you tell me a little about yourself?” If we are having a UX Coffee Hours chat, it means you only have 40 minutes with me. The time is yours to spend as you wish, but do you really want to ask me this? If you look me up online, you can read the basics for yourself! (I’d rather spend every minute talking about you anyway 😉)
- “Can you tell me about your experience in UX research at [insert company]?” This is so vague, I wouldn’t even know where to start. It doesn’t make me excited to chat because I doubt that I’ll say anything new. If this is the only thing you’re asking me, I’d rather skip the meeting and just share a link to a past interview that does a comprehensive, sufficient job of answering the question.
6: Increase the odds of getting an enthusiastic reply by reaching out to junior and intermediate practitioners — in complement to more senior folks.
The most experienced, senior designers and researchers may be the most visible ones, but they are also probably getting more requests for coffee chats than they can feasibly accept. As a designer/researcher early in your career, don’t discount folks who have 2–5 years of work experience. There’s a higher likelihood that these people will agree to chat because they aren’t getting so many requests… and because you asked them a really juicy, compelling question, right? It might be harder to find them right away, but one good place to start is by looking for alumni from your school (or bootcamp) who finished a year or two ahead of you.
An additional benefit of connecting with junior and intermediate practitioners is that their experiences and advice might be more relevant to you and where you’re at in your career.
Here are just a few questions that someone earlier on in their career will be better suited to chat about with you:
- What do you think is most different about working in the industry compared to how we did projects in school?
- Do you have any advice on how to boil down a big project into a concise case study?
- Can you tell me more about what your job searching experience was like? Now that you’re working somewhere, is there anything you would have done differently?
- Do you have any advice for a recent grad?
- I noticed that you had a background in [X] before pivoting to your current job in [X] — can you tell me more about that change?
7: Showcase the breadth and depth of your experience, just not both at the same time.
Hiring managers need to see both the breadth and depth of your experience, but that doesn’t mean that you should expect every document/artifact to do both at the same time. Instead, think about the whole collection of things you might use to show off your work: cover letter versus resume; LinkedIn versus online portfolio; case studies versus project summaries.
Being clear about which pieces are showing your breadth and which are for depth makes it easier to flesh out what each piece needs to cover. It also makes it easier for hiring managers to know where to look for what.
When I’m reviewing resumes, I actually look for breadth-first — to see if I’m compelled to spend more time looking at a candidate’s materials in more detail. Too often when I’m looking at grad student portfolios, I get overwhelmed by the exhaustive detail of each case study. In addition to seeing examples of your work, hiring managers are also looking for evidence of your communication skills (e.g. ability to describe something to an outsider concisely, with appropriate context, etc.).
Personally, my resume is two pages long so that I can demonstrate the breadth of my work with a second page that consists of ten 2–3 line descriptions of projects I’ve done. I don’t ever assume that someone will read more than one page of my resume, but if they do, the project summaries are a nice bonus bit of content I try to share upfront. LinkedIn is another place I use for breadth — a concise intro summary and short blurbs to describe my past jobs. If someone is looking for depth, they can check out my online portfolio, which has detailed case studies (as well as project summaries).
Side note: make sure you have consistency across all these different pieces of yourself (e.g. feel free to repeat content from your LinkedIn summary on your website). In my opinion, a cohesive set of materials is just another demonstration of your professionalism.
I hope the tips and examples I’ve included are helpful — but you tell me! Is there anything I could explain further? Anything that you disagree with or that you think is simply unrealistic? It has been a while since I was fresh out of grad school and focused on my job hunt, so I’d appreciate understanding where my experiences and perspectives may have become dated.
Last but not least, a heartfelt shout out to Deborah for your sage advice. I hope it makes you smile to know that I’m spreading your good word (and it’s still resonating!) all these years later. 💖
