I feel there are general lessons which are important to learn.. or maybe I should call them principles, who knows? But anyway, after 10 years, I wanted to share 10 of my important lessons, hoping they may help you for your next 10 years!

Identifying red flags in a job is crucial as it can help avoid working in a toxic or unsatisfying work environment. I thought of sharing some of the red flags that I have experienced so that you can be vigilant of the ones I have experienced and avoid them.

I blocked out my day yesterday to do 4 portfolio reviews for designers who had booked a portfolio review mentoring session with me.

Here are some of the common mistakes I saw designers making:

As a designer, one of the situations you need to master is navigating pushback on your designs with confidence.

Sometimes we will have to design based on assumptions. As there will be times where we don’t have access to data or insight. In these scenarios we will have to TEST these assumptions and prove or disprove them with data.

Starting a new job can be daunting. Here are 5 ways I set myself up for success when starting a new role!

One of the top concerns I hear from you on Instagram is that you don’t have any work experience.. and you’re trying to get a job but every company wants someone with work experience. I share a huge tip at the end of this post on how you should talk about your projects

Are you risking your chances of being invited for a job interview? I want to talk through a few mistakes I’ve seen designers make. So you can ensure you’re avoiding these when creating your portfolio!

You need to see your CV as your sales pitch to the company. What are all the things you want them to know about you to show them you can do the job. How can you portray yourself in the best light and highlight all the great things about you as a designer?

Workshops are great tools for coming up with ideas, enabling collaborating with other team members and solving problems as a group. Surely this is a skill designers should be prioritising?

Usability testing helps identify if there are specific things the user isn’t able to do. Designers are then able to take the learnings from the usability testing and make improvements on the elements users struggled with.

Don’t fall for the myth that designers can just magically come up with ideas on the spot from a blank sheet of paper! Different techniques can be used to come up with ideas, as with everything, there is a process you can follow!

A UX competitor analysis is a technique that can be done to enhance the products features, find opportunities to develop new features or to identify pitfalls to avoid.

Exploratory research allows researchers to ‘explore’ a space such as peoples motivations, needs, pain points, behaviours, opinions etc. Understanding all of this helps identify opportunity areas with problems to solve.

Design briefs and why they are so important..

Get clarity and alignment on your design project before starting.

I am also sharing a FigJam template I created for a workshop to create a design brief

Here are some of the learnings I got from doing take home tasks during the interview process and reviewing tasks designers have sent for the job vacancies we have.

There are so many tools you can use as a designer! Tools can completely change the way you work and these tools I will mention below have transformed the way I work for the better so I wanted to share them with you. There may be some you were expecting, and some which may surprise you!

The Harvard Business Review describes imposted syndrome as “doubting your abilities and feeling like a fraud”. Many individuals describe it as feeling like you will be found out as a fraud, and you only got to where you are due to luck.

Here are some of the habits I apply which could help you develop your skills as a designer in a much shorter period of time

I want to talk about a few patterns I saw from the job applications we received and explain how you can make sure you do/don’t do certain things to increase your chances of getting to the interview stage.