Evolve or get left behind: How I adapted as a Product Designer
I started my design journey 10 years ago.
The same year the iPhone 6 was released
It was also the year the first Apple Watch was released.
I remember because my boss at the time bought it for me for winning a client project.
10 years later.
The iPhone 16 had been released.
I hit my goal of earning 6 figures.
I worked in Big Tech and ate their free food.
There was one thing that made this possible
Surprisingly.
It wasn’t my design skill.
It was my ability to adapt.
Adapt to meet the needs of the design market.
Here are the three shifts I made when adapting during my career.
Shift 1: The Move From Designing For Usability To User Needs
Years 1-3 of my career
When I started my career, UX design was still emerging.
Teams were focused on usability principles and design patterns.
Companies were just begining to see the ROI of focusing on user needs.
I noticed more UX job descriptions requiring research skills.
I found research-driven design absolutely fascinating. So I decided to focus more on developing the skill to conduct research.
This skill helped me feel more confident in my designs and also help me better influence stakeholders.
Later in my career, this skill became redundant as I transitioned to larger companies with higher UX maturity, where dedicated researchers were part of the design teams.
However this skill allowed me to better collaborate with researchers and strengthened my user-centred design thinking.
Key skills required at this stage of my career:
User testing
User research
Workshop facilitation
Highlighting UX value
Stakeholder influence
Stage 2: When Two Design Job Roles Merged Into One
Years 3-6 of my career
I typed in ‘UX designer job’ into LinkedIn.
3 vacancies in London.
Why were there only 3 vacancies??
I then saw a tag on the right hand side saying ‘Product Designer: 26 jobs added’
I clicked on the tag.
And that’s where all the jobs were.
Except they now wanted me to do UI too.
I had been a pure UX designer for five years, during a time when UX and UI were distinct roles.
However now they wanted one person to do both.
I had never done UI before.
What was I going to do?
Adapt.
So I googled “How to learn UI quickly”.
- I downloaded libraries and practiced
- I did the 100 day UI challenge (well 32 days of it)
- I spoke to designers to understand their UI process
- I created UI designs and requested feedback from UI designers
- I recreated existing screens using my companies design system
6 weeks later I got a job as a UX/UI designer and worked every evening to improve my UI skills to be able to deliver on the job.
Key skills required at this stage of my career:
Visual design
Layout design
Graphic design
More complex Figma skills
Understanding of design systems
Stage 3: When Design Skills Were No Longer Enough
Years 5-8 of my career
A few years into my career, I was struggling to achieve a Senior promotion.
I realised that becoming a Senior designer required more than just design skills.
I needed to understand the product, the business, the strategy.
Up until this point, I had assumed this wasn’t part of my job.
My assumption was wrong.
Without this deeper understanding, my designs had blind spots, preventing them from giving companies the success they looked for.
I shifted my approach, from asking questions such as:
What struggles do users face?
Who are our users?
What usability mistakes are we making?
To questions such as:
What is the primary goal of this feature?
How will we measure the success of this feature?
How does this align with the broader team goals?
This is where I saw my shift from a UX/UI to Product Designer.
I was no longer designing features.
I was now solving problems with design.
My designs went beyond usability and aesthetics.
They now drove results.
Business results.
Key skills required at this stage of my career:
Product thinking
Understanding data
Stronger decision making
Stakeholder management
Collaboration with analytics
Looking back…
Over the past 10 years I’ve seen the industry shift and design roles evolve.
Throughout these changes, one thing has been constant:
Unless you evolve, you will get left behind.
I watched incredibly talented peers of mine struggle to find jobs because they hadn’t embraced change.
My advice to you is, stay informed on the changes in the market.
And adapt.
Don’t just focus on being the best at one thing.
Remember AI roles didn’t exist 4 years ago.
And now they’re some of the highest paid roles.
