No one wants to guess their career choice. Yet there I was, in my first "real" UX role designing the interface for a mobile game, wondering if I had made the right call.
My concern? The flat visual mockups and addictive user flows I was working on provided value for the business, not necessarily for the user. When it came time to make strategic decisions about player experience, I didn't have a seat at the table.
To get that seat, I decided to try engineering. I loved learning code, and the developers I knew had authority and ownership in a way that their design peers at the time, myself included, didn't.
I so took a job as a part-time UX designer. The product manager who hired me – an engineer himself and also an amazing person – agreed to help me improve my development skills by working on the codebase on my days off.
I liked it. At first I thought it was just learning a new skill. Then I noticed something:my design and strategy muscles were also flexed. I would become the voice of the customer in my team. I took part in important decisions not only about the product, but also about the company itself.
This is where it hit me:I wanted all three skills because they made me a better team member and a stronger leader. It took me years to figure it out, but I was looking for the balance of community, creativity and individual challenge that only a hybrid role could provide.
Related: 5 lessons on how to make a successful career change
Experimenting to find your future
"A bit of everything" wasn't a career option I considered in school. Although I didn't realize it at the time, I found my path in applying experience-driven design to my career:
1. Find out your W's:who, where and why.
I don't believe anyone was born to do a certain job. Let's say, for example, that you manage to solve a single difficult problem and I prefer to jump between ideas. If each of us found a conducive environment, we would make equally good engineers or designers.
Initially, I discovered UX design by talking to a friend. His startup was looking for a UX designer, but I had never even heard of him. He described a role that sounded amazing:talking to people, solving problems, and being thoughtful and creative. I didn't have the skills to commit at the time, but I realized that I deeply enjoyed this kind of work.
Whether you know what you want to pursue or just have an idea, ask yourself why. Put pen to paper and write freely for five minutes. Review your list and keep asking why. Exercise over and over again until you feel like you have nothing more to give. You will feel a deep sense of satisfaction once you discover the reasons for your inclination:your terminal values. Once you find them, you can make a path that allows you to feed them.
2. Experiment through play.
I like to play a game that I call “design improvements in the wild”. As I go about my daily life — reading magazines, grocery shopping, whatever — I look for kerning errors, bad copy, silly Photoshop errors, and unclear buttons. It's fun, sure, but it's also a way for me to hone my skills.
I started playing this game long before I became a professional UX designer. It was my way of putting the design hat on, faking it until I made it. He was experimenting:Do I like doing this? Do I like to think that way?
Find ways to experiment with new skills every day to guide you. Take a small project here and a volunteer gig there. If you want to be a lawyer, trainee with your district court. If you want to become a yoga teacher, ask a teacher you admire to mentor you once a week. You don't have to quit your job to get started!
But before you do anything else, know that it takes a beginner mindset. It is essential to give yourself the freedom to fail. You will stumble, but you will not give up.
3. Rate your experience.
While working on small projects and reviewing fonts in my spare time, I collected information about how I felt. When I started UX design, my goal was to have a job in four months. Two months later, I had failed to meet the expectations of a project. The design was horrible and the customer was angry. I felt like UX design was the worst decision I've ever made, and I almost stopped there.
But two things kept me going:one, I was only halfway through my experience. Second, I liked the work even when it was hard. No, it wasn't particularly fun to be told my work wasn't up to par. But the experiment wasn't over, and until it was, I wouldn't have the information I needed to decide whether to persevere or pivot.
At the end of your experience, whether it succeeded or failed, reconsider your why. Has interacting with people for a living turned out to be as empowering as you would have liked? Did you find something new to enjoy during your time at the law firm? If you failed, what made you move and why? If your answers align with your values, persevere. Otherwise, pivot.
If you need to pivot, don't dwell on it. Not all roles will align with your values and sense of self. But if so, keep going. Reach the next rung of the ladder you are trying to climb. I have yet to meet anyone who is unhappy upon learning something that interests them. Disputed? Yes. Exhausted? May be. But deeply dissatisfied? No.
At the end of the day, remember that it's not really a matter of pass or fail. You explicitly designed your experiment to help you. If you've found a career you love, that's a valuable result. If you've found out that you don't want to pursue something, that's also worth it. Most importantly, you gave yourself the freedom to learn, to be a beginner again, and to try something new. I think you'll agree that this is the most valuable result of all.
Related: 5 keys to improving your career
