How to Find Your Values As a Designer
Recently I’ve been interviewing a lot as I try to secure a Summer internship and with these interviews, I’ve noticed a pattern in the kind of questions I’m asked. While I’ll most likely write a separate post about my interview experience, I wanted to dedicate this post to the questions I was asked that relate to my values. What made you choose UX design? How do you describe yourself as a designer? What’s important to you as a designer? These questions are crucial for interviews but more importantly for myself to know. I used to have no clue on how I should answer these questions… then I got it together because I didn’t want to have a tagline describing me anymore. I used to throw around “simplifying technology for users” but honestly that’s just a definition of what UX designers do daily. It doesn’t touch on my “why” or even for who. The way I figured out my values isn’t a mind blowing instant solution that gave me a definite answer but instead it’s a process that is ongoing because as a designer I’m always changing.
1.Try to avoid Googling how other designers define themselves. It’s easy to go through 10 online portfolios and curate the best description of yourself by looking at what other designers are saying. This would be disservice to you. If design is something you’re passionate about, working through finding your “why” should be a challenge that you don’t want to cut corners with. I don’t believe it has to be some heartfelt soliloquy but I do believe it should come from you.
2.Think of your issues/interest whether they relate to design or not. I don’t remember who told me this but I remember being told that my purpose will be in the struggles I face. Meaning, the problems I deal with can be turned into my purpose if I choose to solve for them. I may have butchered that a little but it was something along those lines. My “why” comes from what I care about. How I feel about social media, productivity, mental health, my generation, creative content, etc, all play into it and they’re not even directly related to design. My list goes on and at first, it didn’t really make sense to me. Then I noticed related points that stuck out in everything I listed. Doing this was a self check in of all the things I’ve been consuming and thinking of for the past couple of months to years. Making sense out of why I think about these things and how I could to turn my feelings into actions was my aha moment.
3.Research… This next step was a little scary because I had this description in my head that I felt was too abstract. I wasn’t sure if it could not be designed for. Obviously I was wrong because nothing is too abstract for designers. Research helped me refine my ideas. Watching talks, reading blogs and reaching out to designers helped me figure out if what I’m trying to do makes sense and if there’s been progress on solving these points.
4.Stick to your beliefs but refine if necessary. Through out the months that I’ve become clearer on what I want to design for, I’ve made changes here and there because things change and so do I. I think it’s important to always come back and think of your “why” to see if it’s still something you believe or if you need to add anything onto it.
Figuring out your values will reveal a lot more than what you may think it would. I’ve put companies on my blacklist because I realized they don’t align with what I believe in. I also noticed companies doing work I can get behind. Even though I talked a lot about how I found my values, I’m waiting to share what these values are. I’m in the process of giving my portfolio a face lift because in order for me to feel like my “why” aligns with me, I need my work to translate that. By the end of Summer I’ll have a new polished portfolio that represents me and I’ll be able to talk more about what I hope to design for as a enter my UX/Product design career. In the meantime, subscribe to my newsletter here to stay in the loop! I’m looking forward to the next couple months because I’ll be getting deeper into freelancing, interning and managing my publication, aka lots of random stories and insights.