Last week, we started the journey toward planning a stronger design career by focusing on understanding the core skills you need and documenting your work.
This week, we’ll explore the next steps in career planning: assessing your current level and setting actionable goals.
Self-assessment is about understanding your strengths, identifying gaps, and recognising what you want to do more of. With that knowledge, we’ll create a Personal Development Plan (PDP) to help you take intentional steps toward your long-term career vision.
The worst thing about self-assessment, or even manager-assessment, is subjectivity. This is where your project journal comes in. When you reflect on your proficiency in a particular skill, use context from previous projects as evidence. That's why I emphasised documenting your work in last week's email. Use your real-world experience to measure your ability to perform the skills required for your role.
A typical self-assessment method, and one I've used in the past, is a 1-to-5 rating like the one below:
I have little to no experience with this skill.
I’ve experimented with this skill under supervision.
I've applied this skill at work occasionally.
I've successfully used this skill in complex situations and helped colleagues understand it.
I am recognised within my organisation as an expert in this area.
It works well, but the level of granularity doesn't make it any more actionable than a simpler scoring system. For example, there's no different action to take between a 2 and a 3.
Instead, I've shifted to a simpler system:
I enjoy this and want to do more of it.
I need training and support because I don't feel confident.
This is one of my strengths; I feel confident and can help others.
Meeting expectations.
Labels from my whiteboard template to help designers with their self-assessment exercises.
Designers find it much easier to apply these kinds of labels, and the significance of these categories is that they determine the type of goals you need to set for each skill.
Here's a FigJam template if you want to try it out yourself. If you're a design manager, you might find it helpful for performance reviews. Swap out the content for your company's skill matrix and the level of the designer.
Set goals
Setting goals is the final step in the career growth framework. A structured way to do this is to create a personal development plan (PDP).
A PDP helps you outline your career aspirations, identify short-term and long-term goals, and detail specific actions required to achieve these goals.
Our PDP will be split into the following sections:
Career aspirations
Short-term goals
Long-term goals
The short-term goals, the ones you'll start working on immediately, will be split into:
Skills you enjoy
Skills you are confident in
Skills that need supporting
Career aspirations
Your long-term career vision. Where do you see yourself in 5, 10, or 20 years? What roles or positions do you aspire to? Consider whether you see yourself continuing to be an individual contributor (IC), a manager, freelancing, running your own agency, etc.
Example:
In 5 years, I aspire to be a Head of Design, overseeing a small team of designers and influencing strategic product decisions.
Current situation:
Assess your current role and skills. What are your clearest strengths and areas for improvement?
Example:
I have strong skills in user research and prototyping. I need to improve my stakeholder management and leadership skills.
Short term goals
This is where the categorising of skills in the self-assessment part comes into play.
For the skills you enjoy
Set goals that ensure you find more opportunities to work in these areas. This could involve volunteering for projects that need these skills or proposing new initiatives where you can apply them.
Goal:
Find an opportunity to do more meaningful, generative research.
Action plan:
Identify an area of product vision that requires clarity and lead an exploratory research project resulting in an insight report presented to the Product stakeholders.
For the skills you are confident in
Look for opportunities to raise the level of your team in these areas. That could be via workshops, presentations or mentoring. This behaviour puts you on the path to senior+ or management roles.
Goal:
Leverage my prototyping skills to up-level my colleagues and become a recognised expert at the company.
Action plan:
Conduct a mini-workshop on prototyping best practices and how to prepare your designs for user testing. Record it and convert it into onboarding material for new designers.
For the skills needing support
Set learning goals. This might include taking courses, attending workshops, or seeking mentorship.
Goal:
Understand stakeholder management and effectively apply it to build better relationships across the Product org.
Action plan:
I will complete a course on stakeholder management and apply what I learn to my next project. To start being more intentional about the topic, I will also add a Power-Interest Matrix to my current project.
Long term goals
Set broader goals that align with your long-term career aspirations.
Goal:
Transition into a leadership role.
Action plan:
Identify and own a major release from vision and exploratory research through to shipping and iterating. Talk to my manager to help me identify the right opportunity. Start mentoring a junior designer, whether internally or via an online service. Regularly document achievements and share them with Product leaders for feedback.
Review and update
Finally, set a schedule for reviewing and updating your PDP and mark the event in your calendar so you don’t forget.
Share your plan with leadership to get their feedback and demonstrate that you’re motivated, organised and ready to be given opportunities.
Take my course
Grow your career and build confidence with my hybrid course.
Understand the skills required for your role: Ask your manager for a skill matrix or a role and responsibility document or browse publicly available ones.
Document your work: Track the projects you worked on, the skills you utilised, and the impact you had. This will help plan your career, performance reviews, and assemble your portfolio.
Assess your skill level: Use the simple four labels to assess your ability in each of the skills required by your role and identify areas where you need to set goals.
Set goals: Use the personal development plan outline to identify career aspirations and short—and long-term goals. Structure your goals according to whether you need additional support, build leadership skills or do more of what you enjoy.
The UX Playbook, also from Chris, is a paid resource that offers a deeper dive into the topics covered here and more, with additional topics like creating your personal brand and LinkedIn presence.
Next week
The skills you need largely depend on your career trajectory and the kind of role you're working towards. The skills you need to be promoted to a Staff designer are very different from those required to excel as a Junior designer. Next week, we'll look at how the demands of a product designer's skill set evolve as their career advances to ensure you don't focus on the wrong skills for your current role.
I hope that was helpful! If you have any feedback for me, please reply to this email. Thanks, Dan Winer
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This newsletter is for designers who are looking to grow their careers, build confidence and increase their influence. It will give you frameworks and practical advice to become a more strategic partner and advocate for design.
