Design thoughts

Career progression for (Senior) Product Designer

A food for thought about career path, contribution, and growth.

Image credit to Unsplash

If you started out as junior designer, evolving and earning your way up into mid-level and eventually a senior designer, you probably are familiar with the feelings of going through each day outside your comfort zone. I remember exactly how it felt. From feeling clueless of not knowing what to do, taking one challenges after the other, into presenting into different stakeholders and finally have my own voice as a designer — those years were both hard but at the same time so fruitful and productive.

Fast forward to years later when everything seems easier: you know your way around with Figma and other design tools, you feel comfortable around the stakeholders, your workflow are clear and you rarely feel challenged anymore. There’s nothing wrong with it, despite the fact that you have found stability in your work. Stability might mean comfort zone and contentment, but stability might also mean feeling stuck and eventually you stop growing.

A research conducted by Yale neuroscientists proved that stability triggers some part of human brains to stop growing. To paraphrase, humans are meant to live with instability in order to progress. To a certain extent…