Ask HN: Happy path to a product designer role (no experience)

3 points by el_dev_hell 3 years ago | 1 comment

Quick background:

I'm a software engineer with a few years XP. I have a very design-focused friend that's looking to move into a product designer role. They've expressed major interest in this area after a few days watching me work from home on frontend tasks (seeing me jump out of Figma and convert the designs into components/code).

The question:

My mate is really interested in becoming a product designer. How would you move into a product designer role from 0?

A bit more info:

My friend works in a completely unrelated trades-based field (heavy machinery). He did spend a few years shadowing tattoo artists in his late teens (he's currently late twenties) and has a pretty decent understanding for composition and colour theory. He doesn't have a degree (went the trades path).

I'm currently looking at online MOOC courses focused on product design. I'm not sure if there's anything "high quality" available.

Any advice/input is appreciated!

ohiovr 3 years ago |

I found designing products is fairly easy when you have the skills and certain determination. It takes focus and talent to pull it off and you have to be willing to be around people that you'd love to share your work with but mostly don't care at all, no matter how beautiful your work seems to you. And it very well may be and eye of the beholder issue. This is hard for any visionary because if you have eyes in your head, people might not like it when those eyes are only in your head.

The bottom line has been forever that nothing new happens. Its just a spin on an old idea. The right spin, at the right time, for the right people. That is a very hard nugget to crack.

But that is actually the easy part because you can know more or less how to start and what it will be when you finish. The race and maze to the finish line to find perfection will be accompanied by many many failed experiments until you know what you have is right.

Unless you are after a pure art form you need to know, before you begin, who it is you can sell it to, and how much they'd be willing to part with for it. Before you begin, try to be as honest as you can with yourself, to see what people are doing with similar things. I'm not sure if you are looking to build tools or actual graphics. I presume tools because HN has a lot of tool makers that frequent here.

Imagine all those startups with hunches and big dreamers. I have had hunches and big dreams go no where. You need a lot more than that for success. At least I can say I didn't waste billions of dollars on trying to sell boat loads of pea soup as meat only to be embarrassed by some guy who bit someone's nose as the company tailspins into oblivion.