I work with many Graphic/UI/UX/Product designers in person and on ADPList.org, (If you don’t know what adplist is then check out my profile here https://adplist.org/mentors/kijan-maharjan ), and find that there are common problems with the people I meet every week/month.

Here are a few of reasons why people fail to achieve the goal and here’s my advice.

Research

I had 3 interviews with mentees last month and they all were about the portfolio review and how to nail the interview. All the portfolios that I reviewed were lacking some design aesthetics, some people were missing out on the alignments, and some of them didn’t look nice and elegant. Some didn’t have proper content placements.

I understand, it’s hard to nail these things at the first go. It’s not easy seriously, it’s not.

So the only question this is how can we make our portfolio neat, clean, well-aligned, beautifully aesthetic, and elegant. Well, the simple answer is to “Research”. I found that majority of the aspiring designers are not well researched about the design, the company they are interviewing, and the toolsets.

Perfectness doesn’t come easy in one day or one month. You have to keep researching every day and implement those research into your work, analyze them by yourself, how good you have become at copying other work, and finally how many times did you reject your own work and appreciate it.

Do this every day until you are perfect and success will come to you.

Process

I believe the process is only one thing that will keep people and work in the discipline. So You have to get knowledge about what types of processes are better in which scenarios. Sometimes, we as a designer require to change the process rapidly and wrap it up in 2 steps but in many cases, we have at least 5 steps process. However, no matter what, I recommend you to always follow the Design thinking process. Here’s the map that explains to you on what is Design Thinking Process.

Confidence

Now after learning the design thinking process, we should feel more comfortable using this process to our day to day life. So How to gain confidence by putting this process in place?

1. 1. Believe in yourself
      1. Make a list of ideas that you could solve the problem in different ways.
   2. Take risks
      1. Steal/Copy/Make the ideas happen by putting it into the design work.
      2. Do User Research
      3. Do User Testing upfront with few colleagues.
         1. Ask colleagues about their perception.
   3. Listen to your seniors / managers / team members / stakeholders
      1. Accept the criticism and convert it into positive ones.
      2. Gather all the feebacks in one place
   4. Admit your mistake and learn from them
      1. A.S.K this is my formula. Always Seek Knowledge.
   5. Be optimistic
   6. Be thoughful
      1. Always do research and think how you can bring those research into your world to solve different problems.
   7. Think out of the box.
      1. Think impossible ways to solve the problems.