Hello, my beautiful friends and fellow designers (or those who want to be designers).

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How do you grow in your career?

It starts with your mindset

Your thoughts define your behaviour. So, when we talk about growth, we also have to look at our mindset.

Do you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset?

In Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck describes the two belief systems: a fixed vs a growth mindset.

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With a fixed mindset, you believe in limited abilities and that you can't do anything to change them.

With a growth mindset, you believe that you are starting with certain abilities, but that you can expand them.

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From fixed mindset to growth mindset

When I started my career, I fell into the fixed mindset trap. I studied psychology and got my first job as a Usability consultant. We worked closely with the design team, and I envied them. They made these beautiful interfaces, creating something that simply looked stunning. I wanted to be like them, but I kept telling myself that I was not a designer.

When I wanted to grow my career and move into the field of interaction design, I struggled for the longest time. I just didn't feel like a designer, and I kept telling myself that I was not as creative, that I didn't have the design eye, and that I was too analytical.

I realized that the skills that I had didn't appear overnight; they were the results of training and learning and spending a lot of time and effort practicing them. The same is true for design: there is a lot of training involved if you want to become a good designer.

Talent definitely plays a role, don't get me wrong. I am not saying that everyone can become a superhero at anything. But we all can grow.

Set your focus

In my journey of growth (and I keep growing daily), I learned that it is important to set a focus. I went into the design direction for a short little while - but I enjoyed the research and strategy aspect way more, and I didn't want to spend more time to work on another skill.

I focused instead on growing my UX research practice, my collaboration skills, and my strategic thinking, and I focused on business understanding to better connect with my stakeholders.

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What is your current focus?

​This article about UX Self-Assessment might spark some thoughts.

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Learning Resources

Here are some resources I use regularly to keep growing:

​NNG Articles (blog posts and videos)

​Jared Spool's Leaders of Awesomeness (community & webinars)

​Interaction Design Foundation (online courses and webinars)

​The Futur Academy (videos about design and business strategy)

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Interested in more?

Do you struggle to get buy-in from your stakeholders?

Are you looking for ways to become better at creating team alignment?

Do you want to reduce re-work and get to agreements faster?

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In my course UX Workshop Fundamentals, I teach you how to use collaboration methods to become more efficient in your teamwork.

Learn how to become more influential and unite people to reach your objectives by improving your facilitation skills.

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​Check out the course details​