Moving from design agency to design career in tech: What do I need to know?
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bclE51
Jan 31
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What sort of things are different from design firms to in house at a tech company? Both interview and once you’re in the job.
Thank you!
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However one thing is almost always different. Design is a revenue center for an agency. Selling in more work is a goal. So getting the client to do more research or evaluate their customer journey is “yay!” Internally, depending on the company’s values, more design investigation and iteration might run up against more obstacles.
The other was scale. In agency, we could safely design for a 99% use case. In my product today, that 1% is millions of people. It’s just a totally different level of responsibility and the depth you need to design to is much greater.
Here are a few common hurdles:
1. Remember your “customer” is the user, advocate for them always.
2. You are the expert: Recommend a path. Recommend a design. The days of showing “options” and the client being right all the time are over. Keep your options in your back pocket (and collab with other designers on them), but show one you believe in and iterate on it. Your PM/eng team does not want to see all your work. They want you to be the expert.
3. Usability over aesthetics, create a solid foundation first. Show your work, just being shiny and getting out the door is not enough. Take the time to test. You have the support now!
4. Collab with engineering early about feasibility and use their feedback all the way through. Don’t just throw design “over the wall”. Follow through with engineering and hold them to a high standard. Your voice matters as much as theirs.
5. If you worked in a high stress agency setting where you worked insane hours, set up some boundaries. Agency life makes diamonds for sure, but the insane expectations that made you don’t need to follow you the rest of your career.
Some of the best Product designers I know came from agency and found a forever home in Product. Good luck!