5 Smart reasons devoted UI UX Designers need a Pro Coach

If you’re a UX product designer, I’m sure you’ve faced these moments in your career so far:

• You aren't quite sure if your designs will be the right solution
• You are fed requirements only to find they've changed later
• You pour a lot of time and energy into a single design only to have it dismantled in a stakeholder meeting
• Your design reviews with stakeholders end up being a session where you're pushing pixels instead getting approvals
• You don't know if your designs are actually effective

🙋‍♂️ Yup, I've been there, but I've found a way out of these and other design tight-spots over the past 28 years of designing digital applications.

TL;DR
Sign up for a free coaching session 👇 and start the journey of become a stronger UX Product Designer.

You are not alone, or maybe you are

I spend a most of my early years alone as a designer.

Don't pour out too much pity—that was just the reality of the situation. I was the only designer in the company!

The positive side is I had complete liberty to shape my work. The downside was maintaining internal motivation, slow skill growth, and lacking someone else who spoke design.

The good news is you are not alone.

Whether you're the solo Design Lead at a small company or the only designer on an enterprise product team, you still face these same challenges of getting design done in a business setting.

Here are 5 reasons you should have a UX Designer coach

1.) Get real-time, expert feedback about what‘s important to you

Have you tried these ways to grow your skills with these learning tools?

• Taken online courses
• Attended conferences
• Read blogs, books, and listened to podcasts
• Collaborated in forums and local community meetups

These are all good things. In fact, you should continue to do them. I had some of my Ah-ha moments in all of these at one point or another in my career. They were few and far between, but I had them.

The problem was these learning tools lack one crucial dimension—making it relevant to my specific context.

Best-practice insight applied to what you’re actually working on can’t be found in a course, book, or conference.

As a UX Designer coach, I help you hone in on how to navigate this project with these conditions under these constraints. I’ll not only give you a bump in the right direction, I help you strategically try new approaches to your design work.

2.) Define and accomplish your professional development goals sooner

Are you really making progress growing as a designer year-over-year?

What about month-over-month? Week-over-week?

How about today?

I’ve seen two approaches to professional development: either there are generic company targets you try to hit each year, or you’ve created a list of things-to-do which hopefully will be enough to grow.

Aspirational goals feel good and directional, but without the right, tangible things to do today you’ll wander aimlessly toward the end of the year.

Even a list of specific activities you find interesting may be tangible, but they may not be the actual things to do to get you where you want to go.

As a UX Designer coach, I help you session by session with one of the hardest things to do on your own—accountability to make it happen. Taking these small steps actually adds up to big progress as you apply, practice, and build towards your goal.

3.) Hone your design process

When people don’t think in a design-oriented way, they guess.

Guessing is not designing—it’s randomness. If it’s not designed on purpose, then it happens by accident.

When I started UX Product design it was a bit of a Wild West of approaches, but that was more due to the new medium, called the Internet. However, underlaying it all is the need to

You’ve heard of all sorts of design process models: Double-diamond, Ideation, Design Thinking. These are fine, but they’re easily derailed by those who aren’t bought into them.

I’ve developed an approach which allows you to apply my process to any size problem you encounter. You’ll stay focused and can bring others along with you. Is that hyperbole? No, but it puts purpose at its core, and purpose is a gift that never stops giving.

As a UX Designer coach, I’ll teach you how to integrate my approach alongside yours. When you hone your design process you’ll finding the joy in discovering the unknown world around you.

4.) Gain confidence in your work

The first time a client was disapproving of my designs, I felt extremely small. I came to learn that non-designers weren’t out to get me, they didn’t know how to communicate their feedback constructively (That’s one of the parts of the process ☝️ I’ll teach you...). Even so, that event certainly put a cloud over me and I held back from pushing the boundaries and even generally how to present designs.

You should be confident in your designs because they both solve problems well and in multiple ways.

The funny thing is this confidence isn’t in your ability, but in the quality of what you’ve put together as a design solution. When you walk into a design review, you may not know all the ins and outs of the business or technology, but you should be the expert in the room when it comes to describing every detail, process, and interaction of the screens you’re proposing.

As a UX Designer coach, our sessions end up being the safest place to deconstruct what makes a design work (or not). I’ve been there, so I know it’s a big risk to reveal your unfinished design thoughts. However, once you unlock the mechanics behind your design choices, you’ll be in a better position to explore them with others.

5.) Flex your Design Leadership skills

Have you ever thought of yourself as a leader?

Leadership is often reserved to describe people in authority, or with charisma, or someone who others listen to. While those may be qualities of some leaders, true leadership comes from seeing a gap and filling it.

Leadership happens at all levels of experience and roles. You are a leader in design when it comes to your team.

The biggest gap in most businesses is someone who can be the literal interface between business people who have strategic goals, people who move data around, and people who rely on technology to get their jobs done. You can bridge that gap as a UX Product designer.

As a UX Designer coach, I’ll help you discover ways you can step out and step up in your role. Leadership is earned through diligent consistency and output. You can do this!

I’d be honored to coach you. Are you ready?

I’ve designed a wide variety of UX products and domains over the years, but my sweet-spot of expertise lays in:

• Productivity Applications (typically internal or B2B )
• Financial Services (but any detailed, process-heavy domain)
• Large-scale user bases (typically enterprise or startups needing to scale)
• Development teams using Agile (typically unfamiliar with how to integrate design)

I’ve also worked alongside a number of design roles, so I can likely help you if you’re a:

• UX Product Designer (typically 5 to 10 years experience)
• UX Design Team (typically 1 to ~25)
• UX Design Manager (typically managing a team like ☝️)

Also, if you’re not a designer, we can talk design strategy. I may be able to help you build your design team:

• Product Owner
• Startup CEO or product visionary

Let’s get you moving forward

You can be sure I’ll be there for you during our coaching program. Connection is key to building trust and growing as a designer.

Among other things:

• Discover skills and areas you want to strengthen.
• Apply the techniques and ideas we discuss in the relationship world.
• Report back the results so we can track, adjust, and move closer to the goal.
• Get interactive critique on your current designs or other work.
• Private Slack messaging any time between sessions for the duration of your package. I'll respond within 1-2 days.
• Opportunity to sign up for additional ad-hoc, 30-minute, same-day sessions as needed.
• Access to recorded sessions for reference (camera-optional, screen share as needed).

I can’t guarantee outcomes, but I can show you new ways of approaching UX Product Design so you can apply them to your daily work.

Set up a free intro session

Let's carve out some real time, see what you need, and see if I can help you. If I can, you can sign up to start coaching right away. If not, I’ll try to recommend some next steps for you.

All that starts with a free session where you can find out more of what I’m all about.

Let’s chat, I'm looking forward to it!