Transitioning from Engineering to Digital Product Design

10 years ago, I decided to make the leap from (computer science) engineering to (graphic) design. It was a tough decision with a lot of ambiguity at the time. I was fortunate to have great mentors, teachers, and friends who helped me along the way.

Inspired by a friend and fellow designer, Khyati Trehan, I hosted an AMA on Instagram recently. My hope was to provide some helpful perspective from my experience to those who’re thinking of transitioning to design as a career or are at the very beginning of this journey.

I’ve decided to publish some of the questions and answers here for the broader community.

Two things I learned after hosting this AMA:

1. It’s a great exercise in reflection on your own journey, enabling you to think about the pivotal moments, and more importantly the people who were instrumental in propelling you forward.
2. AMAs take away the blank slate problem. I’ve shied away from writing about my learnings and experiences publically mostly because the web seems so full of helpful content already. Especially a creative profession like design, that encourages writing and sharing… did I really want to add another voice to the discussion? Was it going to be helpful at all? Well, I found that questions through an AMA are a great springboard to start articulating your thoughts because they’re valuable for some people by definition (they asked the question!) and they provide enough bounds to center your thinking.

Anyway, let’s get down to the actual content of it.

Design peeps say that moving from tech to design is a mental shift. What does that mean, in specifics?

Simply put, this means when given a problem to solve, designers start with who and why before they dive into the how.

Example: Remember the classic computer science exercise to build a library management system.

An engineer is taught to start by diving into the use case, software architecture, figuring out data models, etc.

A designer would ask who are we building this for? Why do they need a library management system? What is the underlying need we’re trying to address through this proposed solution? Are there other ways to address this need? What is the most ideal way for the person to achieve their goals (in this case, this might be wanting to read a book they don’t own, getting inspired around what book they should pick up next, etc.)

Only after exploring these questions will a designer start to narrow into the solution space, prototype the strongest directions, test them with the people they’re designing for and move towards implementation.

What aspect of being an engineer helped you in your design career?

• Understanding how the internet works
• Not being afraid to hit inspect element on the browser
• A deep appreciation of the fact that devs have insanely great ideas, love problem solving and hate repetitive tasks (like everyone else)
• Algorithm design teaches you to break down the problem and think in systems and abstractions. I didn’t realize how valuable this was going to be as a skill at the time.

Guidance on making a good portfolio for someone with an engineering background transitioning to design

It depends on the design discipline you’re interested in. I’m going to focus on the stuff I know – UX & digital product design.

Great design portfolios for people starting out typically show:

• Your understanding of the problem area
• What you’ve learned about the people you’re designing for
• Your explorations of how you might address the problem, with rationale for these different directions
• Your recommendation and polished output of the direction to take and why
• If this is a real-life project, then show the impact your approach has had in solving the problem

If you don’t have real projects to show, then show side projects. Hiring managers are looking for the same things.

One way to think about side projects is to:

• Find problems around you that bother you (size of the problem doesn’t matter)
• Break it down and think about how you might approach solving the problem
• Document and publish to get feedback on design communities. People are generally very helpful :)

Digital product design comprises of three main things: product strategy, interaction design, and visual design. So make sure to pay attention to all three of these pillars. It’s okay to highlight one or more to show you strength. In fact, it is very helpful to know what your strengths are and have your portfolio reflect that.

You can find the full AMA in my story highlights here.