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Get a seat at the table and build the design career you want. This podcast is for designers looking to break in, level up, and take control of their careers—whether you're freelancing, climbing the corporate ladder, or just trying to get noticed. Every two weeks, we dive into career fundamentals, design best practices, and the hottest topics in the design community.
And I think that's that's skill number three. Skill number four, I think we more or less talked about already or I think it's one of the main topics in in almost any episode that we we we record, and that's the ability for you to sell and convince your ideas.
Tyler:Yes. So I think our number one job is to be salespeople, regardless of the department. But, like, if we're speaking to designers specifically, you need to sell your ideas. And I'm not saying make sure that people We are officially live.
Nick:We are officially live. Exactly. I mean, this is just an experiment. I mean, let's just let's just be honest about what about what we're talking. Let's just be honest about the topic in a very quick, sales y way.
Nick:Four skills you need to become a super strong product designer in the modern sense that companies really need, and they will line up for you to all hire and pay you. That's the topic.
Tyler:Love it.
Nick:Yeah. And I mean, I'm I'm inspired for four of two of those four came by a a course I bought called let's pick it up here. Interface Craft by Josh Puckett. Puckett. I'm not sure how to pronounce it,
Tyler:but I'll link to it. Sounds French?
Nick:It does. It does. So I'll we'll put that link somewhere in the, you know, around this this episode. So I think I'll just name those four things, and then we will dive into each one of them. So first one is conceptual range, Being able to think about multiple ideas, not just the thing presented to you or already in place.
Nick:Yes. Conceptual depth. So picking one of those ideas and really going deep, literally on, you know, make it work and think about different levels and how can we make this stand out. Third one is, you know, mastering the tools to be able to do those first two skills. Mhmm.
Nick:You know? Yeah. Figma, AI or otherwise. And then four, being able to convince your stakeholders and sell your ideas to your stakeholders. Because, you know, if it's if you cannot sell your design, it's not really worth anything because it will not see the light of day.
Nick:So those four, I think if you can get to a decent level of those four, you'll be a top 1% or top 5% junior level designer. And I think you'll have a very strong foundation to build your career on top of in this, you know, strange time we're living in?
Tyler:Yeah. The first one seems like or the first two seems like the the first half of the double diamond, going wide and then going going narrow. But, like, going wide, I think, is super important, especially now. Like, it is so easy to get to the happy path of, like, focus on what I get very blinders on. I have the solution.
Tyler:This is it. When the beginning of the of project should be, like, breaking shit. Like, going finding multiple different variations even if they don't land anywhere. Inevitably, you land on a combination of one or two or three, which is the ideal solution. Especially with like creating prototypes, you can just jump into a solution.
Tyler:You're not even thinking about it. Like, you should be going wide for sure. You're their design will be better in the in the the end if you do that.
Nick:Yeah. I mean, because it's it's so easy to, you know, to do just do the thing people expect you to do, you know. I mean, let's let's see if we can think about a an example. You know, if let's say you want to to, you know, design an onboarding screen or pricing page or, you know, something's currently a table in your app. Now, it's always easy to think like, okay, well, the table doesn't really work on mobile.
Nick:Let's see if we can improve this table on mobile. I think that's very narrow. But then again, it's very difficult to zoom out and think about like to go wise. Maybe it should be a list of cards. Maybe we don't even need to show this here.
Nick:Maybe we need to show it somewhere else. And it's partially because of what we discussed in the previous episode. And there's just a lot of stakeholders and different departments around you with different goals. They want to get something done quickly. So you feel maybe insecure, like, I have this great idea, but I'm scared to present it because I know they will not like it because of, you know, budget reasons.
Nick:And also, it's just as a human being in your brain, it's very challenging to think about something completely new when you have something in mind. You know, this should be a table. It is a table now. So. Yeah.
Nick:And I'm not really sure how to explain how to do it because it's very challenging. But one thing I it sounds very silly that really helps me is to go for a walk. You know, do something else for part of your day. And then you'll have that wait a minute moment.
Tyler:Yeah. That often is the case. Like, it just comes to what you're doing, not the thing you're supposed to be doing. Yeah. I think I think also what's important to do is, like, the research part.
Tyler:So but that can look as simple as opening up a FigJam board and then doing some, high level competitive analysis, taking screenshots of, like, how others products do it. Of course. And they do it like 7,000 different ways. So that's a way a good way to start with your inspiration. Here's like the convention.
Tyler:There's only one way to there's usually a couple of different ways to do a certain flow, whether it's onboarding. Onboarding is pretty depending on the context, can can be done a couple different ways. But just see how the competitors do it, see which concepts you like, see what fits your use case. Try maybe two or three of them. And that way, you're kind of exploring different directions.
Tyler:But it's anchored in competition or similar products. And then also, like, go outside the conventional norm. So you might think a checkout experience, I'll just go to Amazon. Great. And then I might go a bit even wider.
Tyler:I'll go to, like, a Tesla or, like, a Rivian checkout for purchasing Mhmm. Cars, and then I'll go even wider. How does, like if I wanna sign up for a a banking or a credit card, how does that look like? Just so you have the breadth of, like, different examples of how to do a thing. Then you can converge and kind of narrow in.
Nick:Yeah. So when you say go wise, like, I I only thought about, like, design on a design level, like Mhmm. Different ways to design to design something. But what you're saying is, if I understand correctly, is that you can also go wide in terms of niche or industry. Like, how see how people onboard outside of my little corner of the Internet.
Tyler:Yeah. Because you can niche down and say, okay, I'm I'm doing med tech. This is how med tech UX works. But then you're you're kind of you're kind of narrowing yourself in. But if you expand across different verticals or different types of products, you're gonna get more variety and more inspiration.
Tyler:Yeah.
Nick:I think another way to force that is to do together with other people. Like just if you talk, you know, you know, the rubber ducky thing, like if you just talk to someone and they don't even say anything back, but just you talking out loud instead of being in your head, you have this wait a minute moment almost guaranteed you will have that moment, but also different people, different ideas. So what I do for one of my clients, like once a month, we have a scheduled time slot on Thursday, where we like we just bring one topic to that meeting and we brainstorm together. So last time we did pricing on a marketing page, and on the spot, I asked people to just find pricing pages they've used recently or just from companies they like. Yeah.
Nick:Screenshots, put it in FigJam, and then really be specific. I like this because I don't like this because, you know, just not just it's pretty, but just really talk about and be open about the reasons why you put the screenshot in. And then at some point, like one of the people in the meeting, like they got very emotional, like almost angry about how shitty a pricing page was and how it didn't make sense to them. You know, that's a real a real moment, you know. There's no no filter.
Nick:People are just explaining why they like something, why they don't like something. And then you take at least 10 ideas from that meeting. And that's just forty five minutes of sitting together and and pasting screenshots.
Tyler:Yeah. Plus everyone's like, oh, you're that's that's speaking to, like, probably the last one is just stakeholder management, but this is that beginning discovering piece, bringing everyone together so everyone feels or everyone is involved in the process. It feeds other ideas that you wouldn't normally think about versus just a traditional designer's viewpoint. Yeah. And now you have the now you have the client thinking about the problem.
Tyler:They're exposed to different solutions. And they they're you're bringing them early because and then it's not a surprise what you're showing them later, and they understand the decisions you made along the way because they were included.
Nick:Yeah. Well, Yeah. That's that's a smart idea as well, you know, for the long term happiness of your designer. Yes. I mean, so I think that's that's the range, you know, you have to go very wide.
Nick:And I know this is challenging when you have a stakeholder breathing down your neck, shouting in your ear that you have to become a 10x designer. But slowing down really helps, you know. So, for example, what I rule, what I have is when I say I sit down for four hours, like from lunch till the end of my workday to work on something. And then after four hours, I have something. I'm kind of happy with it.
Nick:My rule is that I will not send it to my client or stakeholder at the end of that four hour block. Because I know I have tunnel vision. I've been working on it too long. If I take a step back, go for dinner, maybe even sleep on it, and look at it again the next morning for just fifteen minutes just to see if I didn't put in anything terrible or maybe I have a new idea. Like that's my my safeguard that I that I keep in place.
Nick:Because I know almost guarantee that I will have something to fix or maybe a new idea the next morning. So sure, it takes a bit longer for people to see it, but nobody's going to see and reply to me at five p. M. Anyway. You know, so might as well do it fresh in the morning.
Nick:Yes. Yeah. So it's it's the designer's version of what a developer says about, you know, not pushing something live on a Friday.
Tyler:Yes. Definitely. Because it'll break on the weekend.
Nick:Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And then your your weekend is ruined, you know. So, yeah.
Nick:So that's that's what I what I do and what I can highly recommend you to do. And it's another example of how you can go even wider with this new fresh idea. So next one is going deep, I think, you know, conceptual depth. Any do do you have any any stories from your experience? Anything about, like, really going deep on something?
Tyler:Probably. But, like, if we're following that that path and going wide and then it's for me, it's deciding whether it's yourself or collaboratively. Like, what are the let's say you've done 20 different ideas. Now you gotta narrow in on, like, that one or two. Like, how do you decide which which ones to push forward?
Tyler:And then how I generally do it is is is just like, almost like, it's going back to the pricing page. What are the benefits or drawbacks of each each concept? What is the goal of the project? Which one align with that one? Which is which ones are are easier to build?
Tyler:Which ones are harder to build, which one gives more value. Then I can you're narrowing in on that one or two. Sharing with getting feedback from from the team also, like, what what do they think, etcetera. And then you have a version that you're we're coming to that territory where this is final version one, two, three, four, five. You're pushing you're trying to push this this this one idea, like, to its limit, like, with like, at the edges of, like, all of its own functionality, whether it's to that table example, does this table need to how does it look on mobile?
Tyler:Does it does it flex right? Does it is this experience needed on mobile, etcetera, etcetera? Then you're really into the to the weeds of, like, what this thing needs to be. And then you have to learn how to stop. Because you can Yeah.
Tyler:You can you can keep pushing past your delivery date.
Nick:Yeah. That's true. That's true. Yeah. So, I mean, I I think that's a very important thing to keep in mind, and I don't I don't think there's one final answer.
Nick:But the from going wide to going narrow, you know, picking the winners, the potential winners, doing that on your own versus involving stakeholders, you know, making it an official moment. I really think that depends. I I think it's it's for you, it might be different compared to to to me because of the in house versus freelancing stuff. Mhmm. You know, for me, it's more like people hire me to do something.
Nick:They don't really know what they're talking about. That's why they need me. So I narrow it down on my own. I go from 20 ideas to three and I present three to them. First of all, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think for you, your stakeholders, they've been working on a product for so long, and they have way more know how compared to my clients.
Nick:So it's probably a brainstorm workshop type moments together with your stakeholders to figure out the the winners.
Tyler:Yeah. Yeah. Keeping everyone involved at every step, whether that's if it's a book a session or even we do this a lot. We just record Loom Loom recordings. And then Loom has a really nice feature where you can add comments or emojis also if you if you think you're the prototype's fire.
Tyler:Just to get just to get everyone's feedback there, which is which is great. So we do that often and always to keep number one, keep everyone updated on, like, the progress of a per of a project, and also to to gather feedback. Like, here's where I'm at today. This and then you can prefix it with, it's in a messy state. It's early stage.
Tyler:I'm at the end. I really need feedback on this specific thing. Yes. Early
Nick:and often. Yeah. True. True. I mean, the the hardest thing is to figure out the winners on your own, and it's more about, like, gut feeling.
Nick:You know? Because at some point you'll probably have a few like when you narrow it down in terms of like KPIs and ROI, like you probably have a few very similar ones. And then it's up to your design eye to be the judge of which one is best. And then even for me as a freelancer at that moment, I, you know, I bring in the the stakeholders to to think along with me. Before we continue, if you're feeling stuck in your design career if you feel like you're doing solid work while no one really notices, we've got a bunch of extra stuff on our website.
Tyler:We're building a community for product designers to actually learn, grow, and get hired, not just scroll and collect more inspiration.
Nick:There's also articles, checklists, and courses.
Tyler:All based on real world experience from both of us. No fluff, just what actually works.
Nick:Check out designtablepodcast.com. The link is in the description.
Tyler:Yeah. Because it's true. Like, in your case, it's it's really seen as the experts. Like, we we hired you because we are we are not good at this thing that I think you can kind of deliver value on. They're looking to you for the answer, but also it's helpful to include them in to figuring out the answer because they own they own it as well.
Nick:That's true. That's true. And it could be, you know, for for the juniors listening to this, it could be that you have to go wide again because the things you thought were a winner weren't really a winner. Like, maybe it's just a step in the right direction or you forgot about a certain aspect of, you know, maybe just an edge case. Or what happened to me recently is I just completely forgot about mobile.
Nick:You know, I just assumed like this is a B2B dashboard. So we're all on on desktop. There's not even mobile involvement. Turns out 20% of users were on mobile. Well, this cool hover idea doesn't work then.
Tyler:You know? And part of that is also understanding, like, when to blow it up. Like, yes, you've done gone wide and then you've narrowed in and then you're pushing and pushing v one, v two, v three. Yeah. It is okay to say we didn't we need to reset.
Tyler:Like, yes, there's risk there, there's deadlines, but you don't wanna push the wrong thing. So it's that's also a skill. That is I think it's harder to to know when you should stop pushing and, like, reset. We we've we've gone a path that we shouldn't have gone down. We we've we've moved further and further and further away from the goal that we initially started with.
Nick:I mean, that's changing. Right? Because at some point, you get emotionally invested. Like, it's your baby. It's your design creation.
Nick:You're proud of it. You really think this is the way and your stakeholders seem happy until you find the stakeholder it isn't. And then it's very tough to, you know, to kill your darlings, you know, to be like, Okay, well, let's take a step back because there's some sense of pride involved as well and insecurity that, you know, people might get angry at you like, oh, it should be finished last week, and then here you are with this new idea, you know. So it's very tough to make the the hard decisions.
Tyler:Yeah. On the baby like analogy, I think you should always I think you should always think of your baby it becomes your baby once it's pushed to production, I think. I think everything before that is, this is a it's getting in a weird place here. Everything before that is experimentation, and you're allowed to make happy mistakes. Yeah.
Tyler:You can be it's very easy to get emotionally involved in in early concepting, but once it's live, it's it's it's being held by the users that are using it. Yeah. And then you give me an Washington Vault because there you once need it's in production, you have to take care of it. To follow the analogy, have to feed it to iterate, improve it over time, etcetera, etcetera. We allow yourself to disconnect from the solution until it it's official.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. Do you think okay. I I think it it's the case, but I'm curious what you think that the whole in house versus freelance thing, you know, some people tell me more and more designers are going freelance because it gives them more freedom in terms of design process. Like, so when I tell you to just slow down, like, do you think that that's even possible at a larger company with all these managers and deadlines and budgets and that kind of stuff?
Nick:Like, can you just go in and say like, well, I'm just going to take another day to think about it?
Tyler:Yeah. Because in in reality, all these deadlines really are arbitrary. They're they're self imposed. It's the the August 25 deadline is is not really a deadline. Unless unless, of course, there was, a contract involved where we have to deliver for a client.
Tyler:But in most cases, things can be pushed and and adjusted Mhmm. With good reason. Like, if there is a real risk, like, you flagged a real risk, this is if we ship it like this, this is what's gonna happen. But if we take time, this and this and this is gonna be resolved.
Nick:Yeah. You have to be specific. Not not just say like, well, it's shitty this way. You know? Yes.
Nick:You're not you're not going to sell it that way. Yeah. No. Well, I mean, that's a relief because I really thought that this become a 10x designer, you have to use AI. Because of AI, you have to be 10 times faster, you know, that kind of thing.
Nick:I was really concerned for people in house that they're all going to have to deal with managers claiming that on you.
Tyler:No. You can we can work 10 times faster, but also be aware of, like, how long it used to take us and just give us the grace. Like, you're gonna you're we're speeding up. There's we need to catch the mistakes. The we're not we're not judged on velocity.
Tyler:It's quality. That's what the design department is. It's that's what we are. It's not we can ship things fast. That's not our job.
Tyler:What we what we ship for which gets built and shipped is not a quick hot fix. It's it's more conceptual, it's high level, and it's more intricate. And it's not something that you can fix quickly Because we've we've gone through this entire process. We have to go wide, multiple iterations, different directions, narrow in a couple of view.
Nick:Mhmm.
Tyler:That takes time and that to speed that up and then have to go back and fix it is more costly to do it that way. So fix everything and make sure that you're shipping the right thing the first time, or ship a phased version of a thing if you're not sure.
Nick:Yeah. I mean I mean, that's isn't it very silly how we're all talking about speed? Like, I mean, that's the feeling I have at least just looking at LinkedIn and Twitter and Reddit and all these places. Like, it's all about I'm so much quicker now. Or I'm just thinking about how can I how can we do things better?
Nick:And then speed is secondary to it.
Tyler:Yeah. I think I watched a podcast with Alex or Moser recently. It's like talking about AI and how different companies that he's investing in or or helping, like, loves to use AI. But the the question you should ask is, are you making more money? Yeah.
Tyler:Yes or no? You, like
Nick:You being the the company.
Tyler:You being the company. You're investing in he gave an example of he had he was he hired virtual assistants, like, overseas that would cost him that costed that company, like, $11,000 per month.
Nick:Okay.
Tyler:And they decided, let's see if we can replace this with with AI, and they ended up investing $300,000, which was basically three years three years of of pay for the VAs that they tried to replace. So, like, yes, you can use AI, but is it making you money? Is it do
Nick:you need to use it?
Tyler:Mhmm. The is faster is being faster making you more money? Is it bringing more users? Like, that's the question you should be asking.
Nick:Yeah. I think and I don't want to to take this away too much from the those four skills that we talked about, but I think it's all about being able if you can do more in the same amount of time or in less time or make more money, like, I think that's the goal for a company to become more efficient.
Tyler:Yeah.
Nick:So, for example, we have to set your automation for this the episodes that we release. You know, it it cleans things up. It puts a draft for me ready to review, to send out to subscribers. It makes a CMS item in Webflow so that we have our own page, you know, and it notifies us in Slack when it's ready and the links that we can share to friends and followers. Know, that saves it saves me time It saves you time, I imagine as well, you know, because otherwise we have to find those things, put it in place.
Nick:So let's say it saves me sixty minutes a week. You know, part of it is AI. Part of it is just automation. Like, I think that's a clear winner. It gives me back one hour of my time.
Nick:And if I can, you know, I can go for a walk, go to the gym or spend one hour extra working for a client at €100 an hour. You know, I think that's a clear winner because that happens every week. So what I think a company should do is zoom out, look at your week, look at all the things you're doing in a week, and see if there's anything where you feel like, hey, this is annoying to do. It's repeating myself every time. Is there something we can make more efficient?
Nick:Automate, replace, not do anymore, maybe even. And then if there's a yes somewhere, then you have to figure out, okay, well, what's the best way to automate this? Like, maybe it needs to be outsourced. Maybe it needs to be automated. Maybe AI can replace it for me.
Nick:Like, it's it's not always and that's what I think people think. You know, it's it's it doesn't have to be AI always. Only if it makes sense. And for some things it does. But yeah, so I think that's that's probably the way, you know.
Nick:If you have this VA multiple for 11 k a month, that sounds probably fine and way better than 300 AI solution, quote unquote. Yeah. But that's my rambling about efficiency. Yeah.
Tyler:Yeah. That example, the sunken cost. To make that money back, you gotta wait three years to go to go green on that one.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, for for a large company, an investment that repays itself in three years, it's not the worst.
Tyler:No. I don't know because I don't know if that's the lever I'd push though.
Nick:No. No. No, that's true. I mean, three years is still a long time. You have to survive that time as a company.
Nick:Anyway, going wide, going narrow. Those are the first two. Third one, I think is quite easy and maybe more straightforward is mastering the tools to go wide and go narrow. You know, and I think it probably involves some sort of soft skill and being able to facilitate workshops, bring together your stakeholders, pushing back on city deadlines, but also being able to use Figma or Clod or Logo or any of the tools to generate or design the ideas you have in mind, you know? Yeah.
Nick:Because it's just way easier for people in a room to look at something visual compared to, you know, let's let's say I would explain a dashboard to you. And on the second row, fifth cell, you have two lines of text and then the first one is blue and the second one is green. Like, you're confused already, you know? Like, it's way easier to have it officially in front of you. So tool mastering, I think, is very important.
Nick:And I don't care, dear listener, I don't care what tool you use. I care about you being able to visualize and present your your ideas and and iterate on this.
Tyler:Agreed. But use Claude. No.
Nick:But I think it's
Tyler:I am think it's Claude.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah.
Tyler:I think it's true. I think learn the tools. Though the the tools change every once in while, like, they're anchored in the hard skill that you've developed. The tools are just the like, help facilitate you getting to an output. And it's great that we get to use all these AI tools that kind of have these different concepts.
Tyler:But learning the tools to be efficient with it, not to slow you down, to help you facilitate conversations like you mentioned. But yeah. And then they like, the tools you learn, the the the faster you get at it, the faster your output is. And I'm not talking about the automation piece. I'm just talking about the better you get at learn navigating the the tools to do your design output, the better.
Nick:Yeah. Well, yeah, that's that's true. And I think if you know one tool, it will be way easier to learn another tool because they do more or less the same thing. You know, maybe the buttons and the toggles are in different places. That's how it felt for me at least going, for example, from Sketch to Figma years ago.
Nick:You know, it's all the same thing. But then it's probably more important to to know the design principles behind it, you know, hierarchy, border radius, text balance, and that kind of stuff. So, yeah, sit down, play with tools, and get your reps in. And I think that's that's skill number three. Skill number four, I think we more or less talked about already, or I think it's one of the main topics in in almost any episode that we we we record, and that's the ability for you to sell and convince your ideas.
Tyler:Yes. I think our number one job is to be salespeople, regardless of the department. But, like, if we're speaking to designers specifically, you need to sell your ideas. And I'm not saying make sure that people take your ideas and make sure you win, but you have to sell the value of the concepts that you're proposing. Like, what are the benefits?
Tyler:Make sure that you communicate. You've thought through all the edge cases and this different use cases. Why why is this concept good? What is it? Because it's increasing revenue, conversion, retention, all all the things.
Tyler:You cannot present your ideas as here, what do you think? It's you've you've been hired to do a specific thing, and it's the research, and that all that discovery work is is backing up what you're what you're pitching.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. I I think the the what do you think is the the thing you like, that mistake is something you have to experience for yourself. You have to feel the shitty remainder of that meeting. You know, it's the one that's even worse is when you say, do you like it?
Nick:I think that's one even worse. Yeah. But you you have to do it. You have to see what happens, and you have to be like, oh, man. I'm never going to ask that question that way again.
Tyler:You could ask it at Like, the you could do your spiel and then, alright, how do we how do we feel overall? That's that could be your last question. Do not ask ask that as your first question. That'll derail the entire rating.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. Or as your only question. Yeah. I mean, so that that there's a whole lot of soft skill involved.
Nick:I think we can probably fill like two or three full episodes with, you know, presenting your work and selling your work and that kind of thing. One thing I do want to highlight in in that thing, in fourth skill is to really try and remember the reason why we even are doing this design exercise. Because that going wide and going narrow, like that whole process, it can take weeks for something that's quite complex. Because, you know, you have to find time to meet with people. You have to think about things.
Nick:You have to weekend. People are sick. People are on vacation. And so it takes weeks. And I don't know about you, but for me, I sometimes forget that starting point.
Nick:Like, hey, this thing is broken or this thing is underperforming. Let's see if we can make it better. Quick fix or big improvement, like, those choices are very important to keep in mind while presenting. Now for us designers, it's very easy to go too big and forget about the scope. For me, at least, I tend to go too big.
Tyler:I think that's that's the only thing that I present or the question that I ask. Like, here here's the question here's the thing that we wanna fix. Does this thing I'm presenting you help fix that problem? It almost never I I don't think I ever get design feedback because I never ask that question. Like, I I assume I think if you're in a team with other designers, get aesthetic feedback in a separate session.
Tyler:But if you're presenting with other stakeholders, like, ask get feedback on the solution to the problem.
Nick:Yeah. Design by commission is someone I I respect very well is what he calls it. You know, and that's something you don't want to just be in a room with a bunch of non designers and then go like, how about this? How about this? How about this?
Nick:You know, and then they're like, no, well, you know, what if we make it two rows instead of one? And then you're on the spot like a little monkey. You're you're just like a circus act. You're doing the thing they ask, you know. That's something to prevent for sure.
Nick:You know, I don't want to make this episode too complex, you know, but I think those four things, if you you can get those things right, more or less right, you can go from problem to a presented solution where your stakeholders are like, yep, let's build it. And I think that's probably that that's that I think that's a the first milestone you have to get to as an entry level designer to be able to solve a problem.
Tyler:If you had to pick one of the four as the the most important, what would that be? I'm curious. I
Nick:would go about I would say the first one. Like, I'm not allowed to say two, but I would say in that case, I would pick one and two, the ability to go wide and narrow again. But you you asked me for one, so I I to pick one, I will pick the first one. Okay. Being able to come up with ideas.
Tyler:Very good.
Nick:How about yourself?
Tyler:I'd probably go four. I think it's you learn later in your design career that four is super important. I think you over index It is. On the craft early and forget. It's it's often it's easy to get lost in if I do the work correctly at a high level, that will help projects succeed, me succeed in my in my career.
Tyler:But I think the politics game is is super important. So I put it
Nick:Well, that's true. That's that's true. I mean, I think if you if you cannot sell your design, if you get overrun by stakeholders, it's not worth anything. You know, but then the opposite is true as well. Like, you can be a perfect salesman.
Nick:But if you have a shitty idea, you're, know, what do they call it? You're a well, you have you have nothing really to sell. Something nothing of quality.
Tyler:Lipstick on a pig, I think you're looking for.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's in Dutch, we have a few similar things that are it's very challenging to translate.
Nick:But I mean, they're all winners. All four are winners. But I really see your point. Without sales skills, yeah, it's you're not going to have something built. Not not your way.
Nick:Agree. Yeah. Alright. So, I mean, let's keep this one short and specific. Those are the four I think you need.
Nick:And they will stand the test of time for sure. They'll be the same four in ten years.
Tyler:Alright. That's another episode in the bag.
Nick:Yeah. Great episode. By the way, if you're stuck second guessing your work or trying to figure out your next move, drop a question in the comments or leave a review. We might actually feature you in one of our future episodes.
Tyler:And if you got any value from this episode, hit subscribe wherever you're listening. It helps more than you think.
Nick:You can can find everything else, resources, articles, and more at designtablepodcast.com.
Tyler:Thanks for being here.
Nick:See you next time.