On January 26, 2012, I walked out of my final job. Thanks for your support these past 14 years.

As you get more fluent with design, you find a progression from tool use to insight generation. In order:

1. Tool use. You become really, really good at whatever design tools are in vogue at the time. Doesn’t matter which. Underneath that is a solid understanding of the basic principles of color, typography, layout, and behavior.

The consequence: you become excellent at making prototypes. Nothing wrong with this! But you should go deeper.

2. Coding. Designers will code, of course, and code well & often, so your next step beyond tooling is to understand the code and how your work will fit in.

The consequence: you become excellent at building. Remember that building, not design production, is why you’re here.

3. Procedural awareness. Why are you building what you’re building? In what order? For what reasons?

The consequence: a point of political friction in one’s career, as you become good enough to understand the system you’re swimming in while lacking the appropriate power to influence it. At the same time, those in power think people don’t know their place, and they manage in a more adversarial way than is generally appropriate.

4. Measurement. Since design must become value-based in order to survive, you learn how to measure the impact of your work, and you’re given access to the tools that are necessary to do it.

The consequence: You may be building less here, or you may be building alongside measurement. Regardless, when you talk about what you did, now you’ll be able to fill in the crucial gaps of what happened. How did customers respond? What remains worth working on?

5. Strategic leverage. You trot out a long presentation or three about not only what you did, but why you did it. After getting some wins & influencing the culture, you’re slowly handed more influence.

The consequence: You use tooling less and become a deeper part of the conversation. You’re also handed more influence into whether and how you research, which of course is the core of design. When you’re pulled into more meetings and asked more questions, you know you’re doing your job right.

In short

A few things happen over time:

• You use tooling less
• You understand more components of the systems around your work
• You’re eventually given more responsibility
• You move into a more business-oriented role

Some blind spots:

• You learn less about new tooling, especially as industry acceptance moves from one toolset/platform to another
• You lose sight of day-to-day operations
• You do fewer activities that you think of as “design”
• Research will fall to the wayside… if you let it

I’m curious how this tracks for you, especially if you’ve been along a handful of steps in this journey. Hit reply & let me know!