How to become a Senior Designer: Break out of your cocoon, spread your wings, and soar ~
Growth starts with you, stepping up proactively, building opinions and voicing opinions like an owner, despite your fear and doubt. Attempt by attempt, you will make your breakthrough.
How to become a senior designer? Step one, step out of your cocoon.
When I started at Google seven years ago, I was a junior designer who worked hard and executed designs diligently. I thought hard work would lead to bigger opportunities. But over time, I got stuck in repetitive small projects. Inside me, I couldn’t wait for my manager to see me and give me bigger opportunities.
It wasn’t until I made significant changes — changing teams and companies, and most importantly, changing my mindset, that I realized: Growth must be initiated.
A senior designer, by definition, is a proactive thinker and doer. No one can hand it to me. I had to step up from an executor to an owner, proactively identify new opportunities and voice my opinions despite my fear and doubt. Since then, I’ve had much faster career and personal growth — became more confident, worked on bigger projects, received back-to-back promotions and got invited to speak at multiple international conferences.
Nowadays, when I mentor junior designers, I often see similar hesitations in them — eager to grow but waiting for others to give them a push or permission to step up. But the transformation into a senior designer requires you to step up proactively and identify new opportunities yourself.
Sounds scary to step up? What if you make a fool of yourself? What if you can’t identify new opportunities? What if others don’t agree with you?
I feel you. It can feel scary. I will share my growth story and the mindset shifts that helped me. I hope to get you excited (not scared) to go on this transformative journey. The butterfly inside you is waiting to come out~
Here’s a preview of my 5 mindset shifts:
Growth is to be initiated. No one can hand it to you.
To step up, be an owner, not an executor.
Voice opinions even if you aren’t 100% sure.
When challenged, be determined to understand, not to win.
Fear and doubt will always be there, but don’t let them stop you.
Define “Senior designer”
Before we proceed, let me clarify what I mean by a "senior designer" in this article. I focus on a high-level mindset shift and transformation, not a granular job title definition.
I focus on a high-level mindset shift and transformation, not a granular job title definition.
I use “senior designer” as a broad term to describe an experienced designer who:
Plays an active role in their teams’ decision-making process.
Can solve design problems independently and knows when to seek collaboration and support.
Proposes new directions and challenges decisions when needed.
Plus many more things. But in this article, I will focus on the ones above.
As a comparison, a junior designer is someone who:
Receives project briefs from product managers or other leads.
Executes design solutions with some support.
Communicates design solutions to immediate collaborators.
Also, to me, becoming a senior designer is way more than getting a promotion. Promotions are good external validations, but they are short-term and decided by others.
The real reward is you growing and achieving more as a person. You will be able to solve harder and more impactful problems - not just design problems, but product, business, organizational and even industry-wide problems. You will gain confidence and leadership skills, which will set you up for further success. You will become a new you - the butterfly~
Now, let’s dive in!
1: Growth is to be initiated. No one can hand it to you.
When I was a new grad designer, I loved to be seen as reliable and diligent. It was a badge of honour to be given more projects. I often worked on 4-5 projects at the same time and worked late nights and weekends voluntarily.
After two years of hard work, I started to grow impatient. I was still the most junior designer on the team. I was asked to do many projects but small projects. One time, when the design team worked on a 5-year vision project for a brand-new product, I was the only designer on the team who didn’t get to work on it. I watched how the senior designers on my team created a grand vision. It looked fun and cool!
“Unfair! When’s my turn?!” I thought. I wanted to work on bigger and more strategic projects too. For more than a year, I felt stuck in repetitive and small projects. On one hand, I felt underappreciated. On the other hand, I doubted myself. I thought, maybe I didn’t have what it takes to work on bigger projects and that’s why I was never given the opportunity.
I felt left out and unfair when all the senior designers worked on the big vision project.
Eventually, out of frustration, I left the team and the company. After I left Google, I had a two-week break before starting my next job at Meta. During that time, I sat down with myself and reflected on my years at Google.
When I was finally honest with myself, as much as I wanted to blame my managers for not giving me bigger opportunities, I admitted to myself that I limited my own growth. I did well but only in what I was told to do. I was reactive. I was an observer and an executor. I never asked for bigger projects or sought bigger opportunities proactively.
As I reflected, I wanted to be different going forward. I thought about what I wanted to do more in my new job: “Seek new opportunities and challenges to grow”, “Be ambitious and be confident to express my ambitions”, “Be an owner and act”. I wrote these down in a reflection doc:
Screenshot of my reflection doc from when I left Google in 2019
Never underestimate the power of an honest reflection!
By the time I started at Meta, I was determined to be different. I went in with a more proactive mindset. Unlike my old self who often hesitated to propose new ideas, in my third week at Meta, I proposed to do a vision project. While not 100% confident, I knew that I had seen enough vision projects at Google to at least give it a try. This time, I didn’t wait for anyone else to ask me to do the project. I proposed it proactively because I believed it was needed and could help the team.
Guess what?! My new manager noticed me very quickly. Two months later, when it was time to do a bigger org-wide vision, even though I was one of the newest and the more junior designers on the team, my manager picked me to work on it! From there, I continued to have bigger opportunities. My first year at Meta turned out to be one of my fastest-growing years. I was promoted to a “senior” level just after one year at Meta.
What I learned is that growth is to be initiated. Senior designers create their own opportunities. They don’t wait for others to hand them bigger roles.
I learnt to step up proactively, instead of waiting for others to hand me a higher role.
If you are a junior designer who wants to work on bigger projects, don’t wait for others to hand them to you. Identify them yourself. Your way up is stepping up yourself.
“But how to step up? How to identify bigger opportunities?” You might ask. Let’s get into the next section.
2: To step up, be an owner, not an executor.
In my second year at Google, I worked with a PM who joined the team in the same week as I did and was also one of the youngest on the team. The similarities between us ended there. Unlike me, she became the center of the team very quickly, creating plans, talking to senior leads as if they were friends, and frequently bringing the team together for discussions and social events. In comparison, I was slow in ramping up, quiet and afraid to voice opinions. For more than a year, I felt like I was living in the PM’s shadow.
At the time, I thought we were different because we were fundamentally different types of people. She was an extrovert and I was an introvert. She was a PM and I was a designer. She talked and looked like the senior leads and I was a quiet Chinese working amongst Americans and Europeans. I thought I would never be like her - having so many impressive ideas and looking so confident. I thought I was doomed.
I thought I was doomed and would never be like the PM who had many impressive ideas and looked so confident.
It was only after I left Google that I realised the real, underlying difference between the PM and me was: She thought and acted like an owner, while I thought and acted like an executor.
As a PM, she spent time thinking about the teams’ directions and oftentimes thought beyond her scope. Her confidence was built on her taking the time to think through the big picture and form well-rounded opinions. Her focus was, “What should we do as a team to be successful?”
I cared about the team too, of course, but in a different way. As a junior designer, I was used to getting project briefs from others, waiting for directions, and then, executing them as well as I could. I couldn’t come up with bigger and more strategic ideas because I never spent time thinking about them. My head was buried in my small scope. My focus was, “How can I execute the work assigned to me in the best way?”
When I joined Meta, I wanted to be different. To get myself to think about the big picture, I pretended, in my mind, that I was responsible for my team’s overall outcome. I told myself to spend time thinking about what we, as a team needed to do next, even if no one’s going to ask me about it.
As a result, I saw a big change in my thinking and behaviour. The team I joined at Meta was new with no clear team direction yet. Instead of waiting for others to define it, I thought about what we could do next. What I thought of was the team vision project that I mentioned in the previous section. The vision project helped the new team come together to form a more clear direction. It also helped me get noticed by my new manager, which led to bigger opportunities for me. Over time, I became more like the PM I worked with - assuming more ownership and responsibility, thinking about the bigger picture and coming up with more strategic ideas.
I wasn’t doomed after all. None of us are!
I learnt to be like an owner and look at the big picture, instead of an executor who only did well in the work assigned to her.
Nowadays when I mentor junior designers, to help them think more like an owner, I like to ask them,
“What would you do if you were in charge - if you were your manager, the Product Manager, or even better, the CEO?”
How would you answer that question for your work?
The mindset shift from an executor to an owner will make a huge difference in how you think about your work and how you act.
An executor has a narrow view, whereas an owner sees the big picture.
When you get a project, if you think like an executor, you might ask:
What are the requirements for the project?
What does the PM mean when they say XYZ?
What’s expected of me for this project?
These are all legit questions to ask, but they rarely lead to identifying bigger opportunities. They focus on following instructions and understanding others’ opinions.
If you think like an owner, then your questions would become:
What are the goals of the project? How do they connect with the company’s ultimate goals? Are these even good goals?
Is this project the most impactful thing for the team to work on now? Are there other more impactful projects?
What does success look like? What needs to happen for this project to succeed? What are the risks? Are there better approaches?
How can I and everyone else in the team contribute the most?
Can you answer these questions?
Maybe someone else already gave you some answers, but still, take the time to think through. Make sure you truly understand the rationales behind the decisions. That’s how you can train your strategic thinking muscles. If there are questions you can’t answer, then that’s a great learning opportunity. Go ask someone for their opinions, and then form your own opinions. Learn from others, but think critically about what they say before accepting the answers as facts.
What if you think through and come up with opinions that are different from others? Are you wrong? Probably not! Let’s talk more in the next section.
3: Voice opinions even if you aren’t 100% sure.
It can be intimidating to voice opinions initially, especially if your opinions are different from others. You might worry about getting things “wrong”.
But let me tell you an obvious secret: There are no absolute right or wrong answers in design and product development. Teams can achieve similar results in different ways. Everyone, even the “senior” people are just making best guesses based on past experience. Your opinions might be different but it doesn’t mean that you are wrong.
It took me a while to internalise this lesson. When I started at Google, I remembered watching the design leads around me walking from meeting to meeting, with their heads up and laptops under their arms, talking so confidently and sometimes aggressively. “So cool! They know what they are doing!” I thought in my mind. I thought they had all the answers and I looked forward to becoming like them one day!
When I eventually became somewhat of a “lead” myself, I started to see things differently. I led my first large-scale project in my second year at Meta. I worked with 3 other designers. While I wasn’t explicitly called out as a design lead, I was one of the more experienced and tenured designers. Because of that, I felt a sense of responsibility for the project overall. So before realising it, I started “leading” - I continued to put out ideas about what we should do next, “let’s do more user research”, “let’s do a weekly design critique”, “let’s connect with that other team”...
And, people listened and followed my suggestions, and not just once, but repeatedly, which at the time to me, a new “lead”, was surprising.
In my mind, I was still very unsure about the suggestions I put out there. But it seemed that others thought I knew what I was doing and they followed what I suggested?! That made me wonder, does that mean, all the amazing “senior” people I used to look up to weren’t 100% sure either?
I was surprised that people listened to my suggestions even when I wasn’t sure.
Fast forward to now, I’ve learned that no one is 100% sure. “Senior” people have more experience, so they are more confident in making educated guesses. But they are still guesses, after all, there are no absolute right answers.
Speaking of “right answers”, recently when mentoring a designer, she asked me what to do next for her projects. As mentors often do, I asked for her thoughts first. She shared her thinking and then said,
“Now, you can give me the right answer!”
“The right answer?! Did you think I asked for your opinions just so that I can tell you that you are wrong?! That would be mean!” I thought in my mind.
I used to seek “right” answers from “senior” people too. But now, when the table’s turned, I see that “senior” people aren’t teachers. There are no text-book answers. “Senior” people aren’t waiting there to say “Gotcha! You are WROOONG!”
Why would they?! There are many different ways to solve problems. Building products is all about bringing together the many different perspectives and “incomplete” answers to achieve the best outcome possible.
I learnt that there are no absolute right or wrong answers in product development. It’s about piecing together different perspectives.
As a junior designer, you might have less experience but it doesn’t mean that your opinions aren’t valid. In fact, often junior designers are the ones who have spent the most time with all the product details. You have a unique perspective, which will help the team create a more complete view of the problem and solution.
And, you don’t need to wait until you are 100% sure to share your opinions. If you wait for that, it will never come.
4: When challenged, be determined to understand, not to win.
If you’ve followed all the previous points - spent time forming opinions, coming up with new ideas, and sharing with your team. It would be nice to get some recognition, right? But what if you receive pushback and skepticism, instead? Others tell you, “I don’t get it”, “It’s not going to work”, “It’s too much effort to build”...
What do you do next when people don’t agree with you?
When I was a junior designer, my instinct was to feel frustrated and disappointed internally. But on the surface, I would quickly compromise and agree with others.
As I grew into a more senior designer, I thought I shouldn’t just agree with others all the time. That would make me look weak! I thought being more senior meant being strong, defending my opinions, and delivering projects despite challenges and disagreements.
So, the first time I led a large-scale project, I was determined to do exactly that - get people to agree with me and deliver despite challenges. It was my second year at Meta, and the project involved building alignment across many teams. As the design lead, I experienced a range of pushbacks, from team members not seeing any value in the project, to partner teams not interested in collaborating, to engineers not willing to fix the button alignments.
Despite the pushbacks, I was determined to get my design vision built. In fact, determined to a fault. When people questioned the project and designs, I created countless docs, slides, and prototypes and did many 1:1s to get others to agree. I was like a samurai loyal to my vision and the project, ready to defend, fight, and push through at any cost.
Throughout the six-month project, I felt like banging my head on the wall. I remembered many times sitting on the carpet of my home office, thinking, “Why can’t they just agree with me?! Why don’t they see what I see?! Why do I have to explain over and over again?!” It was frustrating but I thought the frustration was a necessary part of “leading”. I needed to get others to agree!
I thought being more senior meant getting others to agree with me (and crying on my own when things don’t go as expected)
In the end, we did deliver the project. But at what cost? I was burnt out and left the team. The product we built was also sadly, short-lived.
It was only much later that I realized that I wasn’t “leading”, I was trying to win, be seen as a “leader”, and prove that my designs were good and right. I went from one extreme to the other—from someone who compromised quickly to someone who refused to adjust.
Fast forward to now, I’ve learned that being more senior isn’t about having strong opinions and getting others to agree with me. Having strong opinions is good and important, but these opinions should be held loosely. If we go back to the owner’s mindset, my goal should never be to “win”, or get things my way. My goal should be building understanding and achieving good outcomes as a team.
When challenged, I learnt to focus more on understanding instead of “defending” myself.
To make it more concrete, here’s a common scenario:
You just proposed a new design idea and your engineers pushed back right away and said, “It can’t be done. That’s just a designer dreaming something unrealistic. It would be a waste of time. We have no engineer to work on it”
To respond, you can:
Retreat and think, “Oh, so mean. Fine, I won’t mention this anymore. We can go with that other boring solution.”
Or start pushing back right away, “But it would be so much better if we do this! We’ve heard in user research that… so this design can meet user needs much better… and more delightful… and…”
Or you can stay calm and try to understand the engineers’ point of view more, “Can you say more? How much effort would it take? I think the new designs can help achieve our goals better, would you agree or am I missing something? Help me understand…”
Let’s take a closer look at the responses:
The first response is how I used to default to as a junior designer - feel personally attacked and retreat quickly.
The second response is how I responded when I focused on looking “strong” and “right”, so I would fight to “win”.
The third response is what I aim to do if I face the situation now - pause, ask more questions, and respond after I’ve understood others’ points. Then, try to build on opinions and get to a better outcome together.
If after hearing what the engineers say, you agree with them and abandon your idea, would you look weak? No, in fact, if you can put aside your ego and adjust your opinions, it would be a strength.
Staying calm when challenged is not easy. It requires not taking things personally and reminding yourself that there are no absolute right or wrong answers (remember?). People all have different opinions - build on them, instead of trying to prove that your opinions are the “right” ones. A true leader is someone who focuses on understanding and arriving at the best solutions possible as a team, instead of winning.
5: Fear and doubt will always be there, but don’t let them stop you.
Growth means doing something new, which naturally, involves fear and doubt. As you continue on your journey to become a senior designer, you will certainly feel unsure sometimes - worry about saying the wrong things, making mistakes, or others disagreeing with you. It’s all expected and part of growth.
I used to think that as I grew as a designer and as a person, I would become wiser, more confident and less afraid. But what I learned is that sometimes fear and doubt come back even stronger. Why? Because I’m seeking bigger challenges.
Last year, I spoke at 6 international design conferences. The audience ranged from 600 to 2,000 people. Was I scared to speak in front of 2,000 people? Of course! I was so scared that in the days leading up to my talk, I wanted to run away so badly. I regretted saying yes to the talks. I worried that my opinions wouldn’t be worth people’s time. I worried that I would forget my words and freeze on stage. I worried that my jokes would sound awkward and stupid…
But then, every time, I did my best to prepare my talks, pack in as much value as I could, and show up as confident as I could pretend to be. And every time, after the talks, some audience would tell me that they found value in my talks. Phew~ So then I do it again and sign up for more conference talks. Write more articles. Seek bigger challenges. Feel my fear but do it anyway. Grow in each attempt.
I learned that fear and doubt will always be there. I can feel them and step up anyway.
Looking back on my seven years working as a designer, I’ve grown and changed - no longer the quiet junior designer, now a more experienced, more opinionated and more confident person. But I know I’m still SO SO early on my journey. I have a lot more that I want to do. And, I have a lot more fear, doubt, frustrations, poor attempts and most importantly growth ahead of me.
For you, my friend, becoming a senior designer will be a big step, but certainly not an end. You will achieve so much more after that. So, my last point here, is for you to remember on your journey to become a senior designer and beyond: Fear and doubt will always be there, but don’t let them stop you. Embrace your fear, seek challenges, make mistakes, learn and grow in each of your attempts ~
Closing thoughts
What do you think? Are you more excited about the transformation ahead of you?
To recap, here are the 5 mindset shifts to help you feel more ready for the journey to become a senior designer:
Growth is to be initiated. No one can hand it to you.
To step up, be an owner, not an executor.
Voice opinions even if you aren’t 100% sure.
When challenged, be determined to understand, not to win.
Fear and doubt will always be there, but don’t let them stop you.
The five steps
If you still feel unsure, hear this, “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.” It’s a beautiful quote from R. Buckminster Fuller. We all have so much potential in us. The butterflies are there, waiting to come out.
Growth starts with you believing in yourself. Attempt after attempt, you will have your breakthrough. You will look back and see that you have it in you always - break out of your cocoon, let the butterfly emerge, spread your wings, and soar!
Rooting for you!
Break out of your cocoon, let the butterfly emerge, spread your wings, and soar!
If you can’t tell yet, we are very passionate about helping designers grow. If you are interested in chatting, reach out to us at hello@yutongyunan.com.
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