How to Overcome Imposter Syndrome as a New Designer

I’m going to be honest, this is a big one. I am sure if you are like me then whenever you browse Dribbble/Behance you get a sense that everyone is a great designer except you. You marvel at the creations which seem out of this world and curse yourself when you are going to reach that level.

Imposter syndrome seems to be a trendy term I see these days and it’s something that I go back and forth in-between, especially when I encounter new situations.

The truth is, designers often can feel like an imposter much of the time. Everyone seems to be an expert besides you. Dr Valerie Young, has classified imposter syndrome into five types: the Perfectionist, the Superwoman/man, the Natural Genius, the Soloist, and the Expert.

In her book, The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer From the Imposter Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It, Dr Young shares her decades of research studying phony feelings among high achievers.

If you’re just starting out as a new designer, chances are you’re probably feeling some type of imposter syndrome. Beginning any new career is scary, and there’s always a learning curve, but it can be especially nerve-wracking for those in creative fields where there isn’t really a right answer to anything.

Read through these five categories to see which type of imposter syndrome resonates most with you, and then read on for some tips about how to overcome imposter syndrome.

5 Types of Imposter Syndrome

1. The Perfectionist

The Perfectionist is focused primarily on the “how.” How something gets done and how it turns out can cause major hangups for the perfectionist. This type of imposter syndrome often causes excessively high goal setting that is simply unattainable.

For the perfectionist, 99/100, an A-, or a near-perfect performance report with one slight critique, is a failure. To use another colloquialism, this type can usually be classified (often by themselves) as a control freak. They have a tendency to ruminate on feedback, and even once they feel that success has been achieved, it’s rarely satisfying.

As a designer, the only way to improve the effectiveness of your designs is to always be seeking quality design feedback. So if you identify as a Perfectionist, it’s time to take action.

2. The Superwoman/man

The Superwoman or Superman focuses on “how many.” How many roles, relationships, and projects they can juggle is directly tied to their self-worth. This can be harmful—both to themselves, and to the people around them.

Superbeings tend to think of themselves as phonies standing next to the real deal. They often focus on quantity over quality, and eventually that comes to light, hurting their cause in the long run. These people tend to be addicted to the external validation that work provides, and not actually to the work itself.

3. The Natural Genius

The Natural Genius is inclined to spotlight the “how and when”. This type of person tends to think that everything should be handled with ease and speed, and if it’s not, then they’re not talented.

If a product is not perfect on the first try, the Natural Genius will likely toss it aside in favor of something that comes to them much more easily. These people don’t value the struggle of mastering a new skill.

Design is all about failing: testing, learning, and iterating. So if you’re a Natural Genius type trying to become a designer, it’s important to realize that early on, and work to overcome it.

4. The Soloist

The Soloist cares mostly about the “who.” And the who, is almost always, them. Often considering themselves to be a lone wolf, the Soloist has a hard time asking for help.

These types of people often reject the mentor/mentee relationship dynamic, which can be detrimental to their learning journey. Because of the Soloist’s need to always do things on their own, they tend to neglect their own needs in favor of taking on too much at work or home.

Soloist types should remember that no man is an island when it comes to learning and growing, especially in the design field, where collaboration is key.

5. The Expert

The Expert’s main focus is on “what and how much” one can know or do. Their biggest fear is being exposed as inexperienced or unknowledgeable. The Expert is like the knowledge version of a perfectionist where even a minor lack of knowledge means failure.

In a field like design, where tools are constantly changing and improving, Expert types should take note and be kind to themselves when they don’t (yet) know something.

Don’t be so hard on yourself. Always strive for small increments of improvement.

The next step is owning your successes and take them in stride. We are always going to need to improve somewhere, but if something awesome happens like a presentation went well overall, don’t just think about the downfalls and what you could have done better. Celebrate those small wins and be more aware of them so you can leverage them in future presentations.

The reason why imposter syndrome happens is because we downplay these moments with what we could have done better. This feeling can hinder you from improving yourself or it causes you to work overwhelmingly hard without giving yourself time to ruminate on what happened and be intentional with how you want to improve.

Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash

Why is feedback important?

Ever watch people at an elevator repeatedly push the Up button, or repeatedly push the pedestrian button at a street crossing? Ever drive to a traffic intersection and wait an inordinate amount of time for the signals to change, wondering all the time whether the detection circuits noticed your vehicle (a common problem with bicycles)? What is missing in all these cases is feedback: some way of letting you know that the system is working on your request.

Feedback - communicating the results of an action - is a well-known concept from the science of control and information theory. Imagine trying to hit a target with a ball when you cannot see the target. Even as simple a task as picking up a glass with the hand requires feedback to aim the hand properly, to grasp the glass, and to lift it. A misplaced hand will spill the contents, too hard a grip will break the glass, and too weak a grip will allow it to fall. The human nervous system is equipped with numerous feedback mechanisms, including visual, auditory, and touch sensors, as well as vestibular and proprioceptive systems that monitor body position and muscle and limb movements. Given the importance of feedback, it is amazing how many products ignore it.

Feedback must be immediate: even a delay of a tenth of a second can be disconcerting. If the delay is too long, people often give up, going off to do other activities. This is annoying to the people, but it can also be wasteful of resources when the system spends considerable time and effort to satisfy the request, only to find that the intended recipient is no longer there. Feedback must also be informative. Many companies try to save money by using inexpensive lights or sound generators for feedback. These simple light flashes or beeps are usually more annoying than useful. They tell us that something has happened, but convey very little information about what was happened, and then nothing about what we should do about it. When the signal is auditory, in many cases we cannot even be certain which device has created the sound. If the signal is a light, we may miss it unless our eyes are on the correct spot at the correct time. Poor feedback can be worse than no feedback at all, because it is distracting, uninformative, and in many cases irritating and anxiety-provoking.

Too much feedback can be even more annoying than too little. My dishwasher likes to beep at three a.m. to tell me that the was is done, defeating my goal of having it work in the middle of the night so as not to disturb anyone (and to use less expensive electricity). But worst of all is inappropriate, uninterpretable feedback. The irritation caused by a "backseat driver" is well enough known that it is the staple of numerous jokes. Backseat drivers are often correct, but their remarks and comments can be so numerous and continuous that instead of helping, they become an irritating distraction. Machines that give too much feedback are like backseat drivers. Not only is it distracting to be subjected to continual flashing lights, text announcements, spoken voices, or beeps but it can be dangerous. Too many announcements cause people to ignore all of them, or wherever possible, disable all of them, which means that critical and important ones are apt to be missed. Feedback is essential, but not when it gets in the way of other things, including a calm and relaxing environment.

Poor design of feedback can be the result of decisions aimed at reducing costs, even if they make life more difficult for people. Rather than use multiple signal lights, informative displays, or rich, musical sounds with varying patterns, the focus upon cost reduction forces the design to use a single light or sound to convey multiple types of information. If the choice is to use a light, then one flash might mean one thing; two rapid flashes, something else. A long flash might signal yet another state; and a long flash followed by a brief one, yet another. If the choice is to use a sound, quite often the least expensive sound device is selected, one that can only produce a high-frequency beep. Just as with the lights, the only way to signal different states of the machine is by beeping different patterns.

What do all these different patterns mean? How can we possibly learn and remember them? It doesn't help that every different machine uses a different pattern of lights or beeps, sometimes with them same patterns meaning contradictory things for different machines. All the beeps sound alike, so it often isn't even possible to know which machine is talking to us.

Feedback has to be planned. All actions need to be confirmed, but in a manner that is unobtrusive. Feedback must also be prioritized, so that unimportant information is presented in an unobtrusive fashion, but important signals are presented in a way that does capture attention. When there are emergencies, then even important signals have to be prioritized. When every device is signaling a major emergency, nothing is gained by the resulting cacophony. The continual beeps and alarms of equipment can be dangerous. In many emergencies, workers have to spend valuable time turning off all the alarms because the sounds interfere with the concentration required to solve the problem. Nuclear power plants. Airplane cockpits. All can become confusing, irritating, and life-endangering places because of excessive feedback, excessive alarms, and incompatible message coding. Feedback is essential, but it has to be done correctly. Appropriately.

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

Metrics

If standards are going to be meaningful, we must have a way of expressing fairly precisely the quality level we expect, and a way of measuring the system's performance against the standards laid down. Informal measurement is better than no measurement, but being able to measure something numerically is a great advantage. Numerical measures of the products and processes of software development are called software metrics. Within the overall software project, there are many kinds of metrics that may be useful, let's go and have a look.

Once something can be measured numerically, you move away from the world of opinion and intuition - "I like using this interface but I don't know why" - to a precise word of facts and figures - "It took me 5 minutes longer to perform the task using the old system than it does use this new one". However, we should issue a word of warning: figures can be misleading if not interpreted properly, or if the wrong measurements are taken. Even if the correct measures are taken, they can still be misleading if interpreted incorrectly.

People are keenly affected by their surroundings, both physically and mentally, so it is important to make sure that measurement takes place in a context that is as close as possible to the target environment.

Various kinds of metrics can be devised to measure the design at different stages of development; these include: analytic, performance, and psychometrics.

Analytic metrics are generally applicable when only a paper-based product specification is available. There are many different performance-related measures that can be taken: how long it takes to modify a sentence, how many errors are made in an hour, how many times the mouse button is clicked, how many cups of coffee the user drinks in a day, and so on. These kinds of measures are at the heart of usability engineering, and when systematically recorded in a usability specification they provide designers with information about acceptable levels of usability. There are four main kinds of performance metrics: duration measures, count measures, proportion of task completed, and quality of output:

• Duration metrics measure how much time is spent doing a particular thing, for example, how much time is spent looking at online help screens.

• Count measures simply count how many times an event happens, or how many discrete activities are performed, for example, how many errors are made.

• It is not easy to measure how much of a task has been completed; however, it can be achieved by carefully setting the task goals, and then counting how many have been completed after a certain time. the final result could be expressed as a numerical percentage of the original task goals.

• Again, it is not easy to provide an absolute measure of quality, although it is usually not difficult to identify good or bad quality output.

Psychometrics can only be applied once an operational prototype has been built towards the end of the design. Users complete questionnaires designed to ascertain their attitude to the system after using it for a number of hours. These measures include control, helpfulness, likeability, learnability, and efficiency. Let's have a look at them individually:

• Control refers to the user's feeling that the software is responding in a normal and consistent way to commands and input.

• Helpfulness refers to the user's perception that the software communicates in a helpful way and assists in the resolution of operational problems.

• Affect refers to whether the user feels good, warm, happy or disgruntled when using the system.

• Learnability refers to whether users find the software easy to learn, and the documentation easy to use.

• Efficiency refers to the user's feeling that the software is enabling the task(s) to be performed in a quick, effective, and economical manner or is hindering performance.

At least ten users should complete the questionnaire if the results are to be significant.

Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash