As designers, we have a lot to offer aspiring designers and mentoring could be the most rewarding way to go about it for everyone involved. I would even go so far as to say that it is a responsibility that we should take up at some point in our careers. Not only is it valuable in terms of knowledge sharing, but also mentoring can help us stay motivated as designers and hone our skills.
In this article, I want to highlight the benefits of becoming a mentor and hopefully encourage more designers to join the community.
Mentors, by definition, are experienced and trusted advisors who can offer valuable knowledge that could help you advance in your career. They have been in a beginner’s shoes and have faced the ups and downs that come with building a career.
In product design, designers need to constantly evolve to become better problem solvers and create high-quality products. This requires unlearning the bad habits that have been formed that limit one from addressing problems correctly. The need for a UX Mentor arises here.
A UX mentor can bridge the gap between a learning UX designer and user-friendly products. With the right UX mentor, one has access to years of experience, knowledge of the industry and the market, and a friend who gets it. Mentors have their mentee’s back and will be there to support them when they need it. Now, allow me to jump back to why you should even be a UX mentor.
Have you noticed that when you teach something to someone, you also learn things? To answer this let’s dive into a psychological phenomenon: The Protégé Effect.
It is seen that teaching, pretending to teach, or preparing to teach information to others helps us learn that information. The protégé effect helps you learn better through several mental mechanisms, all of which revolve around the differences between how we learn when we’re learning for ourselves, as compared to how we learn when we teach others.
Teaching others helps us to absorb that information and solidify our learning without this ever being our intention. Teaching improves our metacognitive processing, which makes people more conscious of their learning process. We’re also compelled to use effective learning strategies such as organizing the material and seeking out key pieces of information. Being a teacher to someone else can also work wonders for one’s confidence and improve their communication skills.
Some studies suggest that older siblings tend to have a higher IQ as they act as tutors in the family, at an age when they undergo significant cognitive development.
The impact of the protégé effect is robust and has its long-term benefits.
Mentoring is such a great way to teach others. It enables you to have a hands-on experience where you can learn from the successes and failures of others, all while sharing your learnings. In my experience with mentoring, the conversations were not only focused on UX techniques and concepts, but also challenged an individual’s thought process and perspectives, mine included.
In bootcamps, to a great extent, it is a mentor’s responsibility to help aspiring UX designers understand concepts and review their weekly progress. But being a mentor does not mean you have to join bootcamps or that you’re only going to give valuable advice. Mentoring requires you to be more open to your mentees’ perspectives while learning about them and their projects.
Being a part of this mentoring environment is invaluable. Think about it this way:
UX designers are problem solvers. As UX mentors, we still get to practice that, but on a more meta-level. You solve problems by helping others solve their problems better, thus making you a better problem solver. Geddit?
An important thing to understand is that mentoring is a cycle of knowledge building and knowledge sharing. This happens through learning, and a whole lot of unlearning. The learning methods are:
This involves actively trying to learn while engaging with the material. For example, you can actively try to fit new information around your existing knowledge and figure out how you can apply this new information.
This involves actively monitoring your knowledge throughout the learning process. For instance, when engaging in reflective learning, you can identify the gaps in your knowledge and the areas where you feel uncertain about your understanding.
A mentor must also strive to be a good teacher; explaining concepts in a way that their mentees can understand and then apply. It’s a rather subtle but powerful skill to have. It’s easy to make a simple thought sound complex and abstruse to appear clever. But if you make the obscure concepts easy to understand, then it’s clear that you have understood them deeply.
Communication is essential for designers, and with mentorship, I would say that another vital ingredient to becoming a better designer is thrown into the mix. Communication is about knowing how to talk to people and listen to them. This is a skill that you can develop on your own, but mentorship can expedite that development. Through mentorship, you will learn to become an active listener. This means you will pay attention to what people are saying and ask questions to understand them better.
If we’ve learned anything from design, it’s that people usually acknowledge others for their knowledge and skill, whether they know them or not. But a word of caution — you must not confuse empathy with sympathy. Instead of feeling pity and giving solutions, you must offer directions by asking clarifying questions about how your mentees approach and solve problems.
To give effective feedback, you should identify opportunities for improvement in their workflow, which helps you become a better problem solver by asking the right questions and recognizing roadblocks. While asking questions, you don’t always have to address the person’s abilities, but also how they react to certain design choices. In case your mentee is explaining something to you and you don’t understand what they mean, respond from a place of patience, be respectful and understanding.
When people are just starting, peer pressure may be a great thing — it may push them to work harder, test more ideas, and learn better. This type of pressure may be helpful as it positions you to confront challenges and motivate you to succeed. But there’s a big difference between mentoring and just being a sounding board. Don’t worry, you can easily avoid being pushy.
If you’re working with someone new, it’s important to remember that every person has a story and different strengths. You can ask questions to understand their goals, roadblocks, process, or reasoning, but of course, you shouldn’t unwittingly undermine their efforts. A good mentor is someone who can understand their mentee’s problem, its intention, and its solution. This gets you both on the same page, and that’s a great place to be. If this is not the case then work through it together. Do note that trust is linked to transparency. By including clear and specific details in your feedback, you demonstrate that you’re open and honest with your mentoring arrangements. This also helps your mentee to unlearn and relearn through their work.
If you’re new to mentoring or you’re unsure about how to mentor, don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. Just like getting design reviews from your peers, hearing your mentees express their frustrations or goals is a great way to learn what they need from you. Sometimes, lending an ear is as helpful as offering advice. It is crucial to listen to them to support their learning effectively.
Keep in mind that people will often disagree about what they think the right solution or approach to a given problem is. In fact, disagreement can reveal what the right solution actually is, as long as your disagreement is based on the facts presented, rather than personal feelings.
When you enable others to reach out to you for feedback, it sends the message that you receive feedback willingly. This allows you to work from a place of understanding and empowerment. While some people are guarded against suggestions, I urge you to accept feedback with an open mind. Practice analyzing the feedback the same way you would examine any data collected during research. At the same time, you need to avoid meeting every feedback request or you may create a space where anyone offering heated criticism has the same impact as someone offering unbiased input.
You can start small by helping your team grow or even by engaging in public communities. I don’t mean that you should go about sharing information with everyone at all times but only when required and solicited. Be a listener to avoid becoming a dispenser of information.
You can also actively mentor by signing up on platforms like ADPlist and connect with aspiring designers across the globe. If you are looking to do something more structured where you receive compensation, you can also apply to those UX boot camps with principles and offerings that resonate with you.
Keep in mind that there are different types of mentors and your role in the equation is equally important for effective mentorship. Some mentors show you the ropes, some give you honest feedback, some admit their faults, and others can make you feel comfortable enough to try things out yourself. There’s nothing wrong with trying new mentors or having different types of mentors. When you’ve made your pick, here’s how you can make the best of a session with them:
If you are looking to get help concerning your career, portfolio feedback, or interview techniques you can do so on ADPlist where you will find 2500+ mentors, including myself, and can book a free 1–1 session with any mentor on the platform.
If you have decided to be a mentor, you would want the experience to be a deep source of learning for both people involved, while aiming to keep it professional, structured, and productive.
I’m someone who works insane hours and so I don’t have many to spare. But my mentors, mentees and I have arrived at a shared understanding of the value that mentorship brings by allowing us to keep learning, and this has made it more than worth our while. As designers, we will only get better at what we do with time, enabling us to allocate our energy efficiently for mentorship and make it more inclusive and accessible.
On that note, remember to treat your mentees as peers and that feedback not only helps the ones who receive it but improves those who offer it. If you saw mentoring as a challenging responsibility, you would be right, but it’s nothing to be afraid of. Realising that all we need to be is honest and clear with what we share dissolved any qualms I might have had while beginning my journey as a UX mentor.
Frankly, it’s been the best thing that has happened to me! So I implore you to go ahead and take a step towards being a mentor, even if it’s a small one. If you have any questions about the process, read below on how to reach me and I’d be really happy to help you join this community.
I am Arpita Dhir, product designer and psychology student aiming to impact lives with functional and inclusive design. If you are looking to have a 1–1 conversation with me, you can schedule it on ADPlist.
I would love to hear your feedback in the comments. If this article helped you or you found it interesting, please do share it with others who might find it useful. You can also appreciate this article by giving it up to 50 claps 👏🏻
You can find me on Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram or drop me a mail at contact@arpitadhir.com
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