5 things I’ve learned in my Product Design role at lululemon — with actionable takeaways
For about three years, I worked on digital/visual design at an agency and adored my job. However, when a Product Design opportunity at lululemon presented itself, I couldn’t resist. The chance to practice the full suite of UX design work within an in-house product team was exactly what I needed next for my career.
While my experience on the agency-side prepared me so much for this endeavor, working within the new role itself placed me outside of my comfort zone in the best ways possible and forced me to learn — a lot.
For the first time in my life, I a.) onboarded remotely onto a b.) relatively new product team c.) working as a product designer in a d.) large company. Today, I want to share some unique things I’ve learned and practiced at lululemon to ease myself into the role–along with pithy takeaways for you to implement in your own life.
Study. Treat a design role like going back to school
My first few weeks consisted of frenzy note-taking as I absorbed an enormous amount of information. I felt like I had to treat this time as if I were in school.
Today, I am honestly grateful for this mindset and I sometimes I still treat my days like being back in school. To me, learning never stops and the attitude of curiosity can do more for you than any amount of technical or design skill can. There’s always some person, some document, or some design file to learn from.
⭐ Pithy takeaways:
- Spend time taking notes and documenting your decisions and experiences
- Find a good platform for note-taking and task management––my personal favorites are Notion and Todoist
- Learn about the context and history of your product
- Take advantage of being the new kid and ask questions, and don’t stop even after you’ve settled into the role
- Dive into any files you’ve inherited and understand how the previous designer(s) operated
- Increase your technical knowledge of design tools (in my case, auto-layout and prototyping within Figma)
- Watch YouTube videos or read Medium articles on design in your free time
Get friendly with development
I remember at my old job, someone told me that designers were magic-makers. And it made my heart so happy.
This is true in the digital/graphic design space — but the more I work with developers, the more I’ve realized that developers are the true magic-makers on a product team. Designers do the hard work of creating a blueprint, but developers do the hard work of finally bringing the design to the end user.
While I don’t think designers need to learn how to code, I do think understanding the world of developers will take a designer incredibly far.
Leveraging development knowledge within your design solutions will lead to realistic, efficient, and overall stronger products. Development knowledge makes communication is so much easier with your product team, and your developers will be more likely to work with you. Ultimately, you can ask for more from your developers, on the user’s behalf.
⭐ Pithy takeaways:
- Set up 1:1s with each developer on your team. Get to know them as a person and as a developer
- Don’t hesitate to gut-check a design concept or idea with your developers
- Get to know your organizations content management systems, platforms, or front/back-end technologies
- Make sure there are useful designer + developer check-ins built into your team’s sprints/roadmaps
- Show genuine appreciation to your developers. They really do bring our designs to life
Understand your organization’s design system
Working for a company as large as lululemon finally taught me the insane value of a well-built design system. If you’re unfamiliar with design systems, here is some great content on Medium by Jeremy Bloom and Colm Tuite.
Design systems combine everything I love — creativity, organization, consistency, and efficiency. For a product designer, design systems are genuinely a basis for the entire design experience. I highly suggest familiarizing yourself with not only the design system itself, but the design system team!
⭐ Pithy takeaways:
- Understand your design system and the software components in it
- Get to know the designers and engineers on the design system team
- Attend any weekly/monthly open forum meetings the team hold on the design system. Read their documentations as well
- Familiarize yourself with any intake process for contributing any new components
- In 1:1’s with other designers, ask them how they personally approach the design system
- Don’t be afraid to contribute something new — but always have solid reasons why
Embrace opportunities to talk about your design work
During the first couple months, my product manager wanted to protect my comfort level by saying “Let me know if you’d like me to drive the discussion around the designs!” (I know, he’s genuinely so considerate). And every time, I told him to let me handle it.
At any new role, it can be so scary to take yourself off of mute to an unknown group of people and talk about your design solutions. At lululemon, I’ve spoken in meetings that ended feeling like interviews.
However, a strong and strategic designer can articulate their thoughts and is confident about their design decisions — and confident enough to embrace vulnerability. We are all actively working on this, but only practice shows us that we truly can do this.
I encourage you not to hide from the opportunities to present your work. This has so many long-term benefits — from efficient problem solving within/across teams, to familiarizing yourself with your peers, to building self-confidence.
⭐ Pithy takeaways:
- Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback from other designers or managers
- Take all the opportunities you can to speak to your own design decisions
- There’s always a chance you’ll have to randomly and unexpectedly talk about your work — so continuously reflect, document, and understand your own “why’s”
Think beyond the MVP — always
MVP is such a valuable way of thinking within the product design space, but always keep in mind that MVP is not the end-game. Understanding the Product team’s long-term goals based on user needs and business expectations is crucial to designing effectively and efficiently.
I’d bet that a constraint from an MVP roadmap has definitely put ideas on the back-burner for every designer in the product space. As designers, we not only have to prioritize how and when ideas make it to the deployment, but also to think design for scalability in mind. This requires thinking long-term, understanding your users, and truly grasping the product.
⭐ Pithy takeaways:
- Embrace all user research insights, even if MVP considerations have inevitably filtered out some feedback
- Think about the long term implications of design decisions, and how these connect to user behavior and post-MVP goals.
- Consider scalability from a design and development standpoint
- Always remember to support accessibility considerations, no matter what the MVP timeline is.
Conclusion
My growth as a designer will never end, so I am far from truly mastering everything I’ve learned above. However, I’ve found that keeping these points in mind help me tremendously as I go along my journey. I hope my thoughts and takeaways are helpful for you to apply in your own life!
❣️ Thank you so much for your time!
I’m a creative brand + product designer, also interested in travel, music, mental health, and physical wellness. Follow me on Medium to hear more from me.
You can find my design work on my website, Behance, or Dribbble, and check out my sticker store for designers/creatives here. To say hi personally, drop me a line on Linkedin.
