Who Is a 10x Designer and How to Become One?
10x what? You might find yourself scratching your head if you’ve come across this buzzword for the very first time, even if you are a part of the UX/UI industry & community for some time. We don’t blame you because it’s a relatively new concept, but it’s becoming more and more prominent! Big companies are also starting to include 10x designers into their ranks!
You will be surprised to know that there are product designers who race against time to design applications faster than the ideal turnaround time. But not for the sake of beating time and delivering a bad product. Instead, because they are capable and up to the task, all while using the proper tools that allow them to move at an incredible rate even when collaborating with other design teams and departments. Their project organization and established workflow allow a 10xer to be lightyears ahead of an average designer.
In plain terms, a product designer who has mastery over UX, UI, and graphic design, is often referred to as a “10x designer” because they are considered to be 10 times more effective than an average designer. That’s due to their work ethic, productivity, and performance.
Also, outsourced software development companies use the same principle to build mobile apps and websites faster than the usual time is taken, allowing companies to focus on innovation and creativity. Is this technique widely known? If yes, what does it take to become one of those?
Let’s find out!
Who is a 10x Designer?
They are the generalists in your company.
They are not just 10 times more productive than the rest of your in-house designers but also thought leaders in their field of expertise. They lead a project from the back seat helping project managers with data-driven choices and impeccable user experience design that keeps everything moving forward smoothly.
If you can design each of the touchpoints of your product to create value, you will be able to grow exponentially. A great user experience involves designing with empathy that a quality every product designer should possess. You should also be able to design an experience that is unique, and tailored for each visitor to your product.
With all the information available, 10x designers are capable enough to make design decisions without being constrained by a conventional way of thinking.
For example – when a 10x designer is asked to do a redesign or implement a new feature, they will run every inch of their analytical and creative thinking to draw conclusions from all inputs and arrive at a decision.
The Origins
Recall a time when you came across a nerve-wracking problem! Who did you look for in a hurry to give you the most optimal solution at that very moment? Probably that one person who you think has solved a similar problem before. Or the one with the most experience. Why? Because this is an expert who will probably solve your problem much faster than you would. When it comes to problem-solving capabilities, we need to give credit where credit’s due – the developers.
Before there was a 10x designer, there was a 10x developer. A 10x engineer.
A 10x developer is someone who can write one line of code to solve ten lines of code worth of complexities. And that’s why you see a $10000 bill after the project completion.
This was the concept of 10x developer, originally. But apparently, the formula was practical enough to be implemented to the rest of the departments of a certain software development company as well. And thus, the 10x product designer was born.
That’s how the super-soldiers in the dev and design industry were born. But let’s move on to more hands-on information and actually advice on how to become a 10x designer.
How to Become a 10x Product Designer?
You need to take your UX design skills to the next level, leveraging technology that will enable you to create 10x better user experiences. It all boils down to tying every design decision via following a stringent UX process and getting your horses running at the speed of 10x times.
Starting from user research, empathy mapping, creating personas, designing user flows, and ultimately getting down to sketching wireframes and designing high-end clickable prototypes, there’s absolutely nothing that can go unnoticed. There should be no stone unturned.
A unique trait of 10x product designers is that they understand and absorb the principles of user-centered design. They pull an all-nighter to focus on the user more than the product. It takes responsibility, empathy, and deep expertise to come up with a product that’s exhilarating to use, in terms of user satisfaction.
The UX process is to be taken into account with due diligence when a company is trying to move at a fast pace. A lot of the time and effort we put into designing software is spent on creating usable components and functionality that other people have already built, yet we still start from scratch. That’s because UX to the average user means all the familiarity of previous products with a brand new flavor. Using parts of a design that already exists is the fastest way to do things, and keeps you from having to reinvent the wheel. Merge Technology enhances efficiency by reducing redundancy and integrating workflows. It lets designers take fully interactive components from devs’ coded design system (in Git repo or Storybook), and use them in their design! That’s how PayPal’s design team streamlined their design process.
A 10x product designer must be able to do a lot of things at once. Can you imagine how much work it would take to keep everybody involved coordinated? Well, they face a lot of criticisms, unsolicited opinions, and feedback from a 360-degree perspective to keep everything moving. This is from the inception stage to the deployment stage of an application!
A 10x product designer must be able to:
- thoroughly plan a product’s structure
- evaluate its design
- find the appropriate feedback for each feature
- build a relationship with users, and
- understand their needs
Back and forth of verbal and written communication, endless meetings to address every loophole in the software designing process, and curbing the day-in and out challenges is what their routine day looks like. And we bet they have lost count of how many times a discussion goes through a dip to only come back to what was decided earlier.
A ten-fold improvement in the user experience design is meant to be paid off. Why? Because every step in the UX design process brings a product closer to satisfying its users’ needs.
Everything In a Nutshell
There are very few product designers who are able to make tangible progress in their field. And then they are ten times better than the typical designer (which is what we call them, even though they’re much more than this), these designers are much faster and able to create full-on user interfaces for customers in a fraction of the time. The 10x product designers give concrete feedback and suggestions to designers, developers, and startups.
“Everybody has opinions. The opinions that get implemented are backed by data and process.” 10x product designers are the kind of people whose ideas are implemented. They’re the ones who put in plenty of thoughts and use meaningful data to back their validations!
Are you one of those people? If yes, there’s no way you cannot be ten times better than what you already are! You can request access to our Merge technology to ease the pain of designing from scratch and spending too much time on adding interactions. It all can be just resolved with integration with devs’ repo!
