Strategic Sips for Learning
In 2020, I made a lateral transition from architecture into a career as a digital product designer. During this transition, I consumed design information like I was a desert traveller in search of an oasis. Every time I found a new drinking spot in the form of an article, video or book, I drowned myself in a flood of information and left feeling full as the information sloshed about in my mind. I was constantly adding to my knowledge, building a latent understanding of the industry. Now I realize that I’m not in a desert, and there is an abundance of information for me to drink from. So I selectively look out for wells, inquiring about their sources and filling up journals like I would a water bottle. I take strategic sips from each resource I find relevant, using each drink — each learning session, to fuel my practice as a designer.
Curating my drinks
Lately, I’m curating my design learning as though I’ve been presented with a buffet of drinks to choose from. I take my time to taste and smell, deciding which learning paths to go down — but I wasn’t always so selective. I explored multiple design topics and areas within the first year of starting my product design journey. I spent time attending virtual design meetups and information sessions — ingesting everything. I was worried about missing anything crucial to my growth as a designer. While this was helpful in exposing me to different paths of practice and schools of thought in the design industry, I was unable to synthesize all the information and take action. I was focusing on developing breadth in general advice and surface-level knowledge of design ideas.
Now, I see learning as a way to explore topics that I’m passionate about. I sit with each topic of interest, creating a lineage of thoughts by exploring ideas and their authors. For example, I am recently learning about how systems thinking is a skill I must develop and polish as a designer in the 21st century. As I explore this idea, I don’t only look for resources that mention or explain it; I trace it back to its roots to find the progenitors of the idea and other relevant concepts adjacent to it. I look for real use cases where systems thinking can be applied and map these examples to the work I’m doing. In essence, I’m seeking subject matter expertise by learning as much as possible about particular design ideas.
Knowing what to drink and when
As an architect, I glamorized software proficiency and saw it as a way to stand out amongst my contemporaries. As I transitioned and got introduced to product design tools, my thirsty mind guzzled out of instinct; I used every software available, constantly wondering how many more tools I could add to my CV. I wanted to show that I could use popular design tools like Invision, Treejack and Figma. So I took extensive tutorials and struggled with the tools that had steep learning curves. At the time, my learning goals were built around mastering as many design tools as possible.
My approach to picking up technical skills has shifted. I observed this new learning pattern when I saw my peers learning to use low-code website design tools to build their portfolios and other impressive websites. I began to feel pressure to get under the tutelage of Youtube masters to design an ‘awwward-winning’ portfolio website that would put me head and shoulders above my peers.
However, the increased pressure made me ask myself, “What do you need to learn in this period? Does this skill bring you further on track with your learning goals?” Learning to use cutting-edge tools would sharpen my technical skills, but it was more expedient for me to reinforce my foundational design knowledge at that time. I didn’t need to learn how to create a flashy portfolio website; I needed to learn how to use storytelling to improve the flow of my design case studies. I didn’t need to learn how to write CSS; I needed to deeply understand how my designs translated to code and what engineering limitations existed around the work I did. The technical skills were good but didn’t need to be my priority at the time. I had learned to recognize two things: what information to drink and when to guzzle this information or just take a sip.
Conclusion
International speaker Vinh Giang advises against feeling compelled to read books in their entirety. Instead, he recommends seeking out the chapters that are relevant to you at the time, and when you are done, putting the book away and coming back when you need to.
Today, as I come across fountains of knowledge on my learning journey, I have grown to discern the quality of the fountain’s content and its relevance to the journey I’m currently on. So I’m not just dumping information into my system; I’m carefully filtering and curating what I ingest, tasting it to see if it is what I need. This… is the principle of taking strategic sips.
