How can you continue to learn and grow as a product designer?

To continually grow as a product designer, it's crucial to maintain curiosity, stay educated through courses and resources, network with peers, prioritize user-centered design, embrace feedback, engage in personal projects, develop cross-disciplinary skills, seek mentorship, regularly update your portfolio, and remain adaptable to changing design tools and methodologies. These strategies collectively foster ongoing learning, skill development, and career advancement in the dynamic field of product design.

In my experience I have learned and grown a lot thanks to non-design profiles. Product designers tend to be so good in design but to be great product designers, understanding the context, having communication skills, critical-thinking, curiosity as values is so important. These skills can be found in many different profiles and that can help designers grow. Therefore, I would hardly encourage not to focus just in design but also in other transversal skills that leverage your work and become a game changer.

One things, i want to add one point here, when we talk about setting goals, we should also consider to defining our baseline. Without defining your baseline or existing state its problematic, as something like you know where you want to go, but don't know where you are right now.

Don't just focus on design, think of the end-to-end process. Business thinking involves understanding how design impacts key business metrics. Designers should learn basics of business, marketing, and data analytics to grasp how their work affects the company's bottom line.

Product designers who spend many years focused on a single product or company often develop a limited skill set compared to designers who work at agencies. When they leave the company, they may find themselves less competitive in the job market than their agency-experienced counterparts. Therefore, it's crucial to continue growing beyond your comfort zone. For instance, you might excel in empathy from conducting numerous user interviews and adopting a user-centric approach, yet lack the skills to effectively market yourself to clients. Consequently, it's beneficial to learn marketing skills alongside your work as a product designer.

I use feedback in this way, I collaborate with our sales team to see what our line may be missing and what are customers asking for. I want feedback and insight from the people who are in front of the consumer to learn from what they are saying about what we currently offer and how we can expand our line to fit their needs.

Encourage candid feedback on your work. Participate in design communities, attend critique sessions, or seek peer reviews. Constructive criticism drives improvement.

To improve user feedback, designers should talk to users. Watch how they interact with the product, and let the designer see things from the user’s perspective.

It is crucial to seek feedback from individuals who are at a higher skill level than you. Getting feedback from clients or friends may not be as relevant, since they might not possess the necessary expertise to identify what's wrong. Some may have a sense that something is amiss, but they won't be able to specify the issue or provide constructive guidance. The most unhelpful feedback you can receive from them is a vague 'good job,' which offers no real direction for growth.

Seeking feedback is one of the crucial skills in a true designer whether its about the designs or the designer itself, designer should take them positively, thoroughly and patiently.

Collaborate with different teams and departments too. You might not realize how much the marketing team could use the product design team's insights or how much the customer support team can provide you with useful user data!

Seek a mentor you admire, one who embodies the role you aspire to achieve within the next three to five years. Invest in this mentorship; (Consider paying for it!) You can gain invaluable insights from designers who have navigated a path from positions similar to yours to the leadership roles you aim for.

Surround yourself with smart people. If you want to learn something new, the best approach is to ask an expert in your circle. Find a mentor, it really helps in stay motivated and he/she can help you in many scenarios given the likelihood that they have encountered similar experiences and can provide valuable guidance.

Collaboration skills involve communicating ideas clearly, giving and receiving feedback, and working well cross-functionally in a team. Designers should practice active listening, presentation skills, and team dynamics.

Copying the work of others is an excellent method for honing your skills and analyzing why certain things are effective. This approach is beneficial not just in design but in many other fields as well.

Don't be afraid to fail - it encourages resilience and innovation. Each setback provides valuable insights that fuel breakthroughs and refine design strategies, ultimately leading to more impactful and successful products.

Experiment and iterate with different approaches, understand the effectivness of the approach with the context this will help you gain an intuition regarding the approach which will further lead to your growth.

In my personal opinion, as a designer your portfolio is your resume and in some cases, more important than that. your portfolio should convey your thought process, style of design and who actually you are on the grounds of personality, choices and tone. There are manny ways to create a portfolio it might be full-fledged website (i.e. made up of HTML, CSS and JS), no code website (framer, wix etc), a page in the third party services or others (behance, dribbble, portfolio etc) but the primary objective of the portfolio is to convey designer and his/her work to the audience

Portfolio making is much alike documenting, the absence of that will make you blind-sighted regarding the ups and downs, but make sure you document it in a well-detailed manner

Also, keep an archive of your older projects. You can revisit them in a year or two and not only find areas for improvement but also witness your growth and the direction your path has taken.

It's something samurai-like: your mind should be keen and always ready to be surprised. After the surprise, understanding should come and transform new impressions/experiences into schemes and conclusions.

There is no better way to grow as a product designer than to run your own product. You could work in one place for 10 years and make considerably less progress than you would working on your startup for 6 months. It might be something small and bootstrapped, but it's yours. I truly believe that creating something on my own is a significant reality check and presents a great opportunity to see how things work in real life. When you're under the umbrella of your company, you're in a safe space.

The most important thing to learn, and hardly overlooked by designers, is how business works. The designer who understands business pains, goals, operations, thinking processes, etc. - is the most valuable asset for any of your future partners, clients, or employers. Many people can draw, use tools, and work faster than you - you can't compete with everyone there, especially with new tools and approaches coming our way so fast. But if your understanding and horizons are broader, you'll find the right solution first because you won't make unnecessary mistakes due to lack of understanding.