Anton Sten, internationally recognized UX leader and author, talks to Maze about his experience as an individual contributor and manager, the things to consider when determining which path is best for you, and how to grow in your design career.
The Optimal Path is a podcast about product decision-making from the team at Maze. Each episode brings in a product expert and looks at the stories, ideas, and frameworks they use to achieve better product decision-making—and how you can do the same.
You can follow Anton on Twitter (@antonsten) or check out his website.
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Ash Oliver:
Welcome to the Optimal Path, a podcast about product decision making brought to you by Maze. I'm your host, Ash Oliver, UX Designer & Design Advocate. Great products are the result of great decisions, decisions that deliver value for customers and the organization. In this podcast, you'll hear from designers, product managers, and researchers about the ideas informing decision making across all aspects of product development.
Ash Oliver:
Today I'm joined by Anton Sten. Anton is an internationally recognized UX lead, author, and educator from Sweden. He's consulted with companies like Ikea, Spotify, and Herman Miller and he's written two books entitled User Experiences That Matter and Mastering Freelance. Anton, thanks so much for being here.
Anton Sten:
Thank you. Excited to be here.
Ash Oliver:
So, we're going to get into deep detail about the expansive career path of a product designer. And your work obviously offers a breadth of experiences from freelance, to in-house, IC, to management, to owner. Let's start by going back in time a little bit. I thought that we could maybe begin with the story of how you got started as a designer, and how that's led you to where you are today.
Anton Sten:
So, my career started actually by attending Hyper Island, so this was in 2000, a digital media school in Sweden. And after that, I got a job as a designer at a web agency. After two years, I actually wanted to quit to start freelancing. And so, I reached out to a couple of agencies. And the first agency that I went to talk to, actually offered me a job. And I just initially took the job. So, looking back at it now, it seems obvious that I just wasn't ready for freelancing. But back then it was just something that I thought I should do. And so, I stayed in different agencies for nearly 10 years after graduating Hyper Island, until I moved to the south of Sweden. And there weren't really any agencies that felt like a natural next step career wise. And so, I thought that now might be a good time to start venturing out on my own again.
Anton Sten:
Initially my idea was actually to build my own agency back then. But I realized quite early in the process that I really wasn't interested in hiring anyone. I really enjoyed the freedom that came with freelancing, obviously. Not just getting different kinds of projects, but I actually also really enjoyed entering and exiting teams, that idea that I wasn't tied to a specific team in any sense. I was also mostly working remotely. It's not a crazy idea, really, to work remotely. But this is 2011, so 10 years ago. And working remotely then, was very different to working remotely now. I think that the benefit that that gave me is that it really put pressure on me to frankly get my shit together. And in order to keep clients working remotely, who probably were a little bit hesitant in the beginning, I felt that I had to not just provide as good or better work, but provide a way better experience as well.
Ash Oliver:
And even more so, because the perception is the deck is stacked against you. Because you're remotely. So, you really have to outshine, I suppose.
Anton Sten:
Similarly, that is I think when my interest in UX began as well. So, I think then realizing that it's not just about the deliverables, but it's actually also about the experience that the clients get, that led me onto this UX path of thinking more about the users, which in this specific case, obviously the clients were my users.
Ash Oliver:
Yeah. That's wild. I've thought many times in regards to either like the agency model or working as a solopreneur or a freelancer. There's that variety of the projects that's usually very enticing to a certain type of designer. But I hadn't considered the variety of people as well. Obviously with the clients, but perhaps like when you were saying about entering and exiting teams, you get a really wide experience of all of the different people, and I'm assuming skills that you can learn from people as well. Right?
Anton Sten:
Definitely. And I think it's partly people, but it's also culture. So, if you compare working with Ikea to working with a five-person startup, the culture and the experience of just working with them are completely different. And you quite quickly realize that there are pros and cons with both.
Ash Oliver:
Has any of that entered into your design process? I'm assuming that there could probably be different ways of approaching different clients based on what you've observed from similarities. But how has that entered into how you actually approach UX design in your work?
Anton Sten:
I'm not sure if it's affected my process in that much. I will say that it has taught me more about how companies geographically differ. Like working with companies in the States, for instance, is very different from working with companies in Sweden or working with companies in Poland or in Australia. You might think that they were such a global community, that it's more or less the same anywhere. But in my experience, it really can differ quite a lot. And then obviously when you're working with global clients like Ikea, for instance, that also have a lot of different nationalities and cultures within the same company. So, you really need to find that balance of how to talk to people and how to get your message across.
Ash Oliver:
Yeah. That's major advice, especially for anyone considering or trying to expand their freelance practice. Before we get like too deep on the different paths specifically, I'm thinking, can you just from your baseline define what the differences are between an IC or an Individual Contributor, and a manager or a leadership career path?
Anton Sten:
Definitely. So, I think those are actually three very distinct possibilities. So, if we begin with the IC path, I'd say an IC designer, if we take design as the profession, an IC designer is in most cases more or less in charge of themselves. So, they will have typically very hands-on work and they will spend a majority of their time actually designing. So, a manager then is someone who in most cases also have responsibilities outside themselves. So, that might include that they're responsible for a team, for staff. It is not uncommon that a manager, even if it's a design manager, actually does very little designing. Instead, they tend to oversee design.
Anton Sten:
And then finally, I think many see leaders and managers as almost overlapping. Whereas if you boil it down, I think a leader's focus is really on doing the right thing. Whereas a manager's focus is on doing that thing the right way. And that said, I personally believe a designer, if that is the core competency, could pick any of the three. But I do think that a design leader is not something that is specifically just tied to a profession. I think a design leader is more something that is earned through actions or reputation. So, I like to think of a design leader who is someone more as the captain of a football team. So, it is someone that the team should ultimately follow. And that doesn't mean that the leader is necessarily the best designer, but it is the designer that will take all of the different aspects of a project into account, and make it all make sense.
Ash Oliver:
I love this definition. I think about even on the team here at Maze, some of the design leads that we have very much embody that. I mean they're still very much involved in the work, but set the course for the rest of the team.
Anton Sten:
So, I think it's more about—design leader is really about strategy. So, it's about thinking about where are we going? And then the design manager's job is ultimately like steering the ship.
Ash Oliver:
What do you think are some of the core considerations that a designer should reflect on in order to determine these paths? And I think specifically around like skills and motivations or strengths and weaknesses there will be a lot of natural born, maybe leaders into the design that want to take more of that leadership path, but maybe don't want to give up some of the actual execution work or vice versa. So, what do you think are some of the things that designers should consider when charting out their own path?
Anton Sten:
In order to be a successful manager, I think the ability to listen and also to make decisions that perhaps not everyone always will like. Generally, I found that people pleasers aren't really suited to be great managers, but on the other hand, I do think that managers need to have empathy, compassion. It's the manager's job to make sure that the designers flourish as much as possible. And I think it's also a manager's job to be able to look at a team and see potential.
Anton Sten:
For an IC designer, it obviously helps if you're a great designer because that is what you ultimately will be doing. I also think that skills like determination and personal responsibility are really important. Because especially if you are more of an IC designer and not necessarily integrated within a larger team, it's also really important that you make your deliverables.
Ash Oliver:
And that personal like responsibility and accountability thing, I think is maybe lost sometimes when, especially in big teams, I could imagine the manager is setting forth the execution. And I think sometimes designers look at the IC role as just being like the pixel pushers, just the executors of the work. But I really love the idea of how this personal autonomy and responsibility come into play. What are maybe some of the trade offs or risks to consider in any of those?
Anton Sten:
Well, obviously as stated already, I think if you want to go down the manager path, you should be aware that you will probably do less hands-on work. And for a IC designer, and I think this is, I'm really hoping that this will change, but at least previously I felt that the only way for a designer to progress within their careers is to ultimately become a manager, which I think it's not great for our industry, because I do think they are two very different professions. You can have senior designers that are the best designers ever at their craft, but they would not make great managers. They probably won't even be great leaders, because they have this personal space that they need in order to work with. And they just want to focus on like the actual work.
Ash Oliver:
So, for designers who want to commit to the IC track, what are some of the most important skills that they should learn besides the hard craft skills, do you think?
Anton Sten:
Really the ability to follow up on task tasks. And that could be following up on tasks that they've completed and want to improve on, in relationship to other people within the company. I think the most successful IC designers at least have a sense of personal responsibility and determination. And I think that ties into following up previous tasks and roles as well. But yeah, obviously the hard craft skills are the most important ones.
Anton Sten:
I'd say for IC designers as well, especially within our industry, being able to stay up to date on, not necessarily trends, but the bigger direction in which the industry is heading. You can see that 15 years ago, IC designers were creating websites in Flash. Then Flash died out and we got this move towards 'everything should be responsive.' And now I guess we're approaching the end of that as well, where it's just a given. So, there will obviously come new bigger directions that designers need to accustom to.
Ash Oliver:
From what you've talked about, it sounds like communication skills are really important, kind of getting a bird's-eye view directionally of the industry. Would you also say business skills? I've heard that that is an area where a lot of designers feel their skills lack in the connecting the dots between the work that they do design, and ultimately the business. Would you say that an IC designer should focus on those things as well? Or do you think that that's business emphasis or business acumen, so to speak, is more for the management track?
Anton Sten:
No, I think that's definitely relevant for IC designers as well. A couple of years ago, there was this huge discussion around should designers code. And I wrote a piece called I think Designers Should Speak Business. If we're designers, ultimately we need to be able to solve business problems to actually merit those designs and be able to sell them internally.
Ash Oliver:
Tremendous. I think in the mind's eye of the industry, it's visual design that hits first when we think about design. We don't think about all of the other things that isn't the visual output. Yeah. So, titles. There's so many different titles. There's jargon that runs around this: generalist versus specialist, freelancer versus in-house, senior or lead or even principal designer. Titles are typically a pretty loaded topic in general. And I think everyone would discourage chasing titles. But sometimes I think titles are important in establishing credibility or expertise, or even set the tone for future opportunities as we were just discussing. So, what do you think about titles?
Anton Sten:
Wow. Yeah, I have a very conflicted relationship with titles. I think that we're on a bad path where occasionally you see that you'll have people who are very junior get lead roles. I think that is dangerous in the sense that it will eventually water out the meaning of titles. It is also interesting in the sense that you can have a company with 20 designers, and you'll have three leads, and all of the rest are senior designers. Like that can be the case, of course, if you only hire very senior people, then I get it. I think what has been happening as well is that agencies occasionally lure people over with the promise of a better title. Because ultimately people know that if I have this title now, for my next job I'll come in at this level at the very lowest. And I think that's dangerous in the sense that we'll focus more on the actual titles than the craft and skills of the people.
Ash Oliver:
Two questions based on what you just mentioned. So, what do you see is a way in which we can chart a better future? And what do you think about like the junior designers who are caught in the middle of all of this? Especially because every job post that you see out there is mostly, if it doesn't explicitly say senior, it's got two, three, five years of minimum requirements. So, I guess those two go hand in hand. For the people that are coming up as junior designers, what advice could you give? And what advice could you give the entire industry as we look at this title conundrum overall towards the future?
Anton Sten:
First of all, in terms of job descriptions, I think it's just gone so much off base now that I don't even know who writes these job descriptions anymore. Some time ago there was this job description floating around where they said that you should have 10 years of Figma experience. And Figma came out like six years ago. So, that's pretty interesting. Yesterday I saw, or I was actually offered a job, and the job description said that I should have competence within typical UX tools like InDesign. And I was like, that's a red flag. So, I think that all of that makes it pretty easy for all of us to just take these job descriptions with a grain of salt as well. But for junior designers, I do think that there is a problem of how to actually get that first job.
Anton Sten:
I occasionally teach at Hyper Island. And the one question that every student will ask me every year more or less is like how should they think about applying for jobs. Because all of the jobs, even for junior designers, tend to require two to three years of experience. So, without experience, what work would you ever get? And the one thing I always try to mention to them is just to really apply anyway. What's the worst thing that can happen? It's that you've wasted 10 minutes writing a personal letter for that application. And I do think we need to, either as an industry, get way better at writing job descriptions that are more realistic, or the industry as a whole just need to look at job descriptions as a wishlist, and maybe you can fulfill three out of 10 and if that's the case, then fine.
Ash Oliver:
Yeah. Smart recommendations. It serves us all on whatever end of the spectrum that we're at. And I'm thinking about maybe as a designer, regardless of where their history has taken them, if there's the impetus to strike out on their own, as you did, where do you see that same conundrum coming into play when they're not necessarily being interviewed for the role in-house, but the client is assessing if it's a good fit for them taking on that project? Are you caught in the same snare? I think maybe more so because the client may not know nearly as much about the spectrum of UX design, but where does that come into play then?
Anton Sten:
Definitely. I think now we're at this dangerous point where a lot of companies know of UX design, but not necessarily really what it encompasses. But they know they need UX design. Unfortunately, it opens up the spectrum to a lot of not necessarily talented people as well. But just in terms of, as a freelancer or consultant, I think it's again coming back to being able to speak business. It's not necessarily about UX design or visual design. It's really about what would this potential solution actually result in.
Ash Oliver:
That's huge. The last couple of questions that I wanted to ask you before we get into our fast five here so we can learn a little bit more about you. How does mentorship come into play for both an IC role or management roles?
Anton Sten:
Yeah, that's a great question. I would love to see more people reach out for anyone that they look up to and just ask for half-an-hour. In my experience, almost everyone will take their time to help out. I think that is really fascinating about this industry as well, that people tend to help as much as they can. I think most of us tend to be scared of asking for help because obviously it also opens up our own sort of insecurities. But I would wish that more would reach out to whoever, whether that's within their company, whether it's someone outside of their company, and just ask for help. Because it really can provide a lot of value. I don't think there's necessarily any difference between if you are on an IC path or a management path.
Ash Oliver:
Yeah. Some of the best managers that I've worked for are in a kind of player coach model where they have either advisors or mentors, whether they're inside the business or out or combination of the two. And they really look at them being a manager as being, you know, fostering their skills through mentorship too, not just the hard craft skills of an IC designer. I think that's maybe where we get stuck, we think that the mentor type role is only really suited in the IC position.
Anton Sten:
Totally. A couple of years ago, I was working with a company called Super Friendly. And the guy who runs it ended up mentoring me more or less on a management role, because I had a management role back then. And it was so interesting to see how everything that we talked about within those sessions were almost like therapy sessions, because it just provided so much clarity and insight into how to approach things both professionally, but also outside of work. So, I think a great mentor is something you should definitely hang on to.
Ash Oliver:
Oh, I love that. What parting advice would you give to a designer who's trying to decide between either the IC track or leadership or freelance? I read an article that you had written, and it gives the three human needs that you need in order for your work to feel fulfilling. Can you speak about that?
Anton Sten:
You need to have some kind of reward. And that could be pay. It could be through just the team encouraging you, getting feedback, that kind of stuff. Passion, obviously. I think in order to be fulfilled in a work, you need to love what you do. You're probably not going to love what you do every day, but you should love it most days. And then finally education to also actually learn and evolve within that career I think is super important. So, I think regardless of if you are an IC designer, if you're a manager, if you're a leader, whenever you feel that you're not fulfilling these three for too many days in a row, it might make sense to think about what it is that you want to do instead.
Ash Oliver:
Brilliant advice. I think that that's timeless advice for any situation as well. So, I love that. We're going to get to the fast five questions. These are really just more personal questions connected to you and your work. You can get answers in as much detail as you'd like. But these are five questions that I ask everybody that we have on the podcast. So, the first one is, what's one thing that you've done in your career that has helped you succeed that you think that very few other people do?
Anton Sten:
So, I touched based on this already. I do think it's following up. And especially as a freelancer, I could meet with an agency and it wouldn't turn out into a project straight away. But it might end up with a project five years later, because I really try to keep that relationship alive as well. And that is obviously both in a micro level and macro level as well. Personally, I tend to have maybe three or four tasks for each day. And that's it. And usually one of those is following up on either a connection to someone, or it is a project that we completed some time ago that I want to check up on like what's the progress now. Just keeping that discussion alive really.
Ash Oliver:
That's excellent. What's a system or process or habit or framework that you've created for yourself to help accelerate your career or your work in general? Is there any methodology that you apply that you think has been a boon for your career?
Anton Sten:
Yeah. So, I think again, just actionable goals, both short term and long term. So, that is a couple of actionable goals for today, and then maybe this month. And then I do take the time to think about the choices that I make now. How do I think that they will pan out five to 10 years from now? Will they help me position myself the way I want to be in five or 10 years?
Ash Oliver:
Yeah. Brilliant. I think that micro-macro zooming in zooming out across your career is really good advice. As far as books. You've written two. I'd love to have a separate conversation about what that process has looked like. Maybe besides your own two, what is another industry-related book that you've either given the most or recommended the most?
Anton Sten:
In terms of industry-related, really enjoyed Radical Candor, I really enjoyed Company Of One. I think Paul is an amazing writer as well. I think often the books that I really tend to enjoy and return to are not necessarily industry related. But again, books that help me take the macro zoom out approach more and more as well. I'm currently rereading Sapiens. I really enjoyed Factfulness as well. So, books that tend to widen your horizons a bit and look at things from a slightly different approach. And I think coming back to what we talked about today, I think if there's one skill that both IC designers and managers always benefit from, it's the ability to look at things from a different approach.
Ash Oliver:
Excellent. Two more questions for you, Anton. What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?
Anton Sten:
I'm not sure if it's necessarily an absurd thing, and I'm not sure that I actually love it, but if I have to choose between hot coffee and cold coffee, I will actually go for cold coffee.
Ash Oliver:
Really? That is kind of absurd. Despite the cold weather in Sweden?
Anton Sten:
Yeah. I don't mind at all. If I like leave my coffee cup for an hour at my desk, I will drink it anyway. But I usually don't enjoy really hot coffee.
Ash Oliver:
That is interesting. I love this. And finally, what do you think that you are known for?
Anton Sten:
Oh, wow. I would probably say it is my writing, which is again interesting since I'm technically a designer.
Ash Oliver:
I love it. I love the connection between designing and writing, some of the people that I look up to, and I certainly look up to you as well so, I think you're more well known than you believe, is that the designers that are sharing their knowledge and especially through writing, it's immensely helpful for those of us coming up and, of course, those of us that are already in our career.
Ash Oliver:
So, thank you so very, very much for spending this time with us. It has been tremendous advice. Where is the best place or places for people to find you if they want to learn more about you and your work?
Anton Sten:
I would say my website antonsten.com, or just reach out on Twitter.
Ash Oliver:
Awesome. Thank you so much, Anton.
Anton Sten:
Thank you.
Ash Oliver:
The Optimal Path is hosted by myself, Ash Oliver, and brought to you by Maze, a rapid user testing platform designed for product teams. If you enjoyed this episode, you can find resources linked in the show notes. If you want to hear more, you can subscribe to The Optimal Path by visiting maze.co/podcast. Thanks for listening, and until next time.