The Junior Designer Trap

You get good at the tool much faster than you get good at the reasoning. For about two years nobody can tell the difference, including you.

Then someone asks why, and the honest answer is that it looked right, and that is the moment the career either starts or stalls.

The Trap Has Three Doors

• Speed. You are rewarded for producing screens quickly, so you produce more screens instead of fewer better ones.
• Trends. Copying what is currently good is indistinguishable from taste until the trend turns.
• Praise. The feedback you get is on execution, because execution is the visible part.

Being fast at the wrong thing is the most expensive habit a designer can build early.

Getting Out

Start writing the why next to the what. One sentence per screen. It is excruciating for a month and then it becomes the thing that gets you into the rooms where decisions are made.

And ask for feedback on the reasoning, not the file. “Does this solve it?” is a better question than “what do you think?”, and it gets a better answer.

Nobody promotes a designer for the quality of their auto-layout.