FAQ - Product Design in 2025
11 most asked questions about the design market in 2025
Naturally I get a lot of questions around the design talent world. So I wanted to answer 11 of the recent ones in one article.
TL;DR:
Do you need a portfolio?
Why do we have a rise in the player-coach?
What is the current state of design market?
What are the alternative paths for design leaders?
What are the traits of great product designers?
Not got a single interview. What am I doing wrong?
Whiteboard interviews. What to expect?
What courses can I take to level-up?
How can I be more attractive to start-ups?
What are the most in-demand roles at the moment?
How to push back against an offer to get more money
Do you need a portfolio?
Many candidates are not presenting themselves well enough. If you sift through 100’s of applicants companies get you’d be very surprised (or maybe not!) how low the quality is.
Your portfolio is your product. It’s a representation of what you can bring.
Companies want to see your most recent work, not work from 2018.
The best portfolios are the ones which:
They are visually appealing.
A lot of hiring managers these days are not designers. They don’t think in service blueprints or IA (all very important, of course); they think in visuals, business outcomes, and whether person can help us solve a business problem. Make it look nice. Focus on visuals.
The majority of us think visually. We process images thousands of times faster than text.
The work does the talking
People want to see what your outcomes and to see live work or the impact your work had on the business. 80% of your portfolio should be on outcomes and the actual work.
I know as a recruitment person I do not read masses of text on portfolios, I want to see live work, some data and options to see more understanding of the process later. I can’t see many busy hiring managers taking the time to read every case study in detail.
In short, yes you need a portfolio. Most companies will not even consider you without it.
2. Why do we have a rise in the player-coach?
This is a big one. There’s certainly a shift in companies expecting designers to maintain hands-on skills, often seeking an excellent designer who happens to manage people.
The primary driver is the increase in leaner powerful teams, the value placed on output over culture and organisations dismantling design organisations and moving them under product.
The emphasis to be hands-on is going to grow in 2025.
What is the current state of design market?
The market in 2025 is different.
Increased demand for “craft-led” designers who can both manage and execute
Rise in demand for Principal-level ICs, often hiring Director-level people into IC track
Decrease in middle management roles as companies focus on immediate output
Trend toward smaller, more focused teams
Some companies predict they won’t need junior/mids ICs in 2 years because they believe they can do the BAU/Optimisation work with AI. I find this intriguing, because how are we going to ensure people coming into the industry do not get stuck?
Hiring cycles have lengthened significantly
Design community fragmentation (Read.CV closing, uncertainty about platforms like ADPList. Where do people turn?
Rise of “designpreneurs” - leaders starting their own ventures or doing fractional work
AI first companies flipping the design process on it's head. Karri from Linear talks about this here.
More need for technical designers
Increased need for generalists
Harder to hire perceived top-tier design talent
But, seems like more people than ever on the market.
"Growth design" roles exploding
US companies paying certain EU based designers very well
I recently asked this question to a group I am involved with:
“I’ve observed that craft skills (like visual design, interaction design or design system experience) have become even more important. Mediocre portfolios have stopped selling even to low UX maturity orgs. You need to get specific to get noticed (quality over quantity). B2B companies have been more heavily on looking for candidates with relevant experience (same industry). And there’s super focus on showing your business mindset. Like every org optimizes for growth. Plus heavy check on communication skills in the recruitment process.Observations based on my coaching experience with designers”. - Aneta Kmiecik
“Designers who can blend marketing and product are in high demand.” - Soren Iverson
Ryan Scott talking about why there seems to be a lot of juniors on the market and low demand for them:
“This is a classic supply/demand economics problem.
Low demand: Demand for early talent has plummeted. Junior designers still need a lot of levelling up to deliver significant value. Given the macroeconomic environment, this isn’t an investment many companies are eager or able to make at the moment.
High supply: There are still lots of folks just learning design via bootcamps, universities, etc.
Low demand: Given the number of layoffs, there are plenty of experienced designers on the market who are more attractive to companies.
The pipeline will only dry up if the demand for design increases significantly or the supply of experienced designers drops significantly.
If experienced designers stay in design, and demand for designers decreases or stays the same, the market will be at a new stable state and there won’t be any room for juniors to enter.”
A note on design communities:
I'm appalled at the recent exposure of ADPList that steals ideas, design and content. With Read.cv shutting down, Dribbble is just glossy UI (not a bad thing) and doing their best to alienate designers.
Where are people going to hang out, learn and get inspired with the purpose of making genuine connections instead of commoditising cheap mentorship?
We have 10k per year Design Exec communities, but literally not much else for the wider community if you don't have a fancy logo or title.
There's a real space for someone to build something here.
What are the alternative paths for design leaders?
Interesting career moves I've seen:
- Designer > Founder
- Design > Engineering
- VP of Design > Senior IC
- Design Leadership > CXO
- Design > People leadership
- Head of Design > Director of Product
- Senior Design Director > Design Partner
There's so much opportunity to utilise design experience in other areas of the business. Design is one of the only disciplines where design can benefit every part of an organisation.
On the Senior IC front I believe many VPs, SVPs would go back to IC work. More design teams (especially large companies) need VP level ICs.
Someone who can identify opportunities across the entire products, bring those opportunities to life, help define the future of the organisation, evolve the entire architecture, process and ways of working and are genuinely best in-class in craft, product, business etc.
I know of only a few companies like IBM who have roles like this. They call it a Distinguished Designer.
Design in HR is another fascinating topic. Iain Roberts who is the current Global Head of Employee Experience at Airbnb (who comes from a design background) spoke about Designing HR as a Strategic Service Function, which shows someone from a design background moving into HR makes perfect sense.
Designers moving into product is a no-brainer. There's a real need for design-led product leaders.
I believe whoever leads product should index heavily on creative thinking, with an understanding of business, strategy, market and commercial and connect the dots. The creative part can't be taught. Designers have that in their DNA.
Creative people, who embrace failure, ideation, rather than indexing on operational product create better innovation in the market. Operational leaders focus more on shipping features, story points concluded, and revenue. They are all essential, but outcomes of the process.
Customer value = business value = profit.
What are the traits of great product designers?
Everyone will tell you different, but here’s a few thoughts:
They are proactive
They have a superpower and hone in
They are always practicing their craft
They have a growth mindset
They pause and reflect
They are intentional with their careers
They have open communication
They just keep designing one day at a time
They have a deep focus on craft
They ensure they are delivering business value
Not got a single interview. What am I doing wrong?
This is hard without digging into someone’s situation in detail. it could many things including:
Showcasing work which is simply not good enough
Misaligned expectations i.e going for senior roles when you’re not.
Not approaching enough companies
Not showing relevant work
Not following the right channels to apply for roles
Not leveraging their own network/warm referrals.
I can answer this in a 1:1 conversation, as this will different for each person.
Whiteboard exercises. What are my thoughts?
I’m not against whiteboard tasks. They just need to be prepared correctly.
Often they are run with no context.
What you’re being assessed on:
Ability to take in information
Energy with team-mates.
Being able to be effective with your time to get to an outcome
Understand how you think
The watch out I have with whiteboard exercises are for designers who have neurodiversity as they can pose extra challenges:
(I thank Ìní for giving me extra context from her perspective)
They can create stressful environments and not related of how real life work for designers as usually you’re given more context to a problem you’re trying to solve and ultimately more time. It some cases, it doesn’t prioritise the thoughtfulness of the design process, rather speed.
There can be inherent bias, it’s devoid of crucial context that the interviewers will have. It doesn’t favour people who prefer to dissect problems in different ways.
For neurodiverse people they may struggle to make eye contact (I know I can sometimes!) Neurodiverse people will have to fully mask which can can cause further anxiety so you will not perform as well on the whiteboard task.
If you are doing a whiteboard challenge as part of an interview process, do not be afraid to ask for more context and time. Ultimately it’s up to you to feel as comfortable as you can to mirror how you’d work in real life.
To run whiteboard exercises well:
Give context ahead of time to ensure prep.
Assess for the usual, but also how designers push back on certain aspects like requiring more context or not wanting to do it at all. This shows self-awareness and they know how they work best.
Interesting threads on whiteboard exercises:
What courses can I take to level-up?
Product Design:
- Fons Mans - Learn visual design from one of the best
- Filippos Protogeridis - Product Design masterclass
- Nick Babich - Measuring design impact
- Michael Wong - Levelling up designers across multiple skills
Business/Growth Design:
- Ryan Scott - All things ROI and Career growth.
- Kate Syuma - Creating PLG Roadmaps
- Fonz Morris, EMBA - Crafting successful products
- Sera Tajima - Design for conscious PLG
Career growth:
- Lena Kul - How to find a Design job
- Design Buddies - 10 week project cohorts
- Catt Small - Staff Designer 101
- Wes Kao - Communication for ICs and Managers
- Sarah Jutras - Building your freelance business
Design Leadership:
- Doug Powell - Principles of effective design leadership
- Ian Wharton - Storytelling to maximise impact
- Ryan Rumsey - The CDO school. Very cool.
- PARK Academy - Decades of design leadership training
UX Research:
- Ruby Pryor - Level up UX Research impact
- Dr. Ari Zelmanow - Influencing product decisions with research
- Elizabeth Creighton - User interviews skills for designers + PMs
AI in Design:
- Ioana Teleanu - AI for Designers
- Maheen Sohail - Become an AI Product Designer
Additions from the community:
How can I be more attractive to start-ups?
I tend to see this a lot. Leaders who want to go back to being hands-on, especially in small startups.
They are often the first to admit they are not up to scratch visually, but what they can bring into a Principal role from a strategic, UX and end to end product design role is invaluable.
My advice to people thinking about moving into a more hands-on role:
Advise for startups for free to build a portfolio of this advisory work.
Make it clear in your resume/portfolio the amount of 0-1 work you’ve done in the past either as a founding employee or designer or any side projects. They want to see that entrepreneurial side.
Remain hands-on outside of work. Be exploring new tools.
Level up where you need to. Often the default here is visual design. There’s many courses for you to do this.
Join as a fractional beforehand.
You have to understand at early stage you need to do everything from product design, marketing, brand. You need visual chops.
What are the most in-demand roles at the moment?
(That I am working on FWIW)
- Growth Designers
- Generalist Product Designers
The era of smaller, more powerful design teams is here.
Companies need and can do more with less.
Designers who I see in demand:
Understand business + product
Technical skills and know how
High empathy for customers
Can handle ambiguity
Lead through the work
Can demonstrate they can ship work fast
Generalists with a specialism
Impeccable visual skills (Absolute must in most cases)
I think levelling up in visual design right now would make anyone stand out.
Growth Designers are one of the trickiest roles to hire for.
The typical need for these roles are:
Growth experience (obviously)
High level of visual craft
Solid end-to-end designer
A lot of companies want high-craft because the essence of the first impression is important and a lot of the experiences growth designers work on are firsts in the customer journey.
Add to that a location strategy the company may have, and you're narrowing your talent pool dramatically.
When hiring these roles I've set out to find strong product designers with a growth mindset, who can move into growth focused roles, because hiring someone with 3-5 years "Growth Design" experience that will hit your craft bar is a tricky ask.
How to push back against an offer to get more money
From Lena Kul:
Start the Salary Conversation Early - One of the biggest mistakes they made was only finding out the salary at the very end of the process—after passing all the interview stages and reaching the offer.
Don't do this. Always open up the salary conversation early on. You don’t need to be pushy, but creating clarity around your expectations is crucial. The last thing you want is to invest all that time, only to realize they can’t afford you or the offer doesn’t align with what you need.Don't Be Afraid to Negotiate - You have every right to protect yourself as a potential employee. Asking for clarity or negotiating your offer is not a bad thing—it’s business. Just like the company protects its interests in contracts and salaries, you should protect yours.
The ‘Sh*t Sandwich’ Method for Salary Negotiation:
Start with excitement – Express your enthusiasm for the company, the role, and everything that excites you (the mission, team, challenges, etc.).
Present your case – Transition into why your skills, experience, and impact deserve a higher salary. Make it clear that the current offer doesn’t fully reflect your value. Keep tying it back to the business impact you’ll bring.
Close with commitment – If they can meet your salary expectations, you’re ready to sign. Reaffirm your excitement to join, your eagerness to contribute, and your belief that this adjustment will make it a perfect match.You Are Worth It - Negotiation isn’t about making unreasonable demands—it’s about ensuring your compensation aligns with the value you bring. Your salary impacts your lifestyle, financial goals, and future opportunities.
I want to do these FAQ articles maybe once a month, so if you have any questions I can answer or I can ask the community on your behalf please let me know.
Until next time!
Great one Tom 👏
Thank you, this was insightful and comprehensive!