Building a Product Design career

Paul Otu walks through the path into product design and the part that is rarely written down: which practice actually compounded, and which activity felt productive without moving anything.

The through-line

Design careers are usually narrated backwards, so the early years read as inevitable. This conversation resists that. It stays with the decisions as they were made — including the ones that only made sense later, and the ones that did not.

For the crosser

If you are moving into design from another craft, the useful part here is the sequencing: what to get good at first when everything looks equally urgent.