Project management: an essential skill in my UX design journey

I never thought project management would become such a crucial part of my work.

In my career as a UX designer, project management has become one of my most valuable skills. When I first switched to design, I was focused on improving my design skills and building empathy with users. I never thought project management would become such a crucial part of my work.

My first taste of project management

I first learned about project management during graduate school. I sat in on a project management class just because I was curious. The professor liked my work and offered to give me a good grade if I officially enrolled. I didn't - I was just there to learn. I did all the coursework and even helped teach some undergrad sessions when they needed someone. Our textbook was "Making Things Happen". It's still on my bookshelf, and while I haven't opened it in years, its lessons have stuck with me.

Starting out: doing everything

Early in my design career, I worked at small companies as the only designer. I had to do a bit of everything—product management one day, project management the next, and sometimes customer support. I created a tracking spreadsheet during one particularly messy project to help organize the schedule. It worked so well that I started using spreadsheets to manage projects ever since.

Six months of intense focus

My biggest challenge came when I joined a new company and immediately had to tackle what seemed like an impossible project: designing a complex product in just six months. The pressure was intense. I was new and didn't know much about the industry, but had to create the vision, complete the design, and launch—all in six months.

We were redesigning an existing product and users remained the same. With no time for traditional user research, I talked to everyone I could find and ran several workshops to gather information. Within a month, I had created a product vision, explaining the user experience through stories. The stakeholders loved it - looking back, storytelling was a great way to present ideas.

The design work was complicated because I had to work with different engineering teams and get multiple approvals. I split the design into four parts and worked multi-streams each week. When one part got stuck in discussions, I moved forward with others. I also brought in a junior designer to help, which meant I had to spend time mentoring too. She did great work, and we finished everything on time.

Interestingly, no one had created a project timeline at the time, and nobody knew when the code needed to be completed. So I made a spreadsheet working backward from our launch date and set up weekly progress meetings. That spreadsheet became essential to our success.

Fixing the broken links crisis

Last year, I took over an open-source website redesign. We were the third round of people on this project—different product managers, designers, and engineers. While implementation seemed almost finished, there were serious quality issues.

First, I organized the team to hunt for bugs. I assigned everyone specific areas to check, and we tracked all issues in our system. This helped us understand the website better, see how much work was needed, and bring the team closer together.

Later, when another designer joined me, we noticed many broken links. For three days, we did our best to click on every single link on the website to find the broken ones. It was time-consuming, but with the engineers busy with the deadlines, it was our only option.

This simple approach worked. When we showed all the broken links to the engineering manager, he delayed the launch by two weeks to fix them. After we launched, we only got one complaint about a broken link in the first month - a big success for us.

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Looking back, I now see project management as a key skill for designers. It's not about using design software - it's about organizing work and getting things done when everything seems chaotic.

As we take on more responsibilities, prioritizing becomes crucial. I tell designers who I mentor, "Don't try to do ten things at once—figure out which three matter most and do those first."

This skill wasn't what I expected to learn as a designer, but it has become one of my most valuable skills.