How to evaluate design grade

"What grade am I? Am I good?" — those types of questions that stump and make designers flounder and make wrong decisions. This affects self-esteem and self-confidence, negotiations, and therefore affects the evaluation of the cost of work. And in the end – career.

The difficulty is that there is no single scale of grade estimation, because design is diverse and there are many businesses, each with its own rules. You can be a super honored specialist in the company, experienced and cool, but when looking for a new job suddenly find out that other companies have different criteria and for them you are not a "leading designer" as you were called. Even the competency matrices, so beloved in large companies, will be different for everyone.

At the same time, there is one criterion common to all situations - autonomy.

To a novice designer — you need to explain both the task and how to solve it. Give out an instruction manual. A good june is the one who will do according to the instructions. It is important to be diligent, attentive, trainable. Beginners still spend a lot of time learning the tools.

For a middler, it is enough to set a task and explain the context. The designer will find a solution on his own and execute it at an excellent level. Speed and high level of craft are important, top knowledge of tools is a basic expectation.

Senior specialist or lead — it is enough to voice the expected result, and the designer will formulate the task independently and be able to solve it. Understanding the business context, communication, and level of craft are important.

In fact, the more awesome the designer is, the more autonomous and more uncertain tasks he is able to solve. Picking up, backing up, figuring out-understanding. When evaluating yourself, describing cases, gathering resumes — it's important to build on the value to the business and not miss moments like this. Every case where you understood the context, helped the business or team to formulate a problem, find a solution, improve processes is valuable.

It's not knowledge of tools and the ability to put together a layout, but autonomy that distinguishes a strong designer from a weak one. When approached in this way, it's much easier to work long-term with clients or grow your career in hiring.