Why

i'm

kind

of

failing

apart:

feedback

from

a

product

designer

Ressource model

Never ending compromise

Bigger picture

I'm a Product Designer, and for some time now, a creeping feeling has settled in: I'm tired. Tired of a race that never seems to end... I think it's inherent to the job; everyone experiences this feeling at least once in their career, and it's both normal and necessary to take a step back. It's that step back that allows you to gain perspective, to evolve, and to become better.

One of the primary sources of this burnout is the feeling of having to switch projects too frequently. I get staffed on one assignment, then another, and then another. While the variety might seem stimulating at first, it quickly turns into a form of exhaustion. I barely have time to immerse myself in a context, to truly understand the user's needs, and to start building a vision before it's already time to move on to something else.

This constant rotation leaves a bitter taste of incompleteness. Did I really have the time to do the best work possible? Was I able to follow the real-world impact of my proposals? Often, the answer is no. This leads to frustration, the feeling of skimming the surface of subjects rather than mastering them, and a weariness with this repeating cycle. How can you fully invest yourself when you know your contribution will be short-lived?

The 'Resource' Model: Staffed Without a Choice

I often wonder if this dynamic isn't intrinsically linked to the agency model I work in. Being "staffed" on projects without being truly asked for my opinion, without my interests or aspirations being truly taken into account, has become burdensome. We become a resource to be allocated, rather than a talent to be developed.

This lack of autonomy in choosing assignments, or at least in discussing them, undermines motivation. How can we feel fully engaged when we feel like projects are imposed on us, sometimes without taking into account our specific expertise or our desire to explore certain areas rather than others? This greatly contributes to this feeling of being overwhelmed by tasks that sometimes don't, or no longer, resonate with what drives me.

The 'Resource' Model: Staffed Without a Choice

The Never-Ending Compromise: Is the Customer King and the User an Afterthought?

And then there's the almost daily tension, the fatigue of having to satisfy the client rather than (fully) satisfy the user. We are trained, we aspire, to be advocates for users, to design experiences that truly meet their needs, that simplify their lives. But the reality on the ground is often one of compromise.

Budget constraints, tight deadlines, the client's subjective preferences, or sometimes a misunderstanding of UX issues, lead us to make choices that aren't always aligned with our deepest convictions as designers. How many times have I had to defend a solution that I knew was less relevant to the end user, simply because it better matched the client's expectations or vision? This intellectual and emotional gymnastics is exhausting. It erodes the initial passion, that of wanting to design "fairly" and "well" for those who will use our creations.

The Never-Ending Compromise: Is the Customer King and the User an Afterthought?

Looking at the Bigger Picture...

These three elements—project mania, the agency's sometimes rigid framework, and the balancing act between client and user—are just the first pieces of a larger puzzle that constitutes my current "overwhelm." The emergence of AI and the general state of mind that results from it add further layers to this reflection... But perhaps that's for a future part of this article. For now, the observation is there: a profound fatigue and a sincere questioning of my future in this profession.

Looking at the Bigger Picture...

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Guillem Cotcha

Product designer at source.paris

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