Leadership and mentorship: The pillars of UI/UX design career

By Olawale Bamidele

Digitalization is the order of the day as more people are flocking the UI/UX design industry. Nevertheless, the industry is faced with a very pertinent problem, which is the lack of support for mentors among potential aspiring designers. As the latest “State of UX” report for the year 2023 published by Adobe indicates, over sixty percent of young designers believe they are not provided proper guidance in their profession with a lot of them being unable to find potential mentors from whom they could acquire important information about the field and desired career path. This becomes a major factor since this mentorship gap is likely to slow down the development of designers and henceforth the whole industry.

This is where mentorship comes in handy for UI/UX designers as it equips them with confidence and knowledge above and beyond the technical competencies that educational institutions focus on. For instance, in 2023, approximately 62% of mentees found full-time related employment, according to a survey conducted by the Interaction Design Foundation. This is in contrast to peers who were not mentored, who were unable to find employment due to a lack of supervision.

There have been researchers who have shown that such designers also stand out in the field because they particularly excel in crucial areas, such as methods focusing on user research, wireframing, and stakeholder communication. Additionally, aspects of being mentored are said to improve the abilities of designers as the numbers indicate that 70% of them were able to utilize their mentorship experience to help complete more complex project tasks.

Mentorship programs may also bring benefiting effects to businesses as they help create solid and professional design teams focusing on bringing product success. Companies with mentorship programs report that their UI/UX revolving employees are held longer and the projects’ completion success rate goes up by nearly 30%. In addition, companies who actively engage into mentorships also report improvement in team relations as senior designers becoming mentors acquire how to lead and thus strengthening the collaborative culture of the work place.

In view of these, I have made it a point to be in the forefront of the mentorship world in a bid to fill this void for the future generation of designers. I do so by explaining the theoretical basis behind the design process, as well as assisting and providing practice in a more organized manner, in order to ensure that young designers will be able to create designs oriented to the customer’s needs. Noteworthy, I run workshops dedicated to the basic processes, such as user research, design, and testing allowing young designers to focus on the problem and offer solutions.

The consequences of these mentorship activities are considerable. According to statistics, mentees taking part in structured programs report 67% higher chances of succeeding in team C&I tasks, further supporting the direct advantages of mentorship. I must add that these team-building qualities are taught and developed through mentorship and leadership because it would not just ensure the success of individual designers, but the creation of a vibrant and inventive design community as a whole.

It has already been pointed out that these activities do not occur in a vacuum, and that it is because of their structure or formality that they are able to be effective, and therefore, they are seen as collective and management-oriented activities.