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Why You Shouldn’t Limit Yourself to Consumer-Facing Design Jobs 🙅
Beyond the Obvious: Finding the Right Design Roles for Your Strengths and Interests
Florian Bölter
March 19, 2025
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Hey and welcome back to a new week! 👋
As you probably noticed there was no newsletter last week. I’d like to apologize for that. I was out with a very tough flu or covid the week prior and was not in a state to do any work. I’m back this week with full energy though so let’s go!
In this issue:
Look Beyond The Flashy Jobs: Why consumer-facing roles are far from your only option out there.
The Coolest Link In Bio Around: My good friend Filip built an amazing link in bio tool that I use myself (see here) and it makes a great starter to link through to your portfolio and more!
Megan’s Portfolio: How to lead with impact and tell a good story
Today’s Question: How can I show impact / results with fictional projects?
🤝 TODAY’S PARTNER
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Why You Shouldn’t Limit Yourself to Consumer-Facing Design Jobs 🙅
When starting out in design, it’s easy to be drawn toward the idea of working on a sleek, consumer-facing app from a company you recognize—something like Duolingo, Airbnb, or Instagram. These brands are everywhere in our daily lives, and their products have visually appealing interfaces and highly polished user experiences. Naturally, many junior designers set their sights on these types of roles.
But here’s the reality:
These companies are extremely difficult to get into. They attract top-tier talent worldwide and hire only a handful of junior designers—if any.
The nature of the work at these companies is not necessarily the best fit for every designer. Some skill sets thrive much better in other areas.
Consumer-facing products make up only a fraction of the industry. The majority of UX and product design jobs are in areas like SaaS, enterprise software, fintech, logistics, healthcare, and eCommerce.
And yet, many junior designers overlook these opportunities simply because they don’t have as much exposure to them. If you’ve only been looking at flashy consumer apps, you’re potentially missing out on a huge number of roles that could be a much better fit for you.
Why This Matters
The biggest mistake I see junior designers make is applying to every job they come across, hoping something sticks. While applying to a large volume of jobs is necessary, the quality of applications matters just as much as the quantity.
When you’re chasing jobs that don’t align with your strengths or skills, you’re setting yourself up for frustration. You either won’t get a response, or if you do, you might find that the role doesn’t suit you.
Instead of taking a scattershot approach, you can increase your chances by being more strategic:
Identify roles that align with your existing skills and strengths.
Look at industries where your past experience (whether in work, university, or personal projects) gives you an edge.
Avoid industries that require skills you don’t have yet and don’t naturally align with your strengths.
How to Identify the Right Areas for You
If you’ve been applying to consumer-focused roles with little success, it’s time to reassess where you’re looking. Here’s a simple way to start narrowing down where you should be applying:
1. Identify Your Strengths and Best Skills
What have you naturally excelled at in past jobs, studies, or projects?
Are you more strategic, research-driven, and analytical?
Do you thrive in deep problem-solving rather than just UI polish?
Or are you a highly visual, detail-oriented designer who loves refining aesthetics?
Many consumer-facing companies prioritize strong UI design skills, but many other industries value systems thinking, research, and problem-solving just as much, if not more.
2. Leverage Your Industry Background
Your past experience—whether in design or not—can give you a competitive edge. Some examples:
If you worked in finance before switching to design, fintech products could be a great fit.
If you have experience in retail or eCommerce, you may naturally understand the challenges of designing for online shopping experiences.
If you’ve worked in marketing, you might find SaaS products that cater to marketers a good match.
Even if you don’t want to stay in the exact same industry, adjacent fields can benefit from your existing knowledge.
3. Reflect on Your Interests and What Keeps You Engaged
Do you enjoy working with data?
Are you fascinated by logistics and operations?
Do you love tackling complex, real-world business problems?
Many junior designers underestimate just how much interest and curiosity play a role in career success. If you find a sector genuinely engaging, you’ll likely do much better in interviews and on the job itself.
Niching Down Just Enough
A common fear I hear from mentees is: “If I narrow my focus, won’t I miss out on opportunities?”
No.
You’re only eliminating jobs that were never a good fit for you in the first place.
If your skill set doesn’t align with consumer-facing design jobs, you weren’t going to get those roles anyway—or if you did, they might not have been the right fit.
That said, there is a balance to strike.
If you niche down too far—say, only looking for UX jobs in fintech for pet products—you’re making things unnecessarily difficult. Instead, aim for a broad but logical focus.
For example:
✅ Good niche:
“I’m targeting data-heavy industries like healthcare, logistics, and enterprise tools because my strengths are research, problem-solving, and systems thinking.”
❌ Too narrow:
“I only want to work in the medical AI space for startups that focus on telehealth.”
The first approach still gives you plenty of opportunities while letting you tailor your applications effectively. The second is so restrictive that you’ll struggle to find enough jobs to apply to.
Final Thoughts
Not every designer is built for consumer-facing products—and that’s a good thing. There’s an entire world of opportunities beyond the obvious big-name brands, and for many designers, these paths offer more growth, impact, and career satisfaction.
By reassessing where your skills naturally fit, you’ll start applying to roles that actually make sense for you—and ultimately land a job faster.
If you’re still stuck trying to figure out where you fit best, take a step back, analyze your skills, and start looking at industries you might have overlooked. The best opportunities might not be the most obvious ones.
⁉️ Q&A
Today’s Question
How can I show impact / results with fictional projects?
💼 More Jobs
👀 Portfolio Showcase
Today: Megan Dieckgraeff
Today we have Megan’s portfolio on the showcase and on my first look I quickly spotted a range of best-in-practice things that had me convinced it belongs here.
Let’s have a look what Megan did there!
The Good:
Focus on Impact: I’ll address that separately but one thing you can quickly see is that Megan does not see her work exist in a void. Although the projects differ quite heavily she has been measuring impact on all of them. The best thing here is that this doesn’t feel like an afterthought which I often see. From the case study preview over the intro with the challenge, solution and outcome down to the very end—her impact is part of the story. The only one I would have loved a tiny bit more on is the interest rating metric on her first case study. It is a little bit wonky in its definition and might warrant a bit more explanation as to how it came together / was measured. But still overall the way Megan incorporates impact and results is exactly how I’d recommend you do it.
Reeling People In From The Start: Megan understands how to tell a story. Her storytelling inside of her case studies is great in itself. But this isn’t even what I’m so excited about here. I love how Megan already gets you before you click into the case study. The titles of her case studies and the fact that she leads with impact here already are making it much more likely for me to check her work in the first place. By saying “Transforming a Small Business Website to Increase Sales and Satisfaction” instead of saying “Redesign of a small business website” or “Webshop redesign” which I see SO often she is creating the narrative she wants to tell right from the first moment. By also tying in the metrics next to the title she is not only saying what she did but also what she achieved. There might be ways to even combine this but honestly I was hooked to read more about how she did it already.
You know this section and you also know that no (!) portfolio is perfect. So let’s take a look at what I think Megan can do to improve her portfolio further.
The Potential:
Visual Presentation in Case Studies: While I do think that Megans case studies are overall very good, I do wish they’d spoil me a tiny bit more visually when reading them. I’m not suggesting a whole redo here or anything. And I also have to add that Megan’s UI and general visual work is totally fine. It’s purely about presentation for me. Using mockups or some simple outlines + background here like Howie did is a simple way to ensure your designs shine the way they deserve. In any case I’d make sure that the designs are always consistently represented. I noticed that sometimes there were sharp edges while the design inside had rounded corners or that some screens had rounded corners on top but sharp ones at the bottom—make sure this feels perfect.
Minor Visual Quirks: My second point is also on the visual side. But definitely much more minor in my opinion. I liked to see Megan’s use of interactions and motion on her homepage. It definitely makes her portfolio feel more engaging overall and so I’m glad about this. However this can use a tiny bit more polish. When hovering the case study previews you’ll notice a jump causing the next case study to move to the bottom a bit. This feels very abrupt and a bit jarring. I can see what happened there too. When trying to achieve the zoom-in effect on the image, Megan just increased the height of the image on hover. This causes the jump. I don’t know which builder was used here so I can’t tell how exactly to solve this for but most builders allow a normal zoom on hover. Another small issue I noticed was that on my screen the arrow of the testimonials section was cut off and ran awkwardly into the testimonial cards underneath. Small things to fix that can have a great effect on impression though.
I was super happy to see Megan as a career changer presenting such a stellar portfolio with so many things done right. Definitely check it out to learn more about how to showcase impact and how to tell a good story!
That’s it for this week—thanks so much for the support! ♥️
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Keep kicking doors open and see you next week!
- Florian