Product Design Defined with Rex McKay
Creatives Ignite provides creative solopreneurs with weekly inspiration & honest insights about running a creative business. Encouraging creatives to keep their creativity ignited by exploring new tools and techniques, making messes, and connecting with people all around the world.
This product design defined series is filled with people who are designing apps, creating workflows, dissecting customer journeys and making the experience of buying or using the product better for the customer. We’re also talking to people who create physical products and selling products. All can be called product designers but do very different things.
I hope this series helps open your eyes to things you too might have been incorporating into your career but never thought of yourself as a product designer.
This week I am excited to introduce you with another one of my design babies, Rex McKay. Like many product designers Rex started out as a traditional graphic designer but felt called to further his education and do more design thinking and user experience. We will hear more about this shift in his career and what he does currently as a product designer for Amazon Prime.
I hope you will join us LIVE for Episode 485 on Wednesday, Oct 16, 2024 at 7:30pm BST / 2:30pm ET / 11:30am PT / 8:30am in Hawaii. Sign up here to get the link delivered to your inbox. https://creativesignite.com/signup
Listen here
Questions
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Rex, can you give everybody a little background about you and your career path and how you got into product design?
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How do you define Product Designer?
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When did your traditional graphic design position start doing more digital? When did you know you wanted to do something different?
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Why did you decide to continue your learning and get a Master’s Degree?
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What is the fun part of Product Design? (Problem solving)
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What does the team look like you normally work with? What kinds of other roles are normally on a team with you? What do you like about working on a team and working collaboratively?
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When you are looking for jobs what type of experience do you need to have to apply for product design positions? What are other titles you might call yourself? (UX generalist?)
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What types of things have you done as a product designer?
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Did your traditional graphic design experience help you in landing your first product design job? What did help?
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In all your experience you must have seen some red flags when working or when interviewing. What are some of the red flags of teams or companies?
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What are some questions you would ask if you were interviewing for a position?
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What does overseeing a product look like? What is a typical day like as a product designer?
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What has been your favorite project or proudest achievement so far?
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What are the challenges of working remote when on a team with other designers? What kinds of things have you had to overcome or work-around?
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What is your favorite part of product design?
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What kinds of companies hire product designers?
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What’s next for you? Do you have a big dream of a company or type of project you would like to work on?
Connect with Rex
Website: https://www.rexmckay.com/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rex-mckay/
Transcript
Transcript will go here