Impostor syndrome is the persistent belief people have that their success is due to luck, not ability. Many UX (user experience) designers, and professionals in every field, experience it, often gripped by the fear of being “exposed” as a fraud despite their clear achievements. With insight and practice, you can overcome impostor syndrome and thrive with confidence, feeling valued that you are an authentic professional.
Discover how to power your way through any niggling doubts about not being worthy or ready to deliver excellent work as an authentic professional, in this video with Morgane Peng, Managing Director, Global Head of Product Design and AI Transformation.
Impostor Syndrome is Real, But so Are You
Have you ever felt that somehow you achieved a position without deserving it? Perhaps it was an interview years ago where you feel you may have exaggerated what you knew or could do, and you got the job? Or could it have been a sense that you weren’t quite ready to step into a position or job, so you stayed away from the role or turned down a promotion because someone might later accuse you of being a fake and challenge you to prove your worth? Or perhaps the career path you took seems a little disconnected from what you were studying for it at university? Maybe someone else, someone “more qualified” should be in that position, not you?
If any of the above sound familiar or if you’ve experienced something else where you had doubts about your skill set or felt that luck got you where you are more than anything you did or value you contributed, yourself, you’re not alone; it’s a common phenomenon. Impostor syndrome is a psychological pattern where people doubt their accomplishments and fear being exposed as “frauds,” even when the evidence proves the contrary: that they are, indeed, competent professionals. Psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes first identified the term in the late 1970s, studying high-achieving women who struggled to internalize success.
Since then, research has shown that impostor feelings affect people of all genders, ages, backgrounds, cultures, and nationalities (hence why there’s also “imposter syndrome” as a spelling variant). Impostor syndrome is not a clinical disorder, but it has real effects and long-term consequences if you leave it “untreated”: it can undermine your confidence, block career progress, and increase stress levels.
Impostor syndrome often shows up; for example, when you compare yourself to other professionals with more experience, polished portfolios, or louder voices in meetings.
You Can Tap into The Positive Side of Impostor Syndrome
Here’s the bright side of impostor syndrome: it can carry “hidden” benefits when you manage it well. Once you look past the angst and sour overtones, you may notice how it:
Keeps you humble: When you recognize you don’t know everything, you’ll find yourself being more open to collaboration.
Encourages growth: Self-doubt can motivate you to improve skills and seek learning opportunities that can prove your worth all the more to yourself if you ever doubted it before.
Builds empathy: Your struggles can make you more understanding toward colleagues and users, one reason being that they might well be feeling symptoms of impostor syndrome, themselves, but are too embarrassed to talk about it.
Signals investment: Feeling impostor syndrome means you care about doing meaningful, high-quality work. That caring element, which also shows up in stage fright, is part of who you are, and your brand is lucky to have you. Speaking of “lucky,” maybe it’s time to stop feeling lucky to have “survived” in your role? You are a true professional when you’ve got the goods; it’s just that you may not have realized that you not only have what it takes but also know how to deliver exceptional ideas and design solutions.
So, because the upsides can pay dividends, aim to channel the impostor feelings into constructive energy instead of trying to erase them completely.
Discover how to leverage empathy as a designer to keep the spotlight on where it should be: making a great product for users who need, want, and will love it, in our video.
How to Overcome Impostor Syndrome and Get What You Deserve
Indeed, you can’t “switch off” impostor syndrome overnight, but don’t worry; you can build strategies to quieten self-doubt and strengthen confidence.
1. Recognize It’s Normal
Impostor syndrome is common, even among leaders and experts, and, given its nature, is not something many people will advertise about themselves so openly. You only know your own feelings really well; so, that leaves billions of other people who may be feeling something similar but who may seem “strong” on the outside. When you know you’re not alone, it makes it less overwhelming.
2. Talk About It
Conversations with colleagues, mentors, or friends can normalize your feelings, and you may hear many similar stories coming from others. You’ll often hear “me too,” which reduces isolation, when you take the initiative to declare your feelings. If you trust those you tell, you might find the “risk” of announcing your impostor feelings can pay off and make you feel so much better as you come away with valuable insights, advice, and maybe even mentoring help.
3. Reframe Mistakes
View errors not as proof of inadequacy but as stepping-stones. UX design thrives on creativity, stepping into uncharted territories, and iteration; mistakes can fuel better design decisions, better designs, and, along the way, an even better version of yourself, too.
4. Keep a Success Log
Save praise, project wins, and positive feedback in a document or folder to look at, like an awards or trophies cabinet. Review it when doubts creep in, and remember you matter and what you do matters to many others, too.
5. Ask for Feedback
Instead of waiting for validation or tiptoeing in the shadows of hope, seek constructive feedback. It might take a little courage, but it will show you where you excel and where to grow, facts that will counter self-doubt.
Explore how to approach non-designers so you can get valuable feedback, in this video with Todd Zaki Warfel, Author, Speaker and Leadership Coach.
6. Celebrate Progress
Shift focus from perfection to progress. Did you learn a new skill, or improve a design after testing? That’s success, and if your brand is too “modest” to notice things as important as little victories, celebrate your achievement regardless. Saying that, if your boss has an un-nurturing attitude of “Well, we expect that, anyway,” ignores the achievements of your team members, too, and maybe even exhibits narcissistic behaviors on top of that, then maybe it’s time to think about moving on to a place that will value what you are and what you offer. You deserve better than to be somewhere that may be contributing to your UX impostor’s syndrome from the outside.
7. Support Others
When you mentor or share tips with peers, you may notice how it highlights how much knowledge you already have. You may not even need to hear them say “Wow” to feel good about your knowledge base and skill set.
8. Practice Self-Compassion
Remember “you deserve better”? Well, treat yourself as kindly as you’d treat a teammate. It’s easy when you’re experiencing life from the first-person perspective to forget that you are a human being, too, not some entity that’s just witnessing other humans in the world and is immune to (or undeserving of) the same considerations. You wouldn’t call them a fraud for learning, would you? So, don’t do it to yourself.
9. Redefine Success
Quit the comparisons and stop measuring yourself against others; climb to a higher perspective and define success as creating value for users. That’s what truly matters in UX design, whatever anyone else may say. Your boss may have key performance indicators (KPIs) for you to “live up to,” and you can deliver in terms of output, indeed, but do so in the context of yourself, not comparing to others.
Feel better with some peace of mind about mistakes people make when it comes to measurement and focusing on the wrong things, in this video with the Godfather of UX design, Don Norman.
10. Leverage Impostor Syndrome for Career Growth
Impostor syndrome can feel like it blocks career opportunities, but when you learn to manage it, it can actually boost your path forward, such as:
In job applications: Few candidates meet every requirement in the real, human world. Apply anyway; growth happens on the job. Bosses who wait around for job applicants who tick all the boxes and extras may be in for extremely long waits. Anyway, that’s their loss, and if you’ve been spared from having to deal with an especially neurotic perfectionist or even a manipulative narcissist every day, or someone who might try to dowse the passion you bring to your craft, then so much the better.
In interviews: Frame nerves as excitement and highlight your curiosity. Your hunger for making the role your own and building it out for the users’ and brand’s benefit might seal the deal. After all, good bosses often value adaptability more than knowing everything.
In promotions: If your team trusts you with greater responsibility, believe them. If you ever needed proof of your readiness, nothing beats external recognition in this context.
Become more aware of the people who listen to you, and listening to them can help you see past doubts you might be harboring about your own potential, too.
© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0
11. Practice Everyday Confidence Builders
Exercise your right to advance yourself to better things more confidently through some simple practices that can strengthen your confidence daily:
Contribute one insight at the start of a meeting; it sets a confident tone: you’ll feel better for having spoken, too, and you can listen with a more positive mindset.
Take social media breaks to avoid unhealthy comparison. Seriously, why bother with the outside world so much if you end up making false assumptions and brooding on your own status, fear of failing, and even fear of succeeding? Focus, at least for a while, only on what’s important: yourself, what you know, what you have, what you can do, what you’ve already done, and all the great things you can envision yourself doing.
Journal one positive outcome from each day’s work. Writing helps reinforce the reality, and you’ll feel a glow from your words whenever you look back. The value of that inspiration can be immeasurable in combating self-doubt.
Revisit the purpose of UX design: improving lives through better experiences. That’s meaningful, regardless of comparison, and when you focus on doing good in the world like that, you might be amazed at how good it can feel.
Speaking of building confidence, discover how to feel more confidence and deliver better presentations when you speak in front of others, in this video with Morgane Peng, Managing Director, Global Head of Product Design and AI Transformation.
12. Feel The Empowering Truth
Impostor syndrome may tell you that you don’t belong or that you don’t deserve success, but here’s the truth: if you weren’t capable, you wouldn’t be here, period. Your journey, your effort, and your growth are genuine; to deny that is to do yourself a gross disservice, and to call your hiring manager or boss a fool for having been “stupid” enough to hire you. Regardless of how you might feel about them now, their judgment helped you land your role then. That counts for something. Plus, the fact that you question yourself shows you’re reflective and committed to doing good work. That’s not fraud; that’s professionalism at its best; it’s just too bad it can be so painful when it’s left to fester unresolved.
Why Impostor Syndrome Happens
It might sound surreal that it’s so common, but the high number of causes, each a valid reason in its own right, validate why impostor syndrome is a reality. To strip it back to its barest roots, impostor syndrome doesn’t mean you lack ability; it just means your perception of yourself doesn’t align with reality. Several factors can account for this gap:
High Standards
Are you one of those people who won’t put your name on something you’ve created unless it’s 100% solid and correct? If so, congratulations for caring to do and be your best. The “price” of that, though, is that you hold yourself to near-impossible expectations and feel that anything less than perfection means failure. That can be a formula for a self-worth crisis in a world that is, by default, imperfect.
Comparison Traps
One unhappy byproduct of living in the modern age is how easy it is to see what others are up to and what they can do with such apparent ease, and it may seem like: “Everyone else has their act together! Why don’t I?” If you’ve ever watched a time-lapse video of, for example, someone fixing up battered old furniture into a masterpiece or turning a dull wasteland of a back lawn into a beautiful landscape worthy of a master gardener, you may have felt aspects of this phenomenon. This UX impostor syndrome symptom turns up when social media and design showcases amplify other people’s best work, while you only see your own flaws up close.
A Growing Field
Another reason to feel more cheerful in the face of symptoms of impostor syndrome is the nature of the trade or industry you’re in. UX design is evolving so quickly that it’s normal to feel like you’re always catching up. It’s like digging a hole in dry sand (where much sand falls back in as you do it); you put so much into it and yet it feels like the need for pushing further and making more progress is unending. That’s going to be natural in UX design, which deals with cool, cutting-edge technology and the associated expectations of target audiences of brilliant new apps and other digital solutions your brand might release.
Enjoy a fresh aspect on what UX design is all about, and explore how you can make a difference through it, in our video about the field of UX design itself.
Workplace Culture
Speaking of “brands,” what’s yours like? Is it long-established and large, medium-sized, or a brand-new startup? How about its culture? Environments that reward confidence over competence can make self-doubt worse. It’s an annoying reality that can hijack the feelings of perfectly smart, competent contributors if the boss seems to lavish praise on colleagues who “sound good,” even if these “confident” ones aren’t as technically proficient.
Personality
As you might suspect, people who are introverted, self-critical, or perfectionist often feel impostor syndrome more deeply than those who “just get on with it” and don’t seem to care as much about delivering a perfect product. And if most of your colleagues are less like you in this way, you might feel the effects of so-called impostor syndrome more profoundly.
What Are Signs You May Have Impostor Syndrome?
You might recognize you have impostor syndrome if you find yourself:
Downplaying Success
You dismiss compliments or attribute achievements to luck, timing, or others’ help. That “Oh, it was nothing” attitude of what you might think is “courteous humility” can signal a sense of lower professional self-esteem than you deserve to have.
Fearing Exposure
Ridiculous as it might seem, you might worry someone will “discover” you’re not as capable as they think you should be. It’s not the crime of the century, not even close or even a “crime,” but your mind’s eye might present you with imaginary scenarios where someone has found you out as a non-UX designer, a fake, a fraud, a charlatan. That fear of exposure is as irrational as it is unwarranted, unwanted, and unfair.
Over-Preparing
You spend excessive time polishing work to avoid criticism and cover your tracks. As with the “crime” element above, you believe “they’ll get” you if you don’t, that someone might ring the alarm bells with the boss or Human Resources department that your work is “shoddy” and you shouldn’t have got through your job interview, let alone probationary period at work.
Avoiding Opportunities
You decline projects, speaking engagements, or promotions because you don’t feel “ready” or that you’ve truly got what it takes to do things that are so “professional.” You feel so much safer in your comfort zone. It’s like a womb, and at least you’ve still got a job inside that “womb.” Why, if you were to suddenly become “brave” and try to grow and emerge from that safe place, you might well fail and, worse, people will wonder what else you can’t do. It shares aspects with loss-aversion bias, too, in that you cling to what you already have, even at the cost of not advancing and saying no to what might be far better for you to grow into.
Chronic Self-Comparison
You end up fixating on colleagues’ strengths while ignoring your own growth. This one can be particularly painful because it can leave you feeling not only hollow but also bitter about others who do get ahead. That’s a recipe for self-pity and staying stuck in a rut while begrudging your colleagues for wanting to get on with their lives. Worse, it can be a tragic roadblock to your enjoying what should be the best years of your life as a designer, as you grow and glow.
Discounting Expertise
Speaking of “others,” you might fall into the trap of assuming everyone else knows more than you, even when you have valuable insights. Maybe your knowledge base is so close to you that you can’t even recognize it? Whatever the case, something is keeping the spotlight on what others are good at while leaving you sighing “Sure, what do I know?” time and again.
To return to the professionals who defined the term, Clance and Imes originally outlined several “impostor types,” such as the perfectionist, who’s never satisfied with their work, the soloist, who feels they must accomplish everything alone, and the expert, who believes they need to know everything before contributing. If you can find any traits and patterns that you can apply to yourself, it can help you spot impostor thoughts before they take over.
When you know your material and believe in yourself, you’re “big enough” to go before any audience as a true professional, not an impostor, and calmly present, listen, and adapt to what people in the audience say.
© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0
Why Impostor Syndrome Is Common in UX Design
UX design impostor syndrome, UX designer imposter syndrome, or just plain UX impostor syndrome is especially common among UX professionals for good reason. To delve deeper into the primary cause, that UX is a growing field, and beyond, you’ll find reasons to feel encouraged when you see that this industry is especially prone to impostor syndrome because:
It’s multidisciplinary. The UX design field spans psychology, design, technology, and business: a gigantic expanse. Nobody could master all these areas perfectly (especially the ones that are constantly evolving) even if they had a couple of lifetimes to do it in.
It’s collaborative. Your work is constantly visible to teammates, clients, and stakeholders; so, being on display like that makes it easy to doubt yourself and feel vulnerable. Another point about collaboration is that you’ll often receive feedback on your designs and ideas, which can make a person get on the defensive and think others in the workplace are out to expose them as a “fraud.” Nothing could be further from the truth; it’s about making a better product.
It’s fast-moving. New tools, frameworks, and trends emerge almost monthly: positive signs of a lively profession that’s in demand. It’s only natural that even seasoned designers can feel “behind.”
It’s human-centered. Designing for real people means facing uncertainty. There’s rarely a single “right” answer when you’re devising and creating design solutions for living beings in their various contexts. If it were designing for robots, it would be far simpler, like trains running along a track. However, real people with real-world problems mean you have the privilege of applying your expertise to complex issues that require sophisticated handling, even if some solutions turn out to be beautifully simple.
Explore how to cater to the contexts of use your users find themselves in by designing the best products for them, in this video with Alan Dix: Author of the bestselling book “Human-Computer Interaction” and Director of the Computational Foundry at Swansea University.
So, breathe easily; these realities mean impostor feelings are less a flaw in you and more a reflection of the complexity of the field.
Also, understand that true strength in UX design involves self-belief, commitment to users, and effective communication skills as some of the main personal characteristics.
Overall, impostor syndrome is a reality to reckon with, but it’s one you can address and alleviate the symptoms of when you recognize it as a normal “condition.” Rather than cut it out completely like some toxic growth, the trick is to acknowledge it, manage it, and channel its energy away from negative areas and towards self-growth and positive results. Think of an airplane that’s built up speed for takeoff after taxiing for so long on the runway: there should be nothing keeping it from taking off and flying high. Indeed, the results of it not taking off after all that would be catastrophic.
It can seem easier said than done. However, the risks of not assessing the syndrome of impostors in oneself and treating it can be tragic. People can fear success as much as they fear failure, but they won’t realize as easily that they’re scared of doing well: of taking on more responsibility, perhaps crumbling under the pressure that might go with it, sure, but also rejecting the chances of more happiness, too. Self-sabotage and the fear of being found out as a fraud can keep perfectly competent, decent professionals locked in a prison of their own making. However, with insight and courage, they can rise high out of the abyss of darkness which they think shields them from scrutiny and judgment.
Instead of being locked in a “loser mode” where they let self-deprecating thoughts keep them down while others get ahead; instead of fulfilling their own prophecies about not being “worthy” by not bothering to try; and instead of wallowing in a fear of failure at the same time as unwittingly indulging in a fear of success, people with impostor syndrome can realize that life is not a dress rehearsal; it’s real. It’s time to seize the day, love themselves, and be able to look back with pride years later.
Like that airplane, ready to take to the skies and with nowhere else to go after building up all that momentum, the only way is upwards. And when you’ve got that momentum, the potential for so much more, and have massive reserves of fuel and skill to go places, why not do it and enjoy every part of the journey to even more successful heights and exciting, profitable destinations? This journey is about you and what you can do for yourself, first, so claim your rewards as an authentic professional and reach out and confidently grasp everything you deserve.
