🎨Designer 90 Day Plan

Meet people, set up tools, do not break anything yet.

• ▢Confirm laptop, IDE, VPN, SSO, and password manager all work.
• ▢Read your offer letter and role description in full once more.
• ▢Get added to Slack/Teams channels for your team and adjacent teams.
• ▢Schedule a 30-min 1:1 with your manager for week 2.
• ▢Write down 3 questions you do not want to ask twice. Ask them this week.
• ▢Find your team's source of truth: wiki, Notion, Confluence, or Drive.
• ▢Pull the repo, run it locally, and commit a no-op README typo fix.
• ▢Open the design system in Figma. Star the canonical components page.

Understand the org chart, the product, and the politics, in that order.

• ▢Draw the team org chart on paper, including who actually decides things.
• ▢List the top 5 metrics your team is measured on. Ask if you are unsure.
• ▢Schedule a 1:1 with one peer outside your direct team.
• ▢Map the customer journey end-to-end with one Loom or whiteboard sketch.
• ▢Write a working assumptions doc: what you think the role looks like at day 30, 60, 90.

20 minutes each with as many key people as your week holds.

• ▢Run 5 listening 1:1s. Same 4 questions every time.
• ▢Take notes on patterns, not anecdotes. What gets repeated?
• ▢Find the team's recurring frustration. The one nobody fixes because nobody owns it.
• ▢Sit in on 3 product/design critiques. Take notes, do not present yet.

Write what you learned. Show your manager. Adjust expectations.

• ▢Write a 1-page 30-day note: what you learned, what surprised you, what you will focus on next 30 days.
• ▢Share the note in your next 1:1. Ask one direct question: 'Am I focused on the right things?'
• ▢Ship one small visible win: a doc, a fix, a customer email, a design polish.
• ▢Update your LinkedIn and internal profile to reflect the new role.
• ▢Sanity-check: are you sleeping, eating, exercising? First month is exhausting.

One concrete project with a finishable outcome in 4-6 weeks.

• ▢Propose 2 candidate projects to your manager. Let them pick one.
• ▢Write a short spec: problem, success metric, scope cuts you would make.
• ▢Identify the top risk to delivery. Address it in week 1, not week 5.
• ▢Find the senior reviewer for your work. Get their early read on the spec.

Default to writing it down. Wins are not seen until they are written.

• ▢Write a weekly status update. 3 lines: shipped, learned, blocked.
• ▢Demo your in-progress work in the team meeting. Even ugly, even partial.
• ▢Open a PR or design draft early. Reviewing 200 lines beats reviewing 2000.
• ▢Have one meaningful disagreement, in public, with curiosity not heat.

Take a position you might be wrong about. Notice who responds.

• ▢Make one decision your gut says is right but you cannot fully prove yet.
• ▢Push back on one piece of work that you think is misallocated.
• ▢Ask for feedback in writing. 'What would you change about how I worked this week?'
• ▢Run a postmortem (or retro) on a small mistake out loud.

Check in on the original 90-day plan. Drop, swap, double down.

• ▢Update the 30-day note into a 60-day note. Same 1 page, same 3 sections.
• ▢Ask your manager: 'If you had to score me right now out of 10, what is it?'
• ▢Identify the one thing you would do differently if you started this role today.
• ▢Take one full unplugged day. Energy debt compounds.

Move from 'making progress' to 'shipping the thing'.

• ▢Cut scope hard. What is the smallest version that proves the bet?
• ▢Set an explicit ship-by date. Tell at least one person.
• ▢Run one dry-run demo to a friendly audience before the real one.
• ▢Triage your inbox. Reply to 5 things that have been waiting on you.

Hit the ship date. Write the launch note the same week.

• ▢Ship the project. Even if it is rough.
• ▢Write a launch note: what shipped, why, what is next, what you learned.
• ▢Tag everyone who helped. By name. With specifics.
• ▢Capture metrics before/after. Even rough numbers beat no numbers.

From reactive to proactive. What will you own next?

• ▢Propose 2 areas you want to own in the next quarter to your manager.
• ▢Identify one thing that you and only you can do at this company.
• ▢Identify one habit from this 90 days you want to keep forever.
• ▢Identify one team norm you want to gently change.

Make it official. Get on record. Negotiate from data, not vibes.

• ▢Write the 90-day review: shipped, scope, scale of impact, gaps, next bets.
• ▢Have the formal 90-day check-in with your manager. Ask for written confirmation of expectations met.
• ▢Update your brag doc. Keep it as a private file, forever.
• ▢Send three thank-you messages to people who made the first 90 easier.
• ▢Plan a real break before quarter two. Even a long weekend.