The Invisible Shift: What Actually Changes from Mid-Level to Senior Designer

Nobody hands you a manual for this. Here’s what I wish someone had told me. I remember the exact meeting where it hit me. I’d just been promoted to senior designer, and I was sitting in a project kickoff, waiting for someone to hand me a task. Nobody did. Instead, the PM turned to me and asked, “What do you think we should even be building here?” I didn’t have a polished answer. I had spent years getting good at executing well-defined design problems. Nobody had trained me to define the problem in the first