Specializing Too Early In Your Design Career Can Limit You

Don't specialize early on in your design career.

Start broad and learn as much as you can.

Get comfortable working in every stage of the product dev lifecycle - research, strategy, interaction design, visual design, etc.

Learn to understand what activities are really necessary for your project and what activities are "just going through the motions", ensuring you move towards some positive outcome which has a measurable impact.

Methods and activities (in product design) are like tools in a toolbox and it's up to the designer to determine what makes sense to apply and when depending on various factors like time, executive pressure, customer needs, technical constraints, etc. Building product is never a linear trajectory but more so a bunch of squiggly lines that go back and forth.

Learn about popular technologies and frameworks so you can be confident when communicating with developers and understanding technical limitations.

Partner with product management to understand how you can compliment their efforts and drive impact for the business. This partnership is very important.

Work with other cross-functional teams as much as possible to better understand how to collaborate with them, leverage their knowledge, how they operate and how design can compliment.

Start wide, then narrow in. Over time you'll realize what you enjoy most and start to specialize as you progress. You'll also make yourself much more marketable when companies tighten their belt during economic downturns.