How to Become a UX Designer

Since many parts of our lives are becoming more and more IT-related, a lot of people are thinking of making a move in their careers to some jobs more focused on development of IT products. IT jobs usually offer a lot more benefits compared to average jobs. Benefits like working from home and scheduling your own work-time sound really appealing in our modern world. UX design is a popular career-path and a skill worth learning. Jobs in this profession offer great benefits, a high pay and they are currently highly in demand. It is also a profession where a degree isn’t a must-have and where skill is the thing that matters the most. It is also a profession where a degree isn’t a must-have and where skill is the thing that matters the most whenever you want to hire UI designers.

What is UX design?

First of all, user experience is the interaction a user has with the product. People often describe user experience design (UX design for short) differently than others, some also confuse it with user interface design (UI design for short). UX design is the design process for creating proper experiences for the user. It does not only mean making it easy to use, but also making it relatable to the product and giving all of the information and support that a customer might need.

So, what’s the actual difference between UI and UX?

Basically, UI is pretty much a part of UX. UI is the visual design of the product. UX includes visual design and more. It also includes aspects of branding, function and just overall fitting everything into one pleasant customer experience.

How do you start learning UX design as a complete beginner?

You should first focus on learning the fundamentals and what exactly a UX designer does. It’s important to get to know the basics of each part of UX design if you want to be a successful UX designer yourself. Of course, you don’t have to learn every part of this profession to be successful, only focusing on one part of it might just be enough for you. But as I said, first, the fundamentals.

After you get familiar with the fundamentals, you can decide if you want to focus on only one aspect of UX design, or learn all parts of it and become a one-man UX design crew. Though I would recommend focusing on only one part and try to become a part of a team, then after you can slowly expand your knowledge. Working in a team and having proper communications and management skills are highly important in this profession, since you’ll have to do a lot of market research and planning.

You’ll also have to get familiar with the tools you’ll have to use. You’ll need software that will allow you to create your prototypes for the products. With the prototype, designers (or even you, yourself) can start making the actual design. Sketch is the most popular software used for UX design, and it’s great!

After you learn the theory behind everything, you’ll want to start using that knowledge. Using different resources online for learning, you can slowly start building your portfolio. Your portfolio should show the skills you are acquiring and be able to show what you’re capable of to your potential employers or customers.

Learning resources

When it comes to learning new skills, we live in a great time where knowledge can be found everywhere. The internet is full of different courses and data you can use to start learning new skills. You don’t have to have a university degree to learn this skill, an online course will do just fine. Websites like Coursera and Udemy offer a lot of different, paid and free, courses.

If you would prefer to learn everything by yourself, without a course guiding you, you can use different forums, blogs, or even just Youtube. The possibilities are endless. But do know that you’ll have to invest a lot of your time to be able to learn a skill like this. Though, if you work hard, you can have your first job in this profession in no time.

Conclusion

UX design is a skill that’s more and more popular between people starting their new careers, it’s important to know where you should start.

This article should give you a brief idea on what you should be focused on and how you can learn this skill yourself.

After you get a decent portofolio, you should start applying to jobs. Even if you don’t get the jobs at first, you’ll learn what you’re missing and what you should focus on next. Good luck!