5 steps to get started with UX
aka “How do I become a UX Designer?”
Over the years, I’ve been asked about getting started with UX design by people from different backgrounds, at different stages in their careers.
User Experience design is not a monolithic profession and has a lot of specializations within itself. Most UX practitioners are skilled in some combination of these specializations, and some distinctive archetypes have emerged.
There are a lot of articles on the web that will tell you how to start with your career as a UX professional.
I realized that the volume of information is overwhelming, and for anyone looking for a quick, short answer to the question, I’ll recommend you stop right here. Because there is no short answer.
Getting started with a new profession is a long process that involves sustained efforts in learning and building habits for continued learning of the profession.
What I have here is a small guide to start you off with learning UX. It will not make you a UX master. It will not even make you an entry level professional. But it will start you off on the right path.
Broadly speaking, there are five activities you perform to level your skills up.
Read, listen, watch
Reading is the most important thing ever. I do not know a single super-successful person who does not read regularly. As a UX designer, you are committing yourself to a lifetime of learning something new on every project.
Look at my professional life, for instance. My first project was for a mobile app used to collect audio data for a non profit research project. My second project was for a web based investment management SaaS tool for a Fortune 500 company. I’ve worked on designs for a nation-wide inventory procurement and management tool, an augmented reality game, a self-service cloud management tool, a global website for an API platform, a mutual funds purchase and management tool, and many many more.
All these things are super complex, and each project required me to learn enough about the new domain to be able to design for it well.
Since you are just starting out, the only domains you should read about are UX, Design thinking, User Centered Design, Human Computer Interaction, and other similar topics.
A steady diet of blog posts, medium pieces, webinars, and following some prominent user experience practitioners on twitter is going to set you up to have an understanding of UX as a profession, and have the vocabulary to talk about it with others.
Once you start working, your reading / learning habit shall ensure you’re quickly able to get started with the domain you’re working in.
To get you started, check these out:
Books:
- Don’t make me think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug [ book ]
- Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett [ book ]
- Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden [ book ]Podcasts:
- Aurelius Podcast by Aurelius Labs
- User Defenders with Matt Griffin
- True North by Loop11
- What is wrong with UX? with Laura Klein and Kate Rutter
Community engagement
None of us is stronger than all of us. When you engage with other UX professionals, you benefit from their experience, and can learn from their mistakes without making them on your own.
Be a part of online communities
I am currently a volunteer moderator for two amazing UX communities on Slack. The Designer Hangout (Global) and Get Started in User Experience Design (India). Both these communities are very active, and members discuss their projects, seek feedback on designs, get advice for planning, conducting and interpreting studies, career guidance, job hunting help, and much much more. If you’d like an invite into these groups, send me an email.
Find a local Meetup of UX Professionals
And if you do not have one in your city, start one on your own! Facebook’s public events are a free way to get visibility for your UX events. I run the UX Brunch Club in Mumbai. This is a monthly meet up for anyone interested in UX to talk UX-y things. There are other meet up groups in the city as well, and I engage with them whenever they organize any events as well.
Look for mentors
Mentorships are formal or informal relationships you have with someone more knowledgable or experienced than you are, with the aim of learning the profession. Mentor-mentee relationships often work both ways, where each learns something from the other. A good mentor guides the mentee about things to do for their professional growth. A good mentee steps up to the plate and keeps looking for new things to learn.
Training
Formal training mostly teaches best practices and helps you spot the most common mistakes so that you can avoid them when you start working.
Formal UX Training is relatively new in India. It will be another few years before standardized courses that teach design thinking and UX fundamentals become more popular.
I am aware of a few colleges in the country that do teach the user centered design process as part of their degree programs, as well as some certifications and training programs[1].
- IIT Industrial Design Center (Mumbai)
- National Institute of Design (Ahmedabad)
- Indian School of Design and Innovation Parsons (Mumbai)
- Human Factors International training and certification
- ImagineXP does online courses and training workshops in various cities in the country.
- Design Mortals has two training courses. (Mumbai)
There are other learning opportunities as well. This post was last updated in 2015, but it does a decent job of rounding up some of the UX training options in India as well as in other countries.
Practice
Doing is better than reading. The only way to hone your skill is to actually apply your learnings to real problems.
There are tons of things you can do to flex you design thinking muscles.
- Conduct cognitive walkthroughs or heuristic analyses of your favorite apps and services.
- Maintain a blog of good design patterns you see around you, and write down why they are good.
- Undertake design projects. Offer your favorite local business or non profit the chance to avail of your services as a designer. It’s a great way to make a difference and have a real world project to add to your portfolio.
- Conduct some usability testing with someone else’s product, if you haven’t designed your own.
Remember, there is no UX if you don’t involve Users in your design process.
Portfolio
Your portfolio should be able to communicate your work and skills effectively. That is the sole purpose of your portfolio website.
You have to have enough in your portfolio to convince whoever is looking at it that “Hmmm. This person seems to know about UX, and I think they might be able to help me build my product. Let’s call them in for an interview.”
“I don’t have a portfolio, so I don’t get jobs. I don’t have a job so I can’t add things to my portfolio.”
Remember what I said in the previous section about practice? THAT is how you get over this catch 22 situation of your portfolio.
The type of portfolio you make will depend on the kind of designer you want to become. In general, you want to showcase your strengths. If you are not a visual designer do not show pretty UI everywhere. Focus on telling people about your process, or your research methodologies.
Where do I host my portfolio? Where you host your portfolio is your own choice. Remember that it should be able to showcase your work properly. You should also be able to quickly update it with new work as it happens. If you have basic html/css skills, you should try setting up your website on your own. I prefer to do mine in WordPress. Some designers use Dribbble, Square space, and even Medium.
Here are some resources that will help you build a better portfolio:
How to structure your first UX Design portfolio
Creating better UX portfolios: 4 Dos and Don’ts
“How can my UX portfolio speak to ridiculous job post skill sets?” [Video]
10 steps to a perfect UX portfolio
If you’re looking for a more robust, guided direction for making your portfolio, check out Joe Natoli’s workshop Build a powerful UX Portfolio
And you’re done
No, really. That’s all you need to get off to a good start.
There’s no magic behind this. It’s just a lot of perseverance and structured hard work.
I encourage you to try and fit these things in your life in a way that makes sense for your priorities, learning goals, and schedule. If you’d like to talk more about this, reply in the comments, or shoot me an email at mail@mihirpathare.com, or come say hi in the Get Started UX Design and Designer Hangout slack communities
In a subsequent blog post, I will give a semi structured schedule to introduce you to UX, and in the process, help you make the right decision about your career.
[1] Please evaluate their offerings and make an educated decision about whether they are right for you. I can not personally vouch for the content, effectiveness or any such thing from any of these training institutes myself. :)
Thanks to Tom Kerwin, Sanket Pathak, Alok Shukla, Arpit Bhargava, roopam mishra for their invaluable feedback and suggesting changes to making this article possible.
