Transition into UX — Without prior experience
A great storyteller. Rolls eyes when asked left/right brained. Keeps asking “why”. Curious about human behavior. Mildly OCD. If you are nodding your head, you must be one of the three: A UX Designer, an aspiring UX Designer or an ugly duckling. That’s funny — actually not! I was an ugly duckling three years back. Everything was difficult for me beginning from the wrong job title, imposter syndrome to the never ending why’s. I made the transition to UX, finally a career that made sense to me.
As you must be knowing, UX is one of the hottest job roles out there today. It requires visual design, understanding of software technologies and a passion to create compelling experiences. But what is the best way to get your foot in the door? Here are 5 things that helped me land my first UX job.
1. Warm up to UX
Though there are UX design degrees out there, you don’t have to enroll right away. If you don’t want to jump into a full-time course yet, start with this book — The Design of Everyday Things. It taught me to see design everywhere. I also started reading blogs like UXPlanet, UsabilityGeek and Neilson Norman. Reading these blogs brought up a million questions and reinforced my interest in the subject. This is the point when I decided to invest time and money to get into a 10 week bootcamp from General Assembly. If you would rather prefer to be self-taught, you can enroll on Skillshare or Udemy.
2. Don’t wait for a job to come to you
Here is a secret — None of the courses will open doors to a job (at least not right away!). It will give you the UX fundamentals, but it is on to get practical experience. But wait, how do you get a job when you don’t have prior experience? Here is a trick that worked like magic for me — I made a list of recently funded startups and emailed their founders requesting a coffee chat. During the coffee chat, I played with their product and suggested UX improvements that will make it better. The coffee chat turned into an interview and voila! I got my first freelance project.
Note: It is important to choose your freelance projects/clients. Give permission to trust your instincts and say NO to a client if the experience is not what you expected.
3. UX is not just UI
It is not uncommon for new designers to spend hours to make everything pixel perfect. But that is not everything. In addition to prototyping, UX umbrella also has user research, planning, wire framing and testing and measurement. Remember that interfaces are important, but so is the process leading up to it. To be a successful UX designer, you should advocate and practice the entire UX design process.
4. Show, Don’t Tell
Start building a portfolio right away. Don’t shy away from creating something quick and simple. I chose a template from Squarespace to spin up my portfolio website. I included my capstone work, startup-weekend projects, freelance work samples and other interesting student projects. Within few months of freelance work, my website transformed from a student to an entry level designer portfolio. Below are screenshots from some of my favorite design portfolios.
5. Start networking (Yes, it works!)
Before your first job, you should start networking. Meetups and UX conferences are places where you will find companies to work for (or not), cool agencies and a potential UX mentor. People are more than willing to give feedback on your work or hold a passionate discussion about the design of a dropdown. Test different ways of approaching people — a cold email, LinkedIn request or a follow-up coffee chat with a Meetup contact. Trust your gut, be prepared to fail often and move forward.
Many people believe that UX is an exclusive club and only few elite people can join it. That is not true! If you work hard to acquire the skills that are unique to UX, the career transition is not going to be as difficult as people say it is.
If you would like to learn more about my journey, feel free to email me directly at ramya@kards.in
