This article is all about choosing design as a career path. It is not only for the students, if you are trying to change your career from the previous one to UX/UI, then you can also read this. Hope this will be helpful for you as well.

If you are passionate about usability, user experience, and design processes then you might want to consider becoming a UX Designer. I don’t know how many of you know that design itself is a young profession; hardly 60 years old. We might not know this UX/UI before 10 to 12 years. UX/UI is the latest child, which is actually now an adult. So you being young will always love to flock into the crowd which is actually young, so it’s nothing wrong with that.

Which is the right time to enter into UX/UI Design?

UX design after schooling is the best option. It is an overgrowing field with lots of new opportunities that will come up over the years. While you take up any profession, you can keep working in UX, and also you can keep learning it. If you are in the final stage of your schooling and trying to get into some field which is having a lot of opportunities, then you can take it UX design of your career for the future.

If you are working or if you are done with your bachelor’s degree, we have still a chance and we can do our masters in UX/UI. Of course, you can take online courses and learn side by side, that also will be helpful. But because this field is so vast and you might need a lot of time to invest in learning UX, if you are going for 2 months, or 3 months of courses to learn this UX UI, this won’t cover the whole part of UX. Like you can be able to only know the top layer which actually gets you some introduction to UX/UI. That is what you will be learning in your short-term courses or your certifications.

This is a very vast field and people are still confused that they can learn the whole UX/UI within a month or two, it’s nothing like that. You can learn a tool within a month or two, but you can’t learn UX within a month. So that will take actually a lot of time and energy, just like doctor engineers and architects, UX designer also needs to invest a lot of time to learn the basics, concepts, and principles of UX.

Why a degree in UX/UI is important?

Because they’ll first help you to learn the theories of UX/UI to become a designer and you can learn like other tools, whatever the updated tools that you want to learn, you can learn them side by side while you are doing your degree and this will actually back you up.

One of the essential requirements or preferences that most companies expect is a design degree. If you are going to get into a job related to design, if you have any design degree as your backup, of course, it is easy for you to get a job in any firm you are looking for.

If not, you have to work a lot, you have to invest a lot of time to learn whatever the design degree students learned, whatever they have learned you have to try learning a few of them at least within a year or something, then you if you are trying for a job, actually you will get it. There is a lot of chance that you can get it.

Having a degree is not only the reason to get a job, you should have a proper portfolio to showcase yourself during the interviews in the company, then only you will be able to get it.

Is doing a short-term course worth it?

Offline Learning

So there are also short-term courses you can learn about UX UI design in institutes. But not everyone doing the course might be able to crash the course and get the job. Maybe 60%-70% of people are only able to get the job right after they finish the course within two months or three months in a frame. Why because they lack in creative thinking and not everyone can do design. That’s why design colleges are filtering the applicants by using the entrance exam, which you see a lot of colleges have their own entrance exam, people need to clear that to get into that, colleges or universities.

So Design is not like the other degrees anyone can enter into. They should have some sort of specific and creative thinking. So before deciding anything just make yourself and ask yourself, really you are interested in design or not? Find out that first.

If you get bored or if you stop learning about UX and UI, you can’t be able to survive in this field. Because learning is everything in UX. Day by day you should learn and you have to learn, there is a lot of opportunities to learn in UX/UI.

Online learning

There are plenty of online courses available on interaction design. Websites like Springboard, Udemy, Skillshare, Unacademy, Coursera, Interaction Design Foundation, etc. They offer a self-paced method of learning. You have to learn UX/UI on your own by using these courses. You will be either watching the videos or reading the theory, or you have to write some projects and submit them back to get your marks and your certifications. Websites like Interaction Design Foundation, there is one-on-one mentoring also available but for a different membership price.

How to be a good UX/UI Designer?

Tip №1

Analyze your work before getting directly into design or choosing the design career path and understand the design patterns first. Because people don’t be interested to get into UX because there are a lot of theories and it will take time and need the experience to understand what is actually the process is. So most of the people that actually jump to UI but OK, that happens even I did the same when I started.

So there’s nothing wrong with that. If you are really interested in design, learn design patterns, learn typography, learn the color palette, see how every website and application has given solutions, and what are the common design patterns they have used.

Tip №2

If you want to become a very good UX or UI designer, you should be able to critique a design. Critique in a sense, you have to criticize any of the websites. You have to find the false. Start checking the websites that you like and most startup companies require all in one UX specialist. They won’t hire a lot of people to do this design. They always hire a single person with all this included like all in one kind and they are called as UX specialists. This UX specialist will be needed in the companies like startups and interns.

Tip №3

Reading books is an important part to be a good UX/UI designer. I’ve already posted an article about these important books that you have to learn as a UX/UI designer and you can refer them if you want.

Tip №4

If you are starting your design career, it’s better you join somewhere as an intern. You learn some things. You get to learn from a lot of people that are working there. You can do an internship for around 3 to 6 months that will actually help you learn a lot more than you learned in a course. So don’t feel bad if you are not getting a proper full-time job at any of the companies. Try doing internships for the first six months. So you won’t be wasting a lot of time in searching for a job and also it will help you to get a better job as well once you’re done with the internship.

Why I’m saying this because having a good set of designer friends inside where you work as an intern, you might also refer a few of the companies and you might get some exposure. That’s why I’m saying like there is a lot of chance that you get a permanent job that itself where you’re working as an intern. So try getting internships, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Tip №5

If you are choosing a startup, the work might be very challenging at the start. Why because you are the one who is going to handle the whole process and the overall process. I don’t know whether there would be some lead or head or the experience to people more than you will be there to teach you something because you’re going to learn everything on your own in a startup because no one will be there to teach you and guide you. So self-learning is always better. But still, if you are a person who needs some guidance, you go for internships. If you are a person, who can learn on your own everything, then you can go to the startups.

Tip №6

Most importantly, this UX UI design field is not for someone who lacks confidence. So if you are an introvert, if you don’t want to interact with people a lot, and if you are a shy type of person or if you really don’t have confidence, please build that and get into it. Build your soft skills first, that is what companies need really most, and the communication. But the language is not more important as you think, you can maybe cope up later, but you need to have the conversation and communication skills to make the other people understand what you are trying to say. So that’s what helps you a lot here. If you are lacking your communication, then you’re going to mess this up. So be confident and build your soft skills, then get into this field.

I hope these tips have given you some ideas about getting into UX/UI design and thanks for reading!