
Photo by Jessica Ivins
Last updated: February 9th, 2018
A few years ago, I met with a woman named Veronica. We met at a coffee shop in Philadelphia. Veronica asked me, “How do I become a UX designer?”
I told Veronica everything I’m about to tell you. But first, I’ll finish my story about Veronica.
After we met for coffee, I saw Veronica often. We saw each other regularly at UX Meetups in Philly. At one Meetup, she told me, “I’m serious about changing my career to UX design. I’m doing everything you suggested I do.”
A year later, at a UX happy hour event, Veronica pulled me aside and told me, “I’m exhausted. I’m trying everything to get a job and it’s just not working. But I’m not going to give up.”
Veronica’s hard work eventually paid off. Today, Veronica has a great job in Philadelphia as a UX designer. She’s had that job for several years.
I spoke with Veronica recently. She’s thinking about moving on to another UX job. She told me, “It’s time to learn from others. I’m looking around for my next thing. I have my eye on company A, company B, and company C. It’s nice to be in a position to be choosy.”
I’m very happy for Veronica!
Veronica worked very hard to get her first UX job, and she’s not the only one who worked hard to become a UX designer.
It’s often difficult to get an entry-level UX position. Most UX hiring managers look for designers with experience. They want designers who can get to work with a team right away.
There are many people like you who decide to pursue UX design as a career. Then, they struggle to get a job without experience. It’s a classic chicken and egg situation. I’ve written about this problem before. It frustrates me because there are many open UX positions, and not enough experienced people to fill those positions. I’m passionate about fixing this problem.
There is no prescribed path to UX design.
There is no prescribed path for becoming a UX designer. Like many UX designers, I found my way into UX design. I went to art school and majored in art education. Along the way, I realized that I didn’t want to teach art to kids. So I decided to pursue web design because I enjoyed the web development classes and programming classes I took in college. I finished my fine arts degree by designing sociopolitical websites. My portfolio had just enough work to land me a job in front-end development. From there, I transitioned to a junior UX design position. I’ve been a UX designer ever since.
I can’t tell someone to repeat my own career path. But what I can do is share my best advice for becoming a UX designer.
Ask yourself: Do I have the traits of a budding UX designer?
I attended Fred Beecher’s presentation on UX apprenticeship at the 2014 IA Summit. He advised hiring managers to seek traits in entry-level UX designers instead of skills. He emphasized these traits:
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Passion for the craft.
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Curiosity about people and technology.
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Ability to learn quickly.
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A detail-oriented nature.
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Receptiveness to feedback (willingness to accept constructive criticism and act on it).
If you have most or all of these traits, that’s a good sign. Keep these traits in mind if you land an interview for a UX position. If you don’t have much UX experience, highlight the traits above during the interview process.
Become a part of the community.
Attend local tech events in your area. If there’s a local UX meetup nearby, that’s a great start. If there isn’t a local UX meetup near you, go to related tech meetups such as JavaScript events or graphic design events. Veronica attended UX events and became a regular member of the UX community. The connections she made helped her land that UX job.
Don’t be intimidated by members of the community who know more than you. People in the tech and design fields are usually friendly and open to meeting new people. Introduce yourself to the community members and get to know them.
It’s okay to tell people you’re trying to get into UX, but don’t be the dreaded resume-shover. You don’t want people to see you as someone who’s using the community to find a job. Take the opportunity to form relationships. Form relationships now, even if the community can’t help you right now. Perhaps people can help you make the right connection six months from now or a few years from now.
Find a mentor.
I know another woman in Philadelphia who wants to be a UX designer. She’s followed most of the advice in this article. She also took some of the UX classes I taught for Girl Develop It Philadelphia, a non-profit that runs affordable web design classes for women. She recently told me, “Whether you know it or not, I consider you my mentor.” I was flattered to hear this.
Mentorship can be simple and informal. Find a UX designer you admire, and ask them a few questions about UX. Invite them to lunch or coffee. Ask them to Skype with you for an hour.
Be careful not to demand too much of someone’s time. Start small and make it easy for people to help you. If you invite people out to lunch, offer to meet somewhere that’s conveniently close to where they live or work. Buy them lunch, or buy them coffee if you meet for coffee.
Prepare your goals for the meeting ahead of time. Come to the meeting with specific questions. When you’re prepared, people notice, and they appreciate you using their time wisely.
Get comfortable with teaching yourself new things.
Successful design professionals keep current by teaching themselves new tools and techniques. Technology is constantly evolving, and today’s conventions will be obsolete soon.
If you’re the type of person who loves to figure things out on your own, this field may be right for you. If you’re not a self-learner, start forming that habit now. Hear an acronym or technique you’re not familiar with? Google it and read up on what it means. If adapting quickly and finding your own answers makes you uncomfortable, this may not be the field for you.
Soak up free content.
There is plenty of free UX content about UX design. UX practitioners are passionate people who love to share their thoughts on the practice.
If you listen to podcasts, check out my blog post about my favorite UX podcasts.
Follow popular UX content providers. My two favorite sources are UIE and A List Apart. You can also follow UX Matters, UX Booth, and Boxes & Arrows.
Sign up for UX Thought of the Day. You’ll receive one email every day on most weekdays of the year. Each email contains a bite-sized UX thought or UX tip you can apply to your design work.
Read my list of UX resources for beginners. Most resources on the list are free, except for the books. As a faculty member at Center Centre, I get to review many UX resources. These are the best resources I’ve found for folks who are new to UX design.
All You Can Learn (AYCL) is a library of seminars by experts in all things UX design. AYCL seminars provide high-quality UX content. You can purchase individual seminars or sign up for a monthly plan.
Most of AYCL’s content is for current practitioners, but check out the topics to see what interests you. You may want to start with these:
- How Do We Design Designers?
- Content-first UX Design: What Video Games Teach Us About UX
- Make Collaboration Happen, Even with Stubborn People
Full Disclosure: UIE produces AYCL seminars. UIE is the sister company to my current employer, Center Centre.
Follow UX folks on Twitter.
Start following industry influencers on Twitter. Keep up with their conversations. See what UX trends and discussions bubble up. Follow the people the influencers engage with. Eventually, you may become a part of the conversation. If you choose to remain a silent participant, that’s okay too. 🙂
Here are some great UX professionals to follow: Jared Spool, Dana Chisnell, Dan Willis, Dan Brown, Christina Wodtke, Eduardo Ortiz, Abby Covert, Charlene McBride, Steve Portigal, Karen McGrane, Whitney Hess, and Dan Klyn.
Read some of the classic UX books.
There are plenty of great books for UX beginners. Here are my favorites:
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Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
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The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
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A Project Guide to UX Design by Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler
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Information Architecture for the Web and Beyond by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld
- Letting Go of the Words by Ginny Redish (This is one of my favorite UX books of all time. Read my review of the book to see why. You can also listen to a brief interview with the author.)
In addition to the list above, check out Whitney Hess’ recommended UX books and UX Beginner’s Reading List.
Learn to code.
You don’t have to code to be a successful UX designer. But if you learn to code, you have many advantages as a UX designer. When you learn to code, you understand the medium you’re designing for. You develop a shared language for communicating with the developers on your team. You can make basic coding changes on your own without relying on developers for help.
I began my career as a front-end developer. I’m grateful for that experience. I still use some of my coding skills today. Read my article, Learning to Code Gives You Advantages as a UX Designer, to see what else you gain by learning basic front-end development skills.
I often tell people that it may be easier to break into the field as a developer than a UX designer. At least 10 women in the Philadelphia area found full-time front-end development jobs after taking courses with Girl Develop It Philadelphia.
When you learn to code, you can create a few websites, make them live, and show off your work to the world. Some mobile app developers got their start by creating apps, posting them to the App Store, and pointing employers to their work. UX, on the other hand, requires actual project experience to learn.
Find a way to apply UX on actual project work.
You’ll need real work experience to learn UX design. UX hiring managers want to know how you solve problems. They like to hear about your design process. They want to know how you work with teams to reach shared goals. These things are often more important to hiring managers than the final design you create.
Theoretical assignments or projects won’t give you experience. You can read up about all the UX tools in the world, but you won’t know how to use or apply them until you work on actual projects. You’ll need a project with real users, real constraints like time and budget, and real team members. Then, you’ll truly gain experience in UX design.
Jared Spool is a renowned UX design expert and industry leader. (He’s also my boss at Center Centre.) A few years ago, before we worked together, we talked about how aspiring UX designers can gain actual work experience. He suggested taking on pro bono UX projects. Perhaps you can help your church update their outdated website. Or maybe your Uncle owns a deli and his site hasn’t been updated since 1997. Even better, if someone in your area is organizing a grassroots conference or runs a design meetup, offer to help them design or manage their site.
This is actual work experience that you can talk about in an interview. You can discuss the technical constraints you had to work with, the budget limitations, and how you worked with your team/client to achieve shared goals. These are the day-to-day challenges that UX designers face in their work. These are the stories that UX hiring managers want to hear during interviews.
If you’re already in tech, start practicing UX.
If applicable, start incorporating UX practice into your current position. Rather than asking permission, consider making it part of your process. Start small. As you gradually demonstrate the value of UX design, you’ll likely get buy-in from your team on UX design.
For example, rather than usability testing your entire site, get feedback from four to five people on the registration page. You can learn basic usability testing tips from Steve Krug’s usability test demo. You can also read Steve’s book about usability testing, Rocket Surgery Made Easy. Both of these sources are for beginners. These sources won’t make you an expert in usability testing, but they can help you get started.
After you learn usability testing basics, try running a few usability tests. Recruit a few colleagues to observe and take notes. Then, meet with your team to share the results. When you meet, make sure the people who observed and took notes are in that meeting. They’ll help you share and explain your findings.
By sharing your results, and by including others in your process, you may convince your team to infuse UX design approaches into the current process. (To learn more about usability tests, see my related article, Choose Your Own Adventure to Learn Usability Testing Basics.)
Consider formal training options.
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Center Centre is the UX design school in Chattanooga, TN. Center Centre’s two-year, full-time program prepares students to be industry-ready, junior UX designers. I’m a faculty member at Center Centre.
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Check Codecademy, Lynda, and Treehouse to see if they offer UX courses. Most of them offer coding tutorials, but they may offer UX tutorials as well.
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As I mentioned above, All You Can Learn is a library of seminars by experts in all things UX design. If you already work in the design field, lobby your boss to purchase you a monthly subscription. Otherwise, if you have room in your budget, consider purchasing a subscription.
Propose an apprenticeship or internship.
I know a woman in the Philadelphia area who wants to become a UX designer. She recently proposed UX internships to tech companies in our area. I think that’s awesome. She’s networking, making contacts at those companies, and offering her services for a UX internship. I don’t know if this will be effective, but I think it’s a great idea.
Prepare for the journey.
Shifting your career to UX design will likely take time and dedication. As I mentioned above, there’s no prescribed path for becoming a UX designer. This can be a good thing. It means you don’t have to commit to a specific training program to get into the UX field. It means you have choices.
These choices can also be a drawback. The more options you have, the less certainty you have about making the right decision for you.
Before you commit to becoming a UX designer, I recommend taking time to understand what your career transition may be like. In my post, Resources for Becoming a UX Designer, I list my favorite resources about shifting your career to UX.
Some of the resources in this post will help you understand the complex landscape of UX education (from the perspective of educators throughout the field). Some of the resources will give you non-prescriptive guidance on how to shift your career.
There’s a lot of advice out there on how to become a UX designer. I find it to be confusing and conflicting. That’s why I collected the most useful resources and shared them in this post.
May the force be with you.
UX is a tough field to get into, and it’s not impossible to get into. I encourage you to try whichever of these approaches works best for your situation. Please let me know how it goes in the comments.
Do you have any other advice for breaking into the UX field? Please share in the comments as well.
There is also Rutgers Mini Masters course which was an amazing experience – http://rie.rutgers.edu/course/mini-masters-user-experience-design and Philadelphia University offers a Masters in Interactive Design and Media – http://www.philau.edu/msintdesign/
Thanks Laurel. These are great options for folks who are local to Philadelphia or New Brunswick, NJ.
Fantastic article Jessica! Ryan Cayabyab posted it to FB on the same day we (in Cincinnati) had a meetup about getting a UX job. I posted your article in that discussion.
I hope you’re doing well, and hope to see you again.
Brad
Thanks so much, Brad. And thanks for passing the article along. 🙂
For anyone in the Denver/Boulder area interested in a very affordable class–great for folks looking to get into UX–we happen to be holding one this weekend: http://bit.ly/1ncf33E
Beth, sorry I didn’t approve this comment earlier. Somehow I missed it. I hope the class went well.
One thing I see missed over and over is that to be an effective UX designer you have to have a real good understanding of:
-Consumer behavior (purchasing consumer products, services or B2B same)
-Marketing
-Focus group, live UX research dynamics interfacing with users.
Without strengths in these effectiveness is limited and appeal to employers as someone with a good
skill set is limited.
This is excellent advice Jessica! I don’t know how I missed this nugget of goodness. I especially like the information about “All You Can Learn”. Well, to be honest ALL of the information is great!! I’ve been trying to get into UX and have found it VERY difficult. I worked on UX projects when I was getting my Masters but no “real world” experience. Now, I’m trying to soak up all of the information that I can to keep myself “in the know” regarding what’s going on in the world of UX. Thanks again for this.
I’m glad you found the article helpful, Meka!
Thank you for this post! I’m trying to make the switch into UX from my current job as an art director. I’m definitely going to follow the advice you listed. I wanted to inquire if you recommend any of the online immersive courses (Bloc.io, DesignLab, Thinkful, etc.)
Again, this is great. thank you!
Hi Tirso,
It’s great to hear from you. I’m glad you find this advice helpful.
I don’t know enough about the online immersive courses to make a recommendation. You may find another one of my articles useful: Should You Go to Graduate School to Learn UX Design? (http://jessicaivins.net/should-you-go-to-graduate-school-to-learn-ux-design-part-1/) In the article, I talk about determining your goals before entering a UX program.
Cheers,
Jess
Thank you for this article! This was exactly what I was looking for. I graduated from an immersive User Experience Design bootcamp a year ago and I finally landed a contract job beginning of this year. However, I haven’t been able to get that much work in UX design so I’ve been trying to find ways in which I could continue to teach myself outside of work so I could grow my skills. I am definitely going to use this article for my reference, thanks!
You’re welcome, Cynthia. I’m glad you find the article useful!
Thanks for sharing your knowledge its really very helpful for me.
You’re welcome. I’m glad the post was helpful!
Jessica,
Would you happen to know of any good online Bachelor’s degree programs in UX/UI/Web Design & Development, etc…?
Thank you!
Hi Amiee,
I’m not familiar enough with any of the online programs to recommend one. I would read my other blog post about grad school if you haven’t already: http://jessicaivins.net/should-you-go-to-graduate-school-to-learn-ux-design-part-1/
Even though this article is about grad school, the advice still applies to evaluating online Bachelor’s programs. Best of luck!
Hello guys,ill be reading through this article but My name is Mark and im from North Jersey.Im currently studying to be a ux ui designer.Im taking an online course on udemy.Im currently looking for any advice in regards to any places in jersey I can pay out of pocket for an affordable price.I kinda know about Rutgers in New Brunswick,but im not completely sure if I can attend there,I havent attended college in a few years.Can anyone please give me any structured advice or point me in the right direction for any places in Jersey.Please comment or if your willing to talk through email id really appreciate it.I truly want to chase this dream career and any advice is appreciated.I cant really afford any immediate out of pocket classes
Hi Mark! Thanks for commenting. I’m originally from New Jersey. 🙂
I would read my other blog post about grad school if you haven’t already: http://jessicaivins.net/should-you-go-to-graduate-school-to-learn-ux-design-part-1/
Even though this article is about grad school, the advice still applies to evaluating other UX programs and UX education options. Best of luck!
Thanks for this brilliant article ~ I’m trying to make the switch into UX from my current job as an architect.The post does help a lot~
You’re welcome, Melody. I’m glad the article is helpful!
Jessica,
What a great article! Being in Tech/Digital Talent Acquisition, young professionals ask me all the time about career paths from front end dev to design, to what’s next. I’ll be sure to refer them to this page and your sentiments.
Congrats on all of your success!
Daniel
Thanks, Daniel! I’m glad you found the article useful. 🙂
What about a UX Design bootcamp that have popped up around the country? Like https://devmountain.com/ux-immersive or what not?
Hi Teci,
I would check out my blog post on whether or not you should attend grad school for HCI. http://jessicaivins.net/should-you-go-to-graduate-school-to-learn-ux-design-part-1/
The post is about determining if a UX design grad school program is right for you. But you can apply the tips when evaluating other programs like bootcamps.
Good luck!
Thanks for your article. It helps me a lot and is time to change my career path.
You’re welcome, Tony. I’m glad the article was helpful!
Hi I am considering switching from computer science into UX/UI design. I am still in school right now and was wondering if you could take a look at this program and share your opinion on how well it would prepare me. Thank you!
http://wmc.rit.edu/
https://www.rit.edu/programs/web-and-mobile-computing-bs
Hi Lowell,
To know if the program is a good fit for you, I recommend determining your career goals first.
You may want to read this post, where I talk about determining your goals when considering grad school programs:
http://jessicaivins.net/should-you-go-to-graduate-school-to-learn-ux-design-part-1/
Good luck!
Thank you, Dave!
Hello!
I am very interesting a career change to the UX field. I am trying to decide whether I should get a bachelor’s degree and what I would get it in for it to be beneficial in this field. Would something like software development be a good idea? There are UX workshops I’ve seen that provide you with a UX certificate. Would this suffice without a degree?
Thanks so much
Hi Leanna,
It’s great to hear from you.
I recommend determining your career goals before you choose a UX program. You may find my other article useful: Should You Go to Graduate School to Learn UX Design? (http://jessicaivins.net/should-you-go-to-graduate-school-to-learn-ux-design-part-1/) In the article, I talk about determining your goals before entering a UX program.
Cheers,
Jess