The importance of a design community, and how to find it

Part 3 of 3 in “A not-so-easy, but cost-effective guide to becoming a UX professional”

It is difficult to improve at any skill rapidly in a social vacuum. Before going too deep into any form of study, do your best to find a UX mentor and community.

While brief mentorship sessions may not give you the breadth or depth needed to become design fluent, they are invaluable in diagnosing best path forwards and untangling roadblocks you may encounter. For example, whenever you encounter something you can’t wrap your head around in your studies: it’s significantly more time efficient to be able to ask an experienced practitioner to either help direct you to better resources or provide you an easy explanation on the spot instead of pushing forwards recklessly.

Having a mentor and design community around you will mitigate the risk of practicing a UX methodology imprecisely. Were you to learn and apply in a vacuum, the process would be sloppier and would potentially result in counter-productive habits.

Here’s some tips to finding a community or a mentor:

1. Join local design meetups, or volunteer at them. If you’re in a decently populated location, it’s likely that there will be existing design organizations or meetups that you can join to improve your design literacy. If you’re introverted or struggle with making connections with people in large groups, apply to volunteer at design events. Volunteering will make conversations and interaction a requirement instead of an optional task. Join local events through meetups.com for free, register for AIGA membership for only $50, or sign up to a local IxDA group to get started.
2. Go online. There are vast online communities you can reference or request help from. Ideally experienced in-person interactions and relationships are preferred, but sites like UX Stack Exchange can provide quick answers to confusing questions and are better than having no second opinion or voice at all.
3. Ask for a favor. Chances are, you know at least one person who has experience in UX*. Even if you are not on familiar terms with that person, ask them to do you a favor by giving you introductory guidance over a call/by chat/or in person. People who have done you a favor will see you in a better light to resolve their cognitive dissonance in providing a free service (Dennis T. Regan, Effects of a Favor and Liking on Compliance). This can lead to a mentorship relationship or more guidance in the future- just be sure you thank them appropriately for their time.

*And if you don’t know someone who has experience in UX, now you do :)

Feel free to email me at joshkimux@gmail.com and I’ll be more than happy to help get you started over a call or chat.

Previously: “The benefits of academic UX reading, and how to commit to it”

I’d like to throw a shout out to Pat Finney, Brendan Strahm, and Jason Brier for revision and support in this effort. You guys are the Deloitte Digital dream team.