Let’s Start At The Very Beginning…(a very good place to start)

Laurah Mwirichia
Aug 25, 2017 · 3 min read
Photo courtesy of: Markus Spiske- Pixabay

So I’m new to this whole UX thing. Super new. In fact, I had never even heard of “UX Design” before 4 months ago (I know, I lived under a rock). However, I met a friend while on a trip to Barcelona, who was a UX designer. I grilled him about what he does and what he loves about it, and by the end of our conversation, the clouds parted, the sunbeams shone in my face, and I decided right there and then I was, “Gonna go back to America and figure out what this UX is and make it my career.”

Now four months into this wild experiment on self-teaching, copious amounts of reading, meetup groups, coffee, asking mentors for advice, networking, borrowing my roommates nicer computer (that has Sketch and Photoshop, bless up!), and learning new things on a daily basis it feels like I know nothing. In UX you hear a lot of, “The Process is Important” and that’s totally true. Every time I start to feel discouraged because there’s just so much to learn, I have to remember that 4 months ago, I didn’t even know what this is, and now I can have (semi) intelligent conversations with other UX designers and ask good questions that improve my knowledge. And 4 months from now I’ll look back on this and think to myself, “Wow. Look how far you’ve come!”

Every journey starts with a step. I find a lot of things on the internet that assume you’re trying to get into UX from the standpoint of a designer, or already employed, or you’re a programmer. I’m not any of these things. I graduated with a degree in Anthropology and a minor in Biology. I became a social worker for 5 years, climbed up that ladder, and realized that my heart was somewhere else and I needed a change. I moved to NYC, and spent 5 months being utterly lost and confused, not knowing what I wanted to do, or who I wanted to become. I dabbled with everything from customer service, to marketing, to considering being a stripper (it’s crossed everyone’s mind, let’s be honest) until I found UX and I knew it was exactly what I wanted to do. Now, I work at a restaurant and I spend any small bit of time that I have reading free books and blogs on UX. On my days off, I attend networking sessions, go to meetups, and just recently joined the NYC UXPA to keep up with the scene in my city. I watch you tube videos if I have a question that needs walking through. I will literally sit there with one computer having Photoshop or Sketch pulled up and the other walking through a specific thing I need help solving and going step by step. There are Ted Talks, Lynda, Springboard, Open2Study, and many other resources that can really help you learn, if you are a willing student. The thing with being self-taught is that there is no curriculum, there are no professors, and there are no grades. Just your mind and your motivation. In this day and age we are lucky to have the entire library of the world at our fingertips. We just have to figure out how to organize and digest it.

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Laurah Mwirichia

Written by

Content Strategy and UX writing @Aircall by day | Plant mom by night. 🌵

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