To celebrate my learning process, I decided to dedicate my first medium post to my User Experience Journey, sharing what UX has taught me along the way as someone who has zero experience in Design.
Background
I recently moved to Seattle and got inspired by the tech world and what it has to offer. Most of my peers have jobs in the tech industry and I thought that it would be great if I could tag along and understand the nature of their jobs (not even considering their 6 figures salaries).
I have held multiple types of jobs in the past, where I was working in the hotel industry for 6 months as well as a Personal Assistant for 3 years and my Bachelor's degree is in Communications & Media
Fun facts: I do youtube videos for fun & I can speak 3 languages fluently.
(Interested to know more about me? Click here)
How did it all start?
One day, I was exposed to UI/UX through a friend, suggesting that this is a “hot” industry and most importantly, professionals do not require any Design background/experience to get into the job market. Fascinated and skeptical at the same time, I decided to research and these were my findings:
- Many free resources online about UI/UX (which ones should I follow? Design Thinking? Lean UX? Product Management? Is self-teaching the way to go? & is UX right for me?) — A lot of questions pumping into my head with no definite answers.
- Bootcamps are as pricey as certificates from well-known Universities. I might just go back to school and take a Master's Degree? (I did a competitive analysis of it, DM me, if you are interested).
- Transitioning to UX might not be a bad idea, since there are quite a few success stories from professionals that transitioned and landed UI/UX related jobs.
The REAL Journey
(March) I started attending all the workshops that I could possibly find in bootcamps such as General Assembly, Design Lab, and Career Foundry (the last 2, offer a 7-day free trial course for learning UI & UX), participated in virtual meetups, events, and even networking!
I realized that the more I attended these events, the more I was lost in the world of UX, so in the end, I decided to take the Coursera Google UX Certificate to understand the foundations of UX.
During this time, I subscribed to 100 Days of UI Challenge & so far I have been receiving daily emails about the Challenge, which is quite useful to get your design ideas pumping (Here! — Click it, if you wish to take this challenge as well)
(April) It had been a month of grinding and I only had 1 goal in mind, which was to finish the course ASAP. (ALERT: you can actually apply for financial aid or audit the course — but if you choose to audit, you won’t be able to get a certificate at the end + assignments submissions)
I was very lucky to have found a Discord channel about UXers & from there I started to reach out to people — finding accountability partners to keep me extra motivated and to digest more about the UX Community.
I found an accountability partner from Malaysia, also a beginner in UX & we started redesigning an app together (the project is still ongoing — will update it here, once finished)
(May) At this point, I have 1 case study almost done (from the Google UX Course) and 1 ongoing collaboration project with the accountability partner.
The more I was learning UX, the more I felt that I needed to broaden my knowledge, so then, I took another course from Google about the Foundations of Project Management because I really wanted to know how to start & end a project properly. I was doing the projects, but I wasn’t sure if my design approaches were right. I didn’t have a direction until I joined a Designathon!
Luckily enough, I found a good partner to collaborate with, however, we couldn’t finish the challenge on time so, we decided to turn what we had into a Case Study.
Since my teammates took days off, I had to wait for them to get back on track to continue with the projects. During this period, I took another exciting free course called: Introduction to Human Center Design, where I got the chance to be working with professionals that are in the Research and Accessibility areas.
Meanwhile, I volunteer myself in Discord channels to be a part of the UX community. I joined 2 groups where I am actively working as a moderator and an outreach event coordinator, where I get to post on social media and organize events by reaching out to potential speakers.
(June — NOW) I have not yet completed a project but is not that I don’t want to. Every now and then, I had to drive through ambiguity and when teaming up with multiple people, I needed more time to get feedback & implement new ideas on the projects.
I realized I needed some guidance & mentorship, so I finally got the courage to book a mentorship session at ADPLIST!
If you wish to know what happens afterward, stay tuned and follow me for the upcoming articles!
TL;DR
For those that manage to read from the beginning, I am really grateful that you took your time to join me in my process & for those who just want the summary:
Key takeaways from these 3 months of UI/UX — What did I learn, What can I improve on and What would I have done differently?
- Everything takes time — just like design thinking, there are phases. You can’t just jump to prototyping without understanding what problem(s) you are solving, in other words, no conclusion before the introduction.
2. Reading/studying without applying it will not get you far. You have the knowledge, now it’s time to apply what you have learned to the real world! Get experiences by collaborating with people! UX is about people & we are creating things for them!
Remember: “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much” — Hellen Keller
3. Don’t compare yourself to others and lose yourself in the process. I understand it’s easier said than done, but trust me, opportunities come and go. Maybe tomorrow is your turn to be Fabulous! Who knows?
4. Don’t be afraid of failure and delay progress. In order to succeed you might have to fail, not once but maybe twice or more. Failure is KEY to success (only if you have learned from your mistakes), perhaps we might just need to sprinkle some Luck into the mixing pot.
5. Niche down and focus on an MVP first. It’s good to have big ideas and a lot of features, but if you want to succeed and make things quicker you have to narrow down and have a clear problem statement of what you are trying to solve.
6. Communication is crucial, feedback is never personal and conflicts are everywhere. You just have to have the mentality that everyone is in the same boat and wants to have the best possible outcome.
7. Iterate, test, iterate, test, loop, loop, loop & get data to back up your design decisions!!!
8. I wish I have started this journey earlier…if you are unsure if UX is right for you, at least give it a try.
This is so far, the story of my life!— solely my cheesy perspectives about UX learning and if you happen to have yours, please feel free to leave me a comment or connect with me on LinkedIn if you’d like to discuss anything.
I wish you all the best in your design journey!
Thank you for Reading!
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