Why I didn’t read 23 books in 2021 — My process of becoming a UX/UI designer
TL;DR I recap on the process of becoming a UX/UI designer after 3 years in marketing.
For the last couple of years, I was setting myself ambitious goals for reading books. Not for any particular reason, but simply to use some of my free time to read. However, starting at the beginning of 2021 I no longer had enough spare time to reach my goal of reading 23 books.
After some time of considering becoming a designer, without any serious commitment though, finally in early 2021 I started to research how to become a UX/UI Designer. At that time I didn’t talk to any designer from my network, so my work was based purely on what I found on various blogs, YouTube channels, and other social media platforms and in some books. Here are some of the sources where I was looking for information:
YouTube channels
Blogs
- Career Foundry
- Medium.com — UX Collective, Prototypr
Books
- Don Norman, Design of Everyday Things
- Steve Krug, Don’t Make Me Think
- Aga Naplocha, UX-owa zupa instant, czyli przewodnik po UX (in Polish)
Around April 2021 I started the UX Design course from Google. I quickly swallowed up the first three parts of all seven spending most of my afterwork time and weekends on it and all the new knowledge I found there was making me just more excited for my potential future career.
Getting all of the theoretical knowledge was definitely crucial for me at the beginning of my journey, but I quickly realized that the best way of ‘verifying’ myself in terms of ‘can I actually pull this off?’, was to practice in Figma and try to duplicate some existing designs. With a shy approach, I picked an illustration tutorial from hype4academy and I followed their steps to create my own design. Not sure if it was just a really good tutorial, but I was really impressed with how nice my result turned out to be.
Everything UX/UI-related that I was exposed to at that time was making me feel super excited and so the rollercoaster was just accelerating at this point. After about 3 months in of my journey, I started to lack contact with other designers. I wasn’t even sure yet what I would like to take for myself from this community at my stage of skills and knowledge, but I definitely was feeling that I need to get into the talks, possibly not having anything to say myself. Fortunately, I saw a post on social media promoting a community for designers — Ahoy, with the possibility to sign up. At that time, it seemed that this group just amazingly appeared to me exactly when I needed it. I made the decision to start paying for full access to the community very fast and once I was in, I simply turned into an observer mode looking for precious insights from others, more familiarised with UX/UI.
With all the mentioned knowledge sources, the constant content input was starting to become overwhelming to me. All the useful packs, tools, libraries started to pile up to a point where I was no longer controlling where all my saved links were. I encountered a few databases created by others that contained everything necessary or at least the basics, but for me, they weren’t optimizable enough. At first, I just created a new page in Notion, a tool that I was well-acquainted with but only for personal purposes. I started with a simple table that expanded greatly in a much shorter time than I expected. It was probably because I was using Notion’s web clipper that allowed me to save pages much faster (it’s a great tool for sure), but I didn’t spend enough time later on organizing the list and labeling the pages. Eventually, I divided all the resources into sections. Some of the sections that I decided to create were:
- a library of useful tools for the design process,
- inspiration-focused sites,
- my own notes that were highlights from videos, courses, podcasts, and newsletters.
After a few months of engaging in all the activities mentioned earlier, I was working on creating more shareable work that would be beneficial for me in terms of getting regular practice, but also push me towards opening myself for feedback from others. Initially, I was publishing most of my work on Dribbble and Instagram. Not every piece was ready for publishing in my opinion. I later found out that it was perfectly normal for other people as well, who were in a similar position to mine. I received some likes here and there, a few people even left positive comments under my work. That definitely made me feel good and encouraged me to push myself further.
Having high ambitions, I was planning to create a dedicated space for my portfolio, ultimately one that would allow me to start applying for my new job as a designer. I did my research about all the different options for creating your own portfolio with services like Squarespace, Wix, and others. I decided not to engage in building my brand new portfolio through these services, but to focus on finishing my first case study. The process of creating a case study was described in the UX Design certificate from Google in a lot of detail. The whole project was definitely time-consuming, especially as I was working on that case study on my own. There definitely were moments where I felt stuck and I had to take breaks in between the hours spent on the project. It was also the first time for me to lead an unmoderated usability study, where I gathered feedback on my prototype. Having others criticize my work and the app’s functionalities helped me put myself into other people’s shoes and also see different perspectives that I lacked.
A quote from my usability study:
clean-cut, handsome-looking app! fluid and pleasant transitions, easy to navigate, good for people who rely on “simple visuals” meaning the app doesn’t overstimulate you visually which I appreciate
Around September 2021 I finished my first case study and decided to publish it on my profile on Behance. Among other options for portfolio publishing, Behance seemed to be a faster way for me to get feedback from others. As I analyze that time in the past, I can say that I would like to have my portfolio published through a dedicated service, but this will be a project for the future.
As more of my published work has been piling up on my social media, I started to feel confident enough to start looking for a job opportunity as a designer. I tried to move to the design team of the same company where I have been employed at. During the initial discussions, one of the first questions I got was ‘why do you want to become a designer?’. I think up until that question popped up, I hadn’t even formed a clear answer for myself. Right now, I know which aspect of design is my main driver. And that is — every result of my work should be useful and usable. That’s because those two characteristics help me stay motivated in my job and continuously work on getting better at it. It felt good to actually name a specific reason to the mentioned question and it reassured me about why I spent all of my free time in the past months on learning new skills and training myself.
After sharing my portfolio, submitting the recruitment task for review, and a series of talks with a number of people inside my organization, I received positive feedback and was accepted to the design team at 10Clouds. I definitely worked harder on this than anything else before, so getting an actual job in Product Design brought a lot of validation for me. I have been recognized by others along the way and I‘m very grateful for this, but it’s hard to beat the feeling I had when I was accepted for the job.
My road so far definitely had its ups and downs. It also helped me find a new level of perseverance. Specifically because once I set my goal to switch my career, it was definitely unclear if I was going to get that new job in an entirely new field. If I can share a big learning along the way, it’s really important to use all your competences you gained in your previous positions and utilize them in a way that is helpful for your potential future job. Some of the motivation came also from my Mastermind group where I am with three other designers who are in a similar career phase. We met as total strangers, but with our similar objectives and compatible skills, we were able to help each other strive for our goals. It’s incredible how the pressure of promising something to others pushes you to actually deliver your tasks. I guess sometimes we respect ourselves less, but when we promise others something, we feel obliged to do it. That’s why I’m grateful I had you. :)
So no, I didn’t reach my goal of reading 23 books in 2021, and I probably won’t get close to that in 2022. In February 2022 I started my new job and I’m focused on developing myself as a designer. This year will be full of vulnerability, learning, and designing!
