Journey to UX: from Marketing to UX design

Welcome to our new blog series Journey to UX, where Chegg UX team members share their journey into the industry and advice for others. In this edition, Savannah Carlin shares her journey from marketing to UX design.

Image from Green Chameleon on Unsplash

TL;DR:

Marketing is like UX design in a few ways: both designers and marketers think in terms of a customer journey or funnel, focus on measuring outcomes, and make the value of a feature or product obvious.

The biggest difference between marketing and UX is the range of skills that you must apply, and that the success of your work is highly dependent on many different teams.

To make the switch, have confidence in your skills, work on as many real-world projects as possible, and build your network.

My journey

During college, I majored in business, and after graduating decided to try marketing since I loved writing and would get a chance to use my graphic design skills.

I worked at a small healthcare company and wore all the hats when it came to our marketing efforts—from writing articles to designing brochures and creating an email strategy. While at that company, I had the chance to collaborate with an engineer who was building a simple app. I learned about UX through that project, and immediately became obsessed.

I started doing freelance design projects, learned HTML, CSS and a little JavaScript, and found a design mentor to get feedback on my work. After building my portfolio of projects, I got my first full-time product design role at a marketing startup. This past May, I started as a Senior Product Designer at Chegg where I focus on our Expert Answers product.

Many aspects of marketing translate well to UX design

There are a few major similarities between marketing and UX design. Leveraging my experience in these areas really helped me make the transition:

1. Learning to think in terms of a marketing funnel, or the steps that a potential customer goes through before they become a paying customer. This is very similar to how UX designers use customer journey mapping.
2. The importance of measuring outcomes. In marketing, it’s important to understand how each channel and piece of content is performing to meet business goals. In UX, designers shape their work around specific business and user outcomes they are hoping to achieve.
3. The importance of making value obvious. When a customer is looking at any piece of marketing content, they should be able to quickly understand how the product or service might help them. The same is true for designing a feature — a person should instantly understand what the interface is for and how it can help them achieve a meaningful goal.

Challenges

For me, the biggest difference between marketing and UX is the range of skills that you must apply. In UX design, you’ll need to apply dozens of skills in each project, from visual design to user research methods, to frontend development, to project management.

Another shift is that in UX design, the success of your work is incredibly dependent on many different people in many different roles. Product management, engineering, product marketing, content strategy, user research, and other functions all must work in harmony to create a great user experience. A large part of being a UX designer is learning how to collaborate and influence others towards a shared goal. This was difficult for me as I tried to switch into UX, because there isn’t a great way to get experience in that kind of collaboration process without doing real design projects on a team.

Advice for others

1. Have confidence in yourself. If you are coming from a marketing background, you already have a lot of relevant skills that will support you and even help you stand out in the field of UX design. Confidence will help you stand out in the interview process.
2. Apply your growing UX skills in real-world projects as much as possible. This can look like volunteering for a nonprofit, working on a side project with friends, or participating in hackathons. This experience is valuable, and essential to building the collaborative skills that are huge part of being a good designer. It’s scary when you’re starting, but design is a team sport, so you need team practice, not individual case studies. Check out my list of ways to get real, collaborative design experience.
3. Build your network. Do not worry about being a burden or being annoying by reaching out for informational interviews and coffee chats. Most UXers love to help others, and it feels great to help someone new enter this industry. Stay in touch over time, even if it’s just simple progress updates, and never underestimate the power of a thoughtful thank-you note.

Want to learn more about life on the Chegg UX team?

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