How I am learning UX Designing!
Being a Graphic Designer designing brand identity, corporate brochures, HTML, .js and Magento Websites (through searching the internet for codes and queries), I had never really inclined myself towards the prospect of UI and UX designing.
I had always tried learning .php development or .js in detail but never got to learning it through online tutorials and ebooks. Somehow I always started with a lot of fanfare but after a few days I had to let it go (it happened a lot of times), it was all too technical for me. But then recently I wanted a Dribbble invite real bad, and going through the dribbblers I noticed the most of them had in some way posted UX designs in their profiles. Then again, I had a job offer that too was for a UX designer; and I never knew anything about UX design. All I knew that it was a part of design, that I have been doing for the past many years. I did not even know the technicalities or rules or formulas behind that. So I set out to learn what was so different in UX or UI design. I downloaded a few ebooks found some articles on the topic and bookmarked them for reading. Scrolling through the articles and some write-ups about UX design I found that they taught me nothing. Absolutely Nothing! All they pondered over were the technical bit about the process of UX design, the market research, people suggestions, what consumer want. Every article contained even more jibber jabber and beat around the same bush.
I put my hands down and decided that they really are not going to teach me anything; off course the technicalities were also important but what I needed to learn foremost was what exactly is UX design and how to design for it.
It was then that from one of the articles I read about this application called Sketch (mac only). As intrigued I am about ned applications, I thought of downloading it and giving it a try. Believe me the app is really simple and does actually specialised in UX design usage. Though I could do the same stuff in Photoshop or Illustrator, but I stuck with Sketch (the female in the article I read emphasized on using Sketch). Sketch was really simple to use and I got a hang of it in just 10–15 minutes doodling around it. Then I got stuck with what exactly to do. So I picked up an app that we all use very frequently “Facebook” on our mobiles and thought how would I design the app if I was in charge of re-designing the application. I etched out some rough sketches on my iPad and imported them to Sketch and started working on giving life to my design. I made the first mock up page and posted on some Facebook groups and got some really awesome replies on it. Before sitting down to write this story I designed 4 more pages of the app, will again post those on the groups and get comments and suggestions from actual people who do UX and UI design for their livelihood, its a learning curve. This is how I am learning UX designing.
To all those who really want to get into UX and UI design, I would just tell one thing. Read whatever you want on the net or study whatever ebooks you can. You can’t really achieve anything unless you give it a live try. Sit down on your favourite app and start designing, pick up a app and start modifying to what you really want the app to look like. Off course the basics, and technicalities are as much important. The real secret it to start with the actual design.
I always go by what Steve Jobs said (not his exact words), “I design for my use. I think what would I want the device to look like or what I would want it to do. People don’t know what they want unless you show it to them.”
So just start your laptop and start designing.
