Become a UX/UI Designer in 2023 | 6 months roadmap
No degree, no bootcamp, no experience. 👉 Free guide: https://outdraw-academy.gitbook.io/become-a-ux-designer/
4 pillars for learning UX Design
There are 4 pillars to learning UX Design:
- Learning the tools & processes
- Learning UX patterns
- Designing features
- Designing products.
During this 6 month’s journey, you will go through all of those stages first. Then, we will focus on building your portfolio and landing your first job.
🛠 Month 1: Learn Tools & Process
During the first month of your UX Design journey, you need to learn the essential tools and processes used in the industry.
This includes familiarizing yourself with design software and learning how to use it effectively. I recommend starting with Figma since it’s the most popular and the most powerful. You also need to learn about various UX design methodologies and research techniques.
I recommend learning those things simultaneously to provide some variety to your learning experience, so that you can spend a couple of hours every day learning theory and a couple of hours exploring Figma.
👩🏫 Learning UX Design methodologies
Articles and videos 🍿
If I were to start teaching myself UX from scratch, those are the resources I would start with.
- When, which … Design Thinking, Lean, Design Sprint, Agile — A good intro article that lists the methodologies that are often confused
- Design thinking and the Double diamond model — a deep dive into the double diamond model and its stages.
- Intro to UX design process — This article explains the design process in practice, step-by-step, activity-by-activity.
- Google’s UX series — Intro to ux, What is UX research, and the ‘UX certificate’ playlist — We’re diving more into details and execution of some of the UX process steps.
- A comprehensive list of UX design methods & deliverables. It’s great to explore, but it might be a little overwhelming at first. Treat it as a guide you can come back to later.
- I also recommend the series of videos I’ve recorded about Usability testing. I walk you step-by-step through the process. You can also download a Notion Usability Testing Plan Template and use it in your projects.
📚 Books
In addition to videos and articles, I encourage you to read two books during this first month. Many people recommend starting with beginner-friendly more general books like ‘Design of everyday things’, but since we need to be efficient in this 6-month’s process, we will focus on titles that will move you forward the most.
- Lean UX — It’s a deep dive into Lean methodology for user experience design. You’ll learn about how to make the most of your time and resources, deliver high-quality outcomes, and iterate on your work.
- Sprint — It’s a book about Design Sprints — a method that helps teams go from idea to tested low-fidelity prototype in 5 days. You’ll learn about different methods, workshops, and exercises that will help you shape your view on exploration and validation.
Learning Figma ✍️
You need to be able to digitize your ideas for interfaces, collaborate with the team, and deliver high-fidelity mockups for your engineering team.
Basics
You should start with basics. How to use the controls you see on the screen, add elements, build simple prototypes, etc. Figma provides videos for beginners on their youtube channel — Intro to Figma playlist. You can also see their documentation and look for other youtube videos and courses available online.
Copying interfaces 🚨
To practice your Figma skills and better understand UI elements and proportions, I recommend you start copying the interfaces of your favorite apps.
You can take screenshots and place them in Figma. Then try to re-draw them, without using any pre-made libraries or components. I know it may sound boring, but please, trust the process. It will force you to analyze the elements, and understand spacing and composition.
You can also explore free icon libraries (like Phosphor icons, Material design icons, and Fontawesome) at this stage.
Try to add them to your designs and learn about sizes and formats.
Design systems ☝️
The last step in learning Figma is understanding design systems. Figma created an 👀 80min course that will give you a great intro to design systems.
This step can be executed in parallel to learning UX Patterns in month 2. You can start now, and implement your knowledge next month.
Learning to read the documentation
Learning how to read the documentation and look for answers online (google search, articles, youtube) is also a part of becoming an independent UX Designer. If you have any questions, always try to google it first.
Figma has such a big and engaged community, that in 99% of cases, you will find an answer in less than a minute.
🍜 Month 2: Learn UX Patterns
Month two is about learning UX patterns — recurring design solutions that solve common design problems.
As a UX Designer, you need to be familiar with these patterns and be able to use them in your designs.
It’s important to learn them upfront, so that when it’s time to solve a desing problem, you have something to fall back on and choose from.
Analyzing design systems
This is how I started learning UX design, and it was the fastest and easiest way to wrap my head around different UX and UI patterns.
I recommend starting with 👉 Material Design’s components and guidelines. It’s the easiest to consume and a very comprehensive design system. You can read specifications and guidelines on how to build and use components. They also provide a Figma library so that you can start using the design system in your projects, especially when designing Android apps.
I also recommend analyzing 👉 Polaris by Shopify. There will be a lot of overlapping components and topics, but you’ll see how the design systems vary when it comes to naming conventions, usage, and restrictions.
And the last one is 👉 Human Interface Guidelines by Apple 🍎. It’s best if you explore it as the last one since it’s the least beginner-friendly on this list. At the same time, it’s very important since Apple products are extremely popular, and you need to know how to design for different devices and operation systems.
UX Patterns series
Another method to learn about UX patterns is to explore my ‘UX Patterns’ series. I’m continuously building a library of videos and articles.
- 👀 UX Patterns series on Youtube
- ✍️ UX Patterns knowledge base
In this series, I not only explain the patterns and components but also dive deeper into how to design them, what mistakes to avoid, and what to pay attention to. We analyze how the UX patterns are used in various products and across different design systems.
🍿 Month 3: Design features
Once you have a solid understanding of the UX design process and patterns, it’s time to start designing features for digital products.
You need to start implementing everything you’ve learned — doing research, creating wireframes, user flows, prototypes, high-fidelity designing, and performing usability testing. Of course, you’ll be working in Figma, so you’ll have an opportunity to use what you’ve learned in practice.
How to start
To start designing features, you need to come up with design briefs.
The idea is to add functionality to an existing product you already know very well. You’ll have an actual insight into what could be useful.
Define what you’re designing, for whom, what problem you’re solving, and what is the goal of this project.
💡 For example, you can add a timeline view to your favorite task management tool or introduce commenting to a music streaming app. Remember to align your solution with their current design system.
Get creative with your ideas but stay reasonable ☝️.
Think about what feature this product would actually need given its user base, business model, and strategy. It’s also important to keep your project small. There is no need to solve multiple problems at once. In this phase, a singular focus is recommended.
Learning how to design features for existing products will come in handy when you join your first team. You will most likely be contributing to an existing product, not creating one from scratch.
🚀 Month 4: Design products
It’s time to start designing full digital products. You will be using the same tools and processes as you did in month 3.
This time, you need to develop an idea for a product, solve all the problems, design interactions and flows, and create a design system.
👩💻 Coming up with a design brief
I have a full lesson on how to come up with design briefs for your portfolio projects in my 👉 Free 5-Day Portfolio Masterclass.
☝️ To come up with a design brief for your project, you can go with one of those two approaches:
- #1: Solve a problem that you see in the world
Find a solution to an issue that bothers you personally in your everyday life. I recommend that it’s something well-known to you. At this point in your design journey, exploring an entirely new and difficult topic, like an app for doctors or programmers, would be overwhelming.
- #2: Solve the same problem as another product but better
For example: Let’s say you’re using a fitness app with videos on demand, but you don’t like that videos from all levels are all mixed together. It’s hard to navigate and track your progress. You can design an app with a proprietary fitness level score system that leads users through video choices based on their level.
To do it properly, you need to really know the niche and have experience with multiple products in this niche.
Come up with something that none of those apps are doing or… bring together all the good aspects of the products you know and eliminate the downsides.
👩💻 Month 5: Build your portfolio
Once you have designed features and products, it’s time to start building your portfolio. It is a collection of your best work and is essential for getting hired as a UX Designer.
You need to create ☝️ 4–5 projects, select platform where you’ll build your portfolio and the case studies.
Creating projects is probably the most time-consuming.
To keep us within the set timeframe, I recommend creating 3 projects where you design a feature and 1–2 projects where you design the whole product.
Of course, you can use the work you did in months 3 and 4. You can make changes and improvements as you see fit since you’ve gained more experience with time. Remember to follow the right process and document it as you go.
You will need the artifacts from all the phases for your case studies, so don’t delete anything and save versions of your files.
Choose the platform
When it comes to platform for your portfolio, you can choose between:
They give you the most freedom when it comes to how your portfolio will look and building the sections you need. It’s definitely easier to start with Wix, it’s more beginner-friendly. If you have more time, I recommend learning Webflow or Framer. It will require a little more effort, but should be relatively easy now that you know Figma.
They, of course, give you more creative control, but more importantly,
You’re building marketable skills that you can add to your resume or even look for freelance web design projects. I think it’s worth it.
I do not recommend it as your main portfolio since those platforms are not optimal for presenting UX case studies. On Dribble, you can present only mockups and graphics. On Behance, creating presentations is more adjusted to visual graphics, and you can add a mobile version.
You can share your work on those platforms in addition to your main website to establish your social media presence and potentially get some freelance work.
Those two options, effort-wise, would be between building your own website and using a social platform.
UXfolio is dedicated to creating portfolios. You will be able to use templates of UX-specific sections and build your portfolio quite quickly.
Notion can also be a good alternative, especially if you customize the workspace visuals and pay attention to UX decisions, for example, keeping a fairly flat structure that is easier to explore than multiple nested pages.
Portfolio content ✍️
Now, that you’ve chosen the platform, it’s time to create your portfolio landing page and the case studies. Creating a UX portfolio is an art in itself.
- 👀 Portfolio playlist — It’s a growing collection of videos where I talk about the topic of creating and improving your portfolio.
- 🚀 Free 5-day Portfolio Masterclass — My free course will point you in the right direction and show you how to make adjustments that put your portfolio on a more senior level.
- ✅ Portfolio checklist — It’s a list of things that you need to include in your portfolio and in your case studies.
Personal projects
Since your portfolio will contain personal projects, 🚨 you need to make it clear in every case study.
You can add a Personal project label that is clearly visible. You want to avoid misleading the reviewers.
The worst experience is when they think that you’re presenting real-life projects, and during the portfolio review, it turns out those were personal projects.
Being disappointed and feeling misled is not a great start to a professional relationship 😳.
🔍 Month 6: Jobs search
Finally, it’s time to start networking and applying for jobs. You can attend design events and join online communities and LinkedIn groups.
Preparing for the recruitment process
To help you prepare for the recruitment process and improve your chances of getting hired, here are some useful resources:
- The Comprehensive Guide to Finding a Kick-Ass UX Job — A great introduction to the hiring process and choosing the right job for you.
- 👀 Jobs playlist — A growing collection of videos where I share how to approach the UX recruitment process, how to answer questions, and prepare for the interviews.
- 🚀 UX Job Interviews Sprint — I’ve created a course that walks you step-by-step through the preparation process for the UX interviews, and teaches you about every type of interview and how to prepare for it.
I’ve also included a list of over 30 most popular questions with a detailed breakdown of how to answer them.
Applying for jobs
During the first week of this month, you should apply for 20–30 UX design jobs.
During weeks 2 and 3 you’ll be getting some replies and hopefully land a couple of interviews. Of course, in the meantime, continue looking for opportunities and sending out applications.
Hopefully, by week 4 you will be interviewing with a couple of companies or maybe even negotiating an offer.
Of course, the results depend on many factors, including the ones that are out of your control, like the state of the economy and even the time of the year.
If the process is not going that quickly for you, don’t worry. No matter the outcomes of this month, if you put the effort in, you’ll be well on your way to starting your career as a UX Designer.
Job boards
To make the task of looking for open positions easier, here are the job boards I use. All of them include remote jobs, if that’s something you’re interested in as well:
- LinkedIn jobs — probably the best one since it has the largest list of jobs across different locations
- Dribble jobs — Choose UX and UI in filters. Sometimes you can find some hidden gems there.
- Remotewoman jobs — great, even if you’re not a woman 🫣
- Wellfound (used to be AngelistTalent) — I highly recommend creating a profile there. This platform will connect you with startups that are looking for designers.
- Smooth remote — A great platform for remote design jobs
- Other well-known remote work platfroms like remote.co, Working Nomads, We Work Remotely, or Remote OK. I’ve listed those platforms together since they frequently have the same listings.
- ⭐️ Websites of your favourite companies — Many companies add open positions only to their jobs page. I recommend creating a list of companies you’d be interested in working for and regularly checking their openings list.
Final thoughts
In conclusion, becoming a UX designer within the next 6-months is an achievable goal. By following this roadmap, you can learn the necessary skills, create a portfolio, and apply for jobs.
It’s going to be quite an intense time, but your growth will be immense.
If you have any questions or comments about the content, please leave a comment or reach out to me at alicja@outdraw.design
Want to learn more about how to take your portfolio to the next level?
I would like to invite you to join my 5-day Free Portfolio Masterclass!
- Day 1: Take the inventory of your projects
- Day 2: Include project goals & company goals
- Day 3: Show your design process
- Day 4: Text & engaging structure
- Day 5: Mockups & visual assets
👉 Join the Portfolio Masterclass
Use this week to significantly improve your chance of landing your dream job!
