The Career Benefits of Volunteering (My Experience Volunteering at UX Salon)
TL;DR: The career benefits of volunteering are numerous. When I started out in UX design, I didn’t know anyone. From networking benefits to getting your foot in the door for free, find out how to leverage your non-industry specific skills.
As an autodidactic learner, making a career switch from a completely different field, it can be an intimidating task figuring out where to begin. I knew I wanted to work in the field of UX, but I was unsure of where to start. I decided that the best way to approach my new career was as a design thinking problem. So here goes!
Discovery Phase:
Even though I was designing this solution for myself, I decided to do some background research into other people’s success stories regarding how they got started in UX Design. I joined Facebook groups, read articles, watched YouTube videos, and started reaching out to people asking for tips and tricks.
I found plenty of extraordinarily friendly people willing to share their experiences, lots of expensive programs, and of course, lots of contradictory opinions on what would be necessary to get started.
The most common theme across the board was “network, network, network.” The second most common recommendation was “Don’t ask for favors, instead make yourself useful to people.”
With my newfound knowledge in mind, it was now time to define my problem.
Problem Definition:
I need to immerse myself in the world of UX, without spending a lot of money. I want to meet people, learn new things, and find my direction.
Ideation:
Keeping in mind everything I learned in my research stage, I did a brainstorming session.
From a list of possibilities, I whittled it down to a solution I had used previously to learn new skills and join communities.
My strategy was twofold:
- Take classes at https://www.interaction-design.org because it was both affordable, as well as being recommended by Don Norman.
- The second part of my plan was to volunteer at local UX events (instead of simply attending).
The benefits of volunteering are numerous
When I started out in UX design I didn’t know anyone. Being part of the team gave me a feeling of legitimacy and helped me deal with “impostor syndrome.” It also gave me a “backstage pass” and direct access to meet the speakers. In addition, volunteering allowed me to attend workshops and conferences free of charge!
Experimentation/Testing
The trick when trying to volunteer somewhere is understanding what your strengths are and having a work-trade mentality.
Using interpersonal skills learned in the theater world, I reached out to several people, including Avi Itskovitch from UX Salon. We agreed to try working together and I ended up helping Avi with logistics surrounding meet-ups and workshops. After a few meet-ups and a major conference, Avi invited me to continue volunteering with him, as he really enjoyed my work ethic. I continued helping him, by organising the logistics of guest speakers and making sure they had everything they needed for their presentations and workshops. During his most recent conference I was tasked with managing the slack channel. As we built a rapport, I also started brainstorming ideas with Avi to help improve the attendee experience of his events.
Final Note
I wrote this article because I hope my experience breaking into the world of UX Design can help you in whatever stage of career development you currently find yourself. I hope you find these tips useful. Feel free to reach out with any questions you might have about the benefits of volunteering for career growth.
Toby@trachtmandesigns.com
Conferences and masterclass workshops I attended through UX Salon.
UX Salon 2019 Conference
This was an amazing introduction to the world of UX. The highlight for me was hearing about accessibility from a deaf UX Designer who talked (signed) about common pitfalls, when designing for accessibility.
http://www.uxsalon.com
UX Salon WORDS
An awesome event which (despite coronavirus restrictions) managed to bring together experts from around the globe to talk about UX writing.
Behavioural Design for UX: Dr. Liraz Margalit (attended twice)
Liraz is a fantastic speaker and gives a fantastic introduction to designing for human behavior. She talks about the responsibility of those of us designing for tech, tips on how to create habit forming products, tricks to conduct user interviews, how to motivate people, as well as so much more.
https://lirazmargalit.com
Smart Responsive Design: Vitaly Friedman (attended twice)
Vitaly’s workshop draws you into a world with lots of sticky notes and sticker dots, where everything is possible and picking between menu types is a big choice. He really helped me sharpen my definition of what a UI designer is (beyond making beautiful screens).
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/author/vitaly-friedman/
Lean Service Design: Elam Agam
Lean Service Design is an innovative canvas based approach to problem solving. It’s super intuitive and awesome to use.
https://www.leanservicedesign.ch
