Here is how you can learn UX/UI
One of the most frequently asked questions from fresh designers usually sounds like:
- What’s the most effective and quick way to learn UX/UI? Give me a shortcut.
Unfortunately, there is no direct path to become one. I’m not a guide and not going to tell you the steps you should take. Why?
There are multiple ways. And the answer depends on the various factors:
❓How much free time do you have?
❓How much money are you able to spend?
Learning UX/UI is like playing a Lego.
I can give you the components and you can connect them together. At the end of the day, you’ll get there with the same result, but different resources spend.
Recourses:
- Someone will spend $5000 and will get there in 6 months
- Someone will spend 2 years, $100 and all the free time on the weekends
- Someone will spend 5 years at Uni, 6mo for internships, 2 years on side projects.
The result is obviously a market demand.
💰Paid:
📍University
I may sound bold, but 90% of the Universities are just a waste of your time. You know it too. 5 years of a lot of academic papers, $3k-$50k payment debt and “life schooling” doesn’t exactly add to your skillset. The University still shapes you as a human. It makes you understand your strong qualities and preferences. We tend to go to uni because we’re not completely sure what are we going to do in our lives later. After 2 years it’s too late to quit and we have to finish those grades. This sounds like a trap, however, there is still a list of amazing universities that will help you to reach career goals. I personally believe in the Scandinavian approach, so schools in Sweden, Denmark are pretty good, especially Aalto school in Finland. I finished a Master degree in User-Centric design in Estonia which had a similar program. I was also considering Bauhaus in Germany. In the Netherlands, Eindhoven the school is more practical and arty. Find the whole list of the programs here.
⚠️The value of University is not only in learning. The biggest benefit it gives in return for your time is valuable connections. People who teach and study with you will be your best mates in career launch. The trust they have in you is not that easy to build in the real life.
📍Bootcamps
UX Bootcamp is a 2–3-month program with a quick theory and some real practice. Usually, it requires your relocation. During this time you will build a portfolio through various given client projects. I’d call it a quick university. Here are a few famous Bootcamp programs: General Assembly, Tradecraft, Whitespace , GrowthX. Find more references here.
⚠️The problem is: it’s really pricey and after completing it the chances that you’ll get a job are really small. You’d first need to build an confidence through a lot of own practice.
📍Online courses
There are billions of courses. I personally took Brendan Bolton-Klinger and Joe Natoli courses on Udemy. The main point of the courses is to find a person you want to inherit similar approaches and learn from them. Today you can look for designers you want to be like from resources like Coursera, Interaction-design, Lynda…Find more in this article.
Update: I’ve launched my own online course covering UX design for Freelancers. We focus on UX fundamentals + Remote clients and process + Mentoring your real projects.
⚠️ Free courses give vague value and risk to be a waste of time. Pricy online courses have have a smaller risk of wasting your time/money. Make sure you trust a trainer who creates the course.
📍Find a mentor
This method is one of the most efficient one. The biggest problem of any newbie is a lack of an experienced person next by to ask intricate questions that Google cannot answer. If you’re considering to have a mentor, please, make sure to read this post before asking someone. This question could sound really annoying to many UX professionals and I’m not sure you want to kill the chance before even talking to your potential mentor.
⚠️ The problem is next: experienced designers are in a very high demand. Their time costs more than you can probably afford. But if any great mentor takes you on board — that means a lot! You’re most probably in a good place with a great future potential. To get on board think outside the box.
🆓 Free:
📍 yoUXniversity:
You don’t really need any certification! University diploma is not a must to get a job, at all. Have you noticed? Most of the prominent designers (Tobias van Schneider, Luboš Volkov, Ales Nesetril, Nadya Tsech, Jan Losert) are the self-taught designers. They locked themselves in a room and figured it all out. On their own. It takes a lot of courage to accept that you know nothing and start learning without the help of others. Every single day.
⚠️ Free recourses and self-study — equals the same time (=money) you’d spend on the good courses. So it’s up for you to decide if you want to take it the hard or the easy way.
📍Teach others!
I’m the biggest fan of this method! Did you ever hear of Learning pyramid? In 2015 a week after I finished Master degree in Estonia I moved to Georgia to teach UX design. You can only imagine how strong I felt imposter syndrome. Who am I even to teach others? — I thought. But there was no exit! And that was a blessing. I tied myself to the chair, cut off all the distractions and was learning 24/7. Feel free to read how this story ended up here.
⚠️The point of teaching is: Responsibility and a lot of presenting. When you have to give a 3h lecture every other day — you start realizing where are your gaps and how to fix them. After such an experience, I started to feel almighty. But beware, this situation is pretty stressful.
📍Internship
My second favorite method. Why? Because it’s free, it’s super effective and practical. However, it’s the same hard as getting the first job. You’d have to go through the selection process and then work a few months for free. You’d have to be humble and accept that you’re no one yet, stay always open and give 100% of yourself. But it doesn’t matter, the prize is worth it. You get to work with your mentors and learn from them for free. Plus, at the end of the day squeezing 5 years of uni into 3-months sounds like a good deal. I personally did my 3-month internship at the service design agency in Estonia.
⚠️ Just like with mentors — you have to choose the company you want to learn from. The company that shares your values and processes. Don’t apply to the companies you don’t trust.
📍Youtube channels
Another great way to learn — is by following amazing designers on YouTube. They share their life lessons every day. I personally learned most of the precious lessons about freelancing nuances from Flux. Other great YouTube educators are CharlimarieTV, JesseAtomic, Roberto Smith, Sketch Together, Design Gal.
⚠️ Don’t rely only on the short youtube videos. You first need to build a fundamental of the design process. For this you need to take a logical program that takes you takes by step. Watching only YouTube videos would create inconsistency in your head and you risk to end up only confused by all the information from different people.
📍Side projects
Practice makes perfect, agree? The more you apply what you’ve learned, the better you become. Trust me, you don’t need a client to start practicing. Here are a few ideas for your next projects:
- Solve your own biggest problem (or ask your friends to solve their problem with design)
- Find a hackathon event nearby and build a startup project in 48h. Eg: StartupWeekends, HackEvents, Other.
- Build your own side project 5 ideas a day, Startup ideas dashboard
- Redesign the website of an important service, but poor UX. Or redesign a feature(or a website) of the company you want to work with and then present them a solid case.
- Practice UI each day with 100 days UI challenge
⚠️ Remember, you have to solve a real problem. Don’t only focus only on the beautiful UI. (Re)design doesn’t mean a new “fresh UI”. Sometimes users want the “old” UI. The point of (re)design is to find the issues with the current website, verify and solve them.
📍Value exchange with a peer
Think of it as a language exchange duet. The main difference is you exchange skills, not the languages. Eg: I teach you the basics of UX/UI, you give me basics of Marketing. It’s not a very common method, but today, on the rise of the design community I found it very useful to make small “consultation exchanges” with people from IG. Maybe it can also work for the whole new skill.
⚠️ Make sure your skill exchange happens with the person who have a decent knowledge and skill. You don’t want to receive too little for giving too much.
📍Hackathons
A hackathon is usually a 24h — 48h weekend event where developers, designers, marketers and other creative people meet and work together to build a something worthy. Other than solving creative problems in just 2 days you meet the top experts from different industries, participate is various workshops and learn more than you’d learn in a month. It’s also great for your portfolio as you can build 4 strong and real cases in just 1 month.
Check for the nearest hackathon here: StartupWeekends, HackEvents, Other.
⚠️ Often your 48h are focused on delivering the best presentation for the final presentation. This way you can sacrifice some crucial design milestones like user research, user testing and usability testing. So, after building something in 48h you have a pretty high risk of design mistakes and will most probably need to have a lot of updates after.
📍Reading!
Reading is a perfect tool to get your creative juices flowing. It cannot make you a master, but it can tune your brain in the right direction. Make sure to read daily online publications like:
Medium.com, Smashing Magazine, Designers News, Muzli, or check this blog post for more.
Get the books lists from here:
My TOP books, ultimate list according to Adobe, UXmastery, tips from other designers: Collective, from Lubos Volkov.
⚠️ Please, don’t think that books will create a system in your head and make you a good designer. Books are just a great supplementation to the structure that you build in conjunction with a practice. You don’t need to read more than 2–3 books to know enough, the rest is practice. Later you can always come back to the books to improve what you’ve missed.
👩💻PS. I don’t know if you can take only one of those components and feel ready to hit the market. On my practice, I did all of the described methods. My personal TOP were: online courses, teaching others, hackathons, internship, own startup projects and A LOT of reading. And yet, there is no limit. So what your lego looks like?
😉 Only you can tell
