I Passed the UX Designer Certification
Some Brief Comments and Thoughts after Completing the UX Cert
This past Friday I managed to pass the certification exam and became a certified User Experience Designer. This is the third cert that I’ve passed this year … making me a 3x Certified Salesforce professional overall now.
In this post, I want to offer some general thoughts I had on the exam based on my experience of failing it and then passing on the resit. There is a particular question that I’ve had a couple of times that I will touch on in this post, but I will picking up on the theme from this question in another post next week.
But let’s dive into the exam shall we.
How Did I Find the Exam Overall?
Honestly, I found this exam to be the hardest one I’ve taken so far. There are two main reasons for this in my estimation. The first is that my usual method of study was not available for this exam. So far my study for exams has seen me complete the relevant badges on Trailhead and then move on to using Focus on Force’s study guides and practice exams for my revision material. This was not possible for the UX Designer exam though as there is nothing available for this exam right now on the Focus on Force right now.
The second reason for me finding the exam difficult is because of the questions on the Salesforce Lightning Design System, otherwise known as SLDS. To me as someone who has spent the majority of my time as an Admin, SLDS feels very much like a Developer tool. There isn’t anything wrong with that as such, and given the time and experience, I’m pretty confident I could learn the tool and get to the point where I’m pretty good with it. Right now, I still have a lot to learn about the tool and I feel that my challenges with it at this point in time fed into how I performed in the certification exam overall.
Why Did I Find it Hard … Apparently It’s Easy?
Before I cover my advice for revising the exam. I want to cover the question I got asked about me finding the exam difficult. Shortly after posting on Social Media I received a DM on LinkedIn. The statement that came from the person sending message was that he was surprised that I said the exam was difficult, because he had heard it was easy. Now, I’m sure this individual meant no offence by this comment, but I want to very briefly pick up on this point and address it. The reality is that just because some people find something easy, doesn’t mean everyone will find it easy. Likewise just because some people find something hard doesn’t mean everyone will find it hard.
Also, one would have to ask, if something was easy like that comment suggests, one would have to ask what the value of that thing is anyway. Frankly speaking, the things that are worth the most value take effort to acquire. So if you’re studying for this exam (or any other), it’s absolutely fine to find it difficult. Don’t let the remarks of others make you question your ability. Remember, an exam is an indication of your knowledge and ability, it isn’t necessarily your knowledge and ability itself. So if you work hard and pass that’s fantastic, if you work hard and fail, that’s OK as well. All you would need to do if you fail is to work on your weak areas and try again.
How Would I Advise Others to Revise for the Exam?
This is a good but important question. Like I mentioned in my previous point, one of the main areas I found difficult with the exam was SLDS. This led to me using the Lightning Design System website as my main tool for revision outside of the Trailhead modules and badges. So my main piece of advise would be to familiarise yourself yourself with the content from that website.
The other piece of advice I would give is to try and spend some time reading through the content that has been written by the Trailblazer Community on their experiences of studying for and passing the certification. My colleague at Cloud Galacticos, Luke Menzfeld, has written a Twitter thread about his experiences in preparing for and passing the cert that would be worth a read. On top of that, Vanessa Grant has also wrote an article on LinkedIn covering her experiences. There will be other content out there that could be worth reading, so make sure to search for that and to spend some time doing that.
Closing Thoughts
So that’s my thoughts on what it was like to prepare for and pass the UX Cert. I’m very proud to have passed the exam as it took a lot of work to do that. It’s a great certification to have under your belt as a Salesforce professional and I’d highly recommend anyone working in the Salesforce ecosystem to look to take the exam and to add this certification to their portfolio of knowledge and skill.
Have you taken the exam? If so, what did you think about it? Let me know your thoughts on the exam in the comments section here on Medium, or by replying in the comments when I share this post on Social Media.
