My little designer’s steps

This series of articles I would like to dedicate to my effort trying to evolve myself from the Developer to the Designer.

But from the very beginning …

Who the hell am I?

Currently I work as a UI developer in a big Internet company in a small country in the heart of Europe.

I’ve been rubbing shoulders with web spiders for about four years. I started as a PHP developer and quickly moved to a Front-end, UI developer.

I have been always trying to learn more about my work but I was never a guy who likes learning a programming language perfectly with all its specifics and coding in the nights. More likely I am the opposite of it, because I like a conceptual level and finding ways how to do it right.

When I was following important people on Twitter and learning more about a web development, I discovered soon a term UX Design. And from that point I’ve tried to learn more and more about that.

Why? Because …

I would like to do right things for the right people.

First steps on my way

I went through as much sources as I could find on the Internet, a lot of articles about how to get to UX on sites like UX Magazine, UX Booth, Hey Designer! and many many others.

But sources weren’t sufficient and I wanted more, so recently I’ve started to read proper books. My first book was amazing The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman and this book changed everything.

I’ve found out soon that UX has a lot of meanings and nowadays it’s rather a buzzword. I like much more a term Human-Centered Design because it describes better what it should describe.

And I’ve found out that the Designer is not only a guy who draws nice pictures how product should look like. It’s more about a state of mind, how you think about problems you have to solve and about observing.

And I decided I want to be the Designer too.

What the hell will be this about?

Reading theory is cool, but you need to practice if you want to get better.

I’ve not passed a designer school and I haven’t got a lot of practical experiences. The worse problem is I couldn’t afford to study a designer school or get an intership. And what is more important I don’t want to quit my job for now.

One nice guy told me that the best solution is to have personal projects on which I could learn more about design. But when you work daily it’s little bit harder to think up a new original project.

And the same nice guy gives me an advice it could be interesting to have a personal project how I learn to design. So here it is.

I haven’t a strict plan how to write this series of articles but currently I take an online course through Coursera.org — Interaction Specialization, authorized by University of California, San Diego.

Interaction Specialization consits of seven courses and a final Capstone project. Every course have some Assignments you have to completed. I hope I will take them all.

I intend to write this series about my experience from learning to design and about other things I will meet on my way to be the Designer.

Thanks for reading and I hope you will enjoy it.