How to Become a UI/UX Designer in 2023 - A Step by Step Guide

Hey guys, come closer. I want to tell you a secret. Do you know that you need only 3 things to become a UX designer in 2023? Number 1 is your computer. Number 2 is good internet. Watch this video to the end and I'll tell you what number 3 is. My name is Samuel and I'm a senior product designer based in London. I know how overwhelming and tasking it can be to get started as a UX designer, especially when you have no prior experience or design degree. That is why in this video I'll be taking you through 7 particular steps that you can follow to become a user experience designer in 2023. Step number 1, understand your why. The first thing you need to do before you get started is to ask yourself these important questions. Number 1, why am I interested in this career path? Number 2, how does this align with my career and personal development goals? Number 3, how much time can I invest into learning all the relevant skills to get started? These questions are very important because it helps you to gain a lot of clarity and understand exactly what you're getting into. Why is UX design interesting to you? Do you enjoy solving difficult problems and understanding human behavior, or are you interested in UX design because you've heard that designers make a lot of money? How much time can you invest into learning and practicing every day, in a week, and in a month? This would help you to set a realistic timeline that can help you go through all the steps that I'm going to mention in this video, including applying for a job once you're ready. Once you've been able to answer all these questions genuinely and reflectively and you're convinced it's the right decision, then you're ready to get started. Step number 2, study the design process. It is important to understand some of the design frameworks that help you to structure your design process. There are several of them, but you can start with the design thinking process and the double diamond design process. The design thinking process is the most popular framework that you should study. It is a nonlinear iterative design process that enables you to tackle design challenges in a structured manner. It encourages you to empathize with the user, understand their problem, generate ideas, prototype solutions, and test these solutions. Similarly, the double diamond design process enables you to solve design challenges by discovering the problem and developing solutions based on the insights gathered from the discovery. A good way to learn and practicalize these design processes is to take an introductory UX design course. Some of the courses I would recommend is the Google UX Design Certificate hosted by Coursera. It is very beginner-friendly with less than 10 hours of study per week. Also, you can enroll for the Interaction Design Foundation courses taught by experts in the UX design industry. These courses teach and encourage you to solve UX challenges using these design processes and frameworks. It is important to note that these design frameworks and processes should not limit you in any way. They're just frameworks that are there to guide your design process. In fact, it is ideal for you to jump through different steps of the process or go back and forth on different steps of the process based on the requirements or goals of the project that you're working on. Step number 3, start learning a design tool. There are a lot of design tools that UX designers use today. There are design tools like Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch, InVision, Marvel, Origami, Framer, Balsamiq, Axure. There's so many of them, I could keep going on, but I would advise you to start by learning only one. If I would pick one tool over all the ones that I've mentioned, it would definitely be Figma. I will pick Figma 100 times over. Figma is a web-based design tool that allows designers to create user interfaces and functional prototypes all from their web browser. They also have a desktop app, so if you If you'd like to download the app, you can install it. It's compatible with both Mac and Windows, so you don't have a problem with that. Figma is widely used by organizations like Uber, Slack, Twitter, and we also use it at Deliveroo where I currently work. If you want to learn how to use Figma, you can watch YouTube videos like this one. If there's any particular thing that you'd like me to make a video about on Figma, then you could like this video and also comment about what you'd like to learn, and I'll be sure to get to it. Don't forget to subscribe as well. Another way to learn is to find design inspiration sites like Dribbble. Go through the UI designs there and try to recreate the designs using Figma. This is a stage that you need to be practicing every day. Challenge yourself to design something every day. There are hundreds of thousands of design inspirations on Dribbble, UI designs, landing pages, and all of that. So you could basically go on Dribbble and start to see all of this design inspiration. Try to understand why the designer decided to use this particular kind of visual language, this kind of color, or this kind of typography, or this kind of shape. Once you start to understand that, and then you make this a challenge, it could be a 30-day challenge, for example, you would not be the same designer that you were at the beginning of the challenge once you are able to complete entire 30 days challenge. So it's very, very important to make sure that you are also challenging yourself and you are practicing every day. You can also look at websites like mobbin.design, which is where you would find real-life applications. You find the screenshots of real-life applications. You could find applications like Twitter, Dropbox or different kind of applications. And then you can actually look at why they were designed the way they were. And you can also try to recreate them. Once you're able to do this and make sure that you're practicing every day, trust me, at the end of the challenge, you would have made a lot of progress. Step number 4, create case studies. The next thing you need to do is to showcase your design and thought process using case studies. To do this, you need at least 2 case studies. You could redesign an existing mobile app or a website. And the thing is, you don't necessarily need to redesign the entire experience. You could just pick a section of the experience that actually interests you. For example, you could redesign the checkout experience of your favorite online store, or you could redesign the order experience of your favorite food delivery app. Make sure that whatever solutions you are preferring actually improves the experience and make sure that you are able to tell that story in your case study. Also, try to apply the learnings from the design frameworks that you have learned in step 2. If you can't find any ideas on design challenges that you can take on to create these case studies, there are several design challenges online that you can look at. You can check out this website where you have different design challenges and you can pick anyone that interests you. I've added a link to the website in the description. Also, I've created a video on how to create case studies like a pro. You can check them out in the description as well. Step number 5, show your work. This is one of the most impactful design books I've read. It is by an artist and author called Austin Kleon. In this book, he encourages creatives to share their work, and he talks about the importance of sharing your work as a creative. The 3rd section of the book encourages designers to share something small every day by sending out a daily dispatch. This helps you to get out of your comfort zone and expose your work to feedback, which is something you have to be comfortable with as a UX designer. You can start sharing everything you create from your challenge in step 4. Another benefit of showing your work is it helps to put you out there so that you can meet amazing like-minded people like you, people that are on the same journey with you, or people that have even gone through that phase and are ready to give you advice or give you feedback on your work. It's also important to make sure that you leverage design communities on platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, especially now that we have a lot of conversations going on around different industries on Twitter Spaces. On Twitter Spaces, you could see people talking about UX. These are the kind of things that you should be interested in. And these are the kind of places that you should actually share your work so that you can get feedback. Also, you can connect with mentors on platforms like ADPList. Once you get on this kind of platform, you are able to book mentorship sessions with senior designers that can give you feedback on your work, have portfolio reviews with you, or tell you about career development. Before you schedule these sessions or before you actually have these sessions with these mentors, make sure that you already know what you want to discuss so that you don't get there and then you don't know exactly what you want to say. Step number 6, create your resume and your portfolio. Your resume and your portfolio can be likened to your tickets and your passports that enables you to travel to holiday destinations. Without your ticket and your passport, then you're going to be stuck at the airport. This is why it's important for you to pay attention to how you put your resume and your portfolio together. Even though you don't have any prior design experience, you can emphasize the impact that you've had in your previous roles, how you've been able to solve problems, and how all the skills you've gathered along the way can make you a good fit for a UX design role. Your portfolio, on the other hand, is probably the most important personal project that you ever get to work on as a UX designer. Your portfolio should be visually appealing, and recruiters and design managers should be able to navigate it easily. Your portfolio should house all the case studies that you've put together in step 5. You can use drag-and-drop website tools like Wix or Squarespace for your portfolio website. It's best to have your portfolio on a portfolio website because recruiters and design managers always prefer it this way. That way they can assess your design skills and they can see how you are able to help them navigate the website. Also, it makes them take you serious. There are other tools that you can use for a portfolio as well. You can use Notion, you can use Behance, but I always advise that you use an actual portfolio website. You can find inspiration on portfolio websites on websites like Bestfolios. They have lots of portfolio websites that have been created by other designers, and you can let this inspire you. I've also created a video on some portfolio websites that I think is interesting. You can check out the video. I have the link in the description. Step number 7, start applying for jobs. Now that you've put your resume and your portfolio together, it's time to start applying for jobs. Remember that the UX design industry is very competitive. You have a lot of people to compete with, especially at the junior level. There are so many people coming fresh out of boot camps, out of design schools, out of university degrees, and even online courses. The pool is really, really large, so you need to stand out. How do you stand out? First of all, you need to tailor your applications to every job that you apply to. You need to tailor your resume, and if you're submitting a cover letter, you need to tailor it to every job. You can do this by making sure that you actually read the job description, understand the skills that they recruiters require. Understand the units that you might be working in. Understand the problem that you might be solving. A lot of times recruiters actually put these problems within the job description, so once you read this job description properly, you can understand it. Also, another thing to do is to not apply blindly. Don't just submit 40 applications in a day just because you can. Instead, you could submit 3 applications in a day, but make sure that those 3 applications are applications that have been thoroughly thought about. You've actually read through the job description and you know what you're applying to. Don't be discouraged when you see that you don't meet all the requirements for the job. As long as you meet 50% of the requirement, then by all means you should apply. Another thing to do is to make sure that you are actually preparing for the interviews once you start applying. Don't wait to be called for an interview before you start preparing. UX design interviews can be very tricky. There can be questions around soft skills, around hard skills. There are so many things that you need to learn ahead of your interview. And since this is going to be your first series of UX interviews, you need to be prepared. This is when you need to reach out to the mentors that you've met in step 5. Start to ask them about advice on how to approach UX design interviews. You also need to research about the company properly. When you're at the interview, make sure that you are asking questions. You answer their questions, and when it's time to ask a question as well, make sure that you're asking important questions. Interviewers always like it when candidates ask them important questions in interviews. It shows them that this kind of person does his research, and that's the kind of person that they want to join their organization. One thing to keep in mind is that the more interviews you do, the more confident you become. So don't be discouraged if you don't get an offer on the first few tries. At the beginning of this video, I spoke about needing three things to become a UX designer in 2023. So far, all the steps I have covered can be achieved and practicalized with your computer. And good internet. Now, the third thing you need is a strong mindset. You can't afford to give up because you feel like you're not making any progress. This is a marathon and not a sprint. Remember why you started in step 1 and keep your eyes on the goal. Ideally, you should be able to cover all these steps in 3 to 6 months. If you're a very busy person, you can be less aggressive about the timeline. That'll be all for today's video. If you enjoyed watching this, you can also check out the video I made on common mistakes that beginner UX designers need. Don't forget to like this video, subscribe to my channel for more videos like this, and share this video with your friends. I'll see you in the next one. Bye!