If we started UX design in 2026, We'll do this

How would 2 designers with nearly 2 decades of combined experience become a UX designer in 2026 if they could start all over? What would they do differently in a job market that's more competitive than it's ever been? And why should anyone even consider this career path when AI is reshaping what it means? According to the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs report, UI/UX design is ranked as one of the fastest-growing jobs in the next 5 years. It's tough and competitive out there, but the opportunity is there if you know how to position yourself. My name is Samuel. I've been a UX designer for 9 years. I started at startups in Lagos, Nigeria, and then moved to the UK and worked at design-led including Deliveroo and Monzo Bank. This is Femke. She's been a designer for nearly 10 years. She's worked at Uber, Wealthsimple, and currently she's a design manager at Gusto. And she's helped thousands of designers navigate their careers. In this video, myself and Femke will walk you through the exact roadmap we'd follow to become a UX designer if we were starting from scratch today. We'll be covering the foundations you need to build, the skills that actually matter and what to ignore, how to choose the right project, how to use AI so you're not left behind, how to create a portfolio that gets you opportunities, and how to stand out in most competitive job market we've ever seen. This is the complete roadmap to go from zero experience to a job-ready designer in 6 to 9 months. So grab a pen and your notepad and let's get into it. So let's start with a quick overview of the roadmap. The roadmap is broken into 3 phases. In phase 1, we'll talk about building the foundations, which is going to be from months 1 to 3. And then in phase 2, we'll talk about the right projects to work on and how to leverage AI in your process. And that would be what happens between months 4 to 6. And then in phase 3, we talk about getting job ready, which is what you do after 6+ months after you've understood the foundations, you worked on design projects. How do you understand the job market and stand out? You need to commit 2 to 4 hours daily for the first 6 months of all of this. It's very, very important to make sure that you're not taking this as passive learning. This is you actually building a new career. So make sure that you're focused on this actively and you could start with maybe 30, 45 minutes in a day and then ramp that up to 1 hour a day and then that get up to 2 hours, but for most of this roadmap, you need to commit up to 2 to 4 hours daily if you want to get the most out of it. And before you learn anything, it's important to set a crystal clear goal. Your goal should answer 4 questions majorly: the why— why do you want to be a UX designer? The when— when do you want to achieve this goal? The where— which industry do you want to work in? And then how— what's your plan to get there, right? So an example goal could be, by September 2026, I'll be a UX designer in the health tech industry because I want to Build products that help people get healthier. To achieve this, I'll follow this roadmap and share my journey online. If you look at this and break it down, your why is how I want to build products that help people get healthier. Getting people healthier is your why. Your where is the health tech industry. This is the industry that you want to break into. Your when is by September 2026, and your how is by following this roadmap and sharing your journey online. It's important to make your goal as flexible as possible. The only thing that probably doesn't need to be flexible in your goal is your why. Your why is important. Is why you're doing this, but your how can be flexible. How you want to achieve it can be flexible. Your when can be flexible based on the time that you have. You can expand your when to beyond 9 months, or you can contrast your when to maybe 6 months, for example. And even your where— you could pick 2 to 3 industries you're interested in, maybe fintech, healthtech, entertainment, e-commerce, and crypto, or even business-to-business software as a service, you know. So make sure that your goal is flexible. Now pause this video and write down your goals. It's very, very important. Write it down somewhere that you always have access to it, somewhere that you're always going to see it. So maybe write it down, paste it on your wall, somewhere that you can always see. So now let's talk about building the foundations, what you need to do between months 1 to 3. So the first question that usually comes up is, what are all these terms? What's UX design? What's UI design? What's product design? What are all of this? These terms are used interchangeably sometimes, but they often mean the same thing. But let me break them down. UX design is the overall experience of of how a product feels and how it works. It is how you feel when, as a user, you're using a product and if you're able to solve your task, the reason why you're using that product. UI design is all of the visual elements that you interact with while using that product. It is how it looks. What does the buttons look like? What does the layout look like? What does the input fields look like? What colors were used? This is UI design. And then product design is both UX and UI design all together and even some other things. So product design, how it It's how it works, it's how it looks, it's how it makes or saves money for the business and meets the needs of the users. Before now, it's always been a different, um, there's always been like a segregation in like this role. So a UX designer would work on the user flows and then hand them off to a UI designer to polish it. Now product design is like a merger of the two where one person is responsible for thinking about the user experience thinking about the user interface and also being clear about why that product even needs to exist and if it is helping a business to save money or helping them make money or if it is meeting user needs. So let's take this iceberg analogy for example. UI is at the top and then UX is everything else in the ocean that you don't see, like strategy— why does this product need to exist— to structure of the product itself, like how does everything come together to make a product. The skeleton, like what are the user flows? What are all of the decision points that users have to make before they can actually complete a task while using this product? And then the UI is the surface. What does the user need to tap? Why is the button red? Why isn't it green? Why are they tapping the colors? What are the emotions that the colors pass across? So you need to understand both UX and UI design. It's important to merge both of them together and Think about you as somebody that can do both. We are no longer in 2015 where a company needs somebody different to do UX design and somebody different to do UI design. Both roles need to come together and you should brand yourself as a product designer. So where do you start? This is the question that I often get because there's so much to do. Where do you start? Now, Femke is going to walk you through exactly what to learn first and how to build the foundations of your craft as a designer from scratch.

Hey, I'm Femke, a design manager who's taught over 500 designers how to build their product thinking skills through my course, Product Strategy for Designers. And I'm here to lead you through the next section. So now that Samuel's covered the fundamentals of what UX design actually is, let's talk about the practical question you're probably asking. What do I learn first? The answer might surprise you. Instead of starting with tools or a bootcamp, start by developing your design craft. So what do I mean by craft? Craft is your foundation as a designer. It's the skills that transcend any specific tool or trend. It's what makes your work feel intentional, polished, and professional regardless of what you're designing. Craft helps you build taste, which is essential for good design. Your craft foundation has 6 key areas you need to develop. First, visual design, composition, visual hierarchy, and balance. Second, layout. This includes grid systems, spacing, alignment, and rhythm. Third, typography. Type pairing, hierarchy, readability, and accessibility. Fourth, color. This includes color theory, accessibility standards, and emotional impact. Fifth, iconography. Creating clear, consistent, and recognizable icons. And sixth is white space. The breathing room that creates focus and sophistication. These 6 areas are your foundation. Master these and you'll be able to create strong work in any tool on any platform. These are the foundational skills that apply across all design work, whether you're designing apps, websites, or even physical products. They're what separates good designers from great ones. And here's the key. These skills are timeless. Tools will change, trends will come and go, but strong craft will always matter. Now, Once you have that foundation, then it's time to learn the tools. Tools are how you bring your ideas to life and communicate with your team. Let me walk you through the key tools you should know about. For UI and UX design, Figma or Sketch are your go-to tools. Figma is the industry standard. It's collaborative, cloud-based, and what most teams are using in 2026. Sketch is still popular, especially on Mac, but Figma's collaboration features make it the better choice for most designers starting out. For web design and publishing, check out Framer and Webflow. These tools let you design and build responsive responsive websites without writing any code. They're powerful for creating high-fidelity web experiences and publishing them directly. I've used both of these tools in the past for web building, though Framer remains my current favorite. And if you want to create advanced prototypes with complex interactions and animations, ProtoPie is worth learning. It lets you build realistic interactive prototypes that feel almost like the real product, which is perfect for testing and presenting your ideas. So let's talk about Figma specifically since it's the tool I recommend you start with. It's the industry standard, it's free, and here's the key. Every other design tool uses similar concepts. Once you learn Figma, picking up another tool becomes much easier. Here's my advice for getting started. Watch 1 or 2 end-to-end tutorials, but don't just watch them passively. Follow along. Try to build what they build. This hands-on approach is how concepts actually stick. But watching tutorials isn't exactly learning. Building is learning. So after you watch, keep building. Try recreating designs you see in apps you use. Experiment, break things. That's how you actually develop fluency with a tool. I've shared 2 great video tutorials here that will walk you through the fundamentals and get you comfortable with Figma's interface and core features. Start with these, follow along, and build what they build. But there are more resources in the description of this video too. And that brings me to the most important part, learning through reps. So here's a challenge for you, the clone challenge. It's one of the most effective ways to develop your design eye and build fluency with Figma at the same time. To do this challenge, you'll need access to Mobbin. It's a library of thousands of mobile app and web app screens from real products. It's free, and I've put the link in the description below. Honestly, it's a really great resource for studying how the best products are designed. Now, you'll notice Mobbin has both mobile apps and web apps. A quick difference: mobile apps are designed for phones and tablets. Think native iOS and Android apps on your phone. Web apps are designed for browsers. They're responsive and work across different screens. Some examples of web apps are facebook.com or PayPal. Both of these apps are valuable to study. Here's the challenge: download screens from Mobbin and clone a few screens and flows in Figma. Don't just trace them, rebuild them from scratch. Pay attention to things like spacing, typography, colors, and components. The goal is to clone 1 to 3 screens per day for 30 days. That's it. Small, consistent practice, but every single day. By the end of the challenge, you'll have cloned about 30 to 90 screens. That's 30 to 90 opportunities to study what good design looks like and reverse engineer how it was built. While you're doing this, pay attention to the details. How is the white space being used? What's the visual hierarchy? How are colors used to create emphasis? Or how are the components working together? This is where the real learning happens. This is how you start building visual design intuition, understanding what good design looks like, not just intellectually, but in your hands. You develop a feel for what works and why. Now that you know what to practice, Samuel's going to show you how to make this practice visible because the work you do in private won't get you hired.

Thanks, Femke. Femke will be back to give you some tips on how to be job ready in phase 3 of your journey. So keep watching. Now, something that most beginners miss is that your learning journey is a great opportunity for visibility. And you have to capitalize on that. Now, the thing about design is that when you're getting into this field, it is quite saturated, right? So you need to find ways to stand out. And like every other field, visibility is so important. And how you stay visible or how you start understanding visibility is by being comfortable learning in public. So you should pick one platform, maybe LinkedIn or X, and pick some of the cloned designs that you've worked on from the clone challenge that Femke spoke about, and then post your cloned designs daily. Even if these designs are ugly, just keep posting them because naturally your design is not going to look the same on day 1 as it looks on day 30. It would be different, right? You will have made progress. You will have understood some things that you didn't understand on day 1. And if you post from day 1 to day 30, there's no way that you haven't started building some kind of network, right? So you should create a posting schedule that works for you. Post daily, maybe something that you've learned from the previous day, or maybe weekly, some challenging problems that you solved, or just think about a schedule that can make you accountable so you can always show up. Because, you know, you can also even, you know, post videos sharing your screen. For example, you could just record your screen, record your design software that you're using, maybe on Figma, and just talk through the challenge that you're solving. As you're doing all of the clone challenge, you know, say, oh, today is day 1 of clone challenge. I'm picking up this challenge and today this is the particular app that I'm going to be cloning. And then this is what it looks like. 2-minute video. Keep it scrappy. You don't need to do any kind of fancy editing. This is how you start building a network before you even need it. Before you get to the point where you're starting to look for opportunities or look for jobs, you should already start building a network because that way you are already building people that are following you on your journey. And people love journeys. People love to follow people as they are growing as well. So what do you learn next? That's usually the question that people have. There are soft skills that you need as a designer. There's user research, communication, storytelling and presentation, collaboration, product thinking, workshop facilitation. I know this is a lot, right? But these things are things that you can learn on the job. You don't have to learn everything immediately. I think the most important things that you need to learn right now while you're following this journey is user research and storytelling and presentation. So this is going to be your focus for months 2 and 3, because user research helps you understand problems deeply, helps you understand how to speak to users, uncover the problems that they might be having, and then also understand the solutions to those problems. And then storytelling helps you to explain your work clearly. This is why you need both, because you're going to need both for every kind of interview that you do. And even throughout your career, throughout your career, you are going to have to really find ways to understand what the problem is. You shouldn't go ahead and solve something that you don't understand the problem. They say that a problem understood is half solved. And this is where user research is important. Storytelling helps you tell the story of why you think that's the right problem to solve. And you need to be able to tell your story every time. You need to be able to understand how to tell a story, how to get people along and help them understand why you're doing what you're doing, and how to explain and show your work. This is why these are the 2 soft skills that you should focus on: user research and storytelling. So there are some learning materials that you need in the first 3 months. First off, you need to take this free UX Research Fundamentals course. This course is a free course, it's going to be linked in the description. It's going to help you understand the fundamentals of UX research and how to conduct UX research at the basic level. And then for your reading, there are 4 books that I recommend that you read. The first one is The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman. Donald Norman is such an amazing author. This book has been in existence for over 20 years, and any book that keeps getting a high rating 20 years later is a good book. So it's a foundational book on design, basically how to design everyday things. These other 2 books, Show Your Work and Steal Like an Artist, are the best books that I've ever read on creativity. So you need to understand how to show your work. I already spoke about showing your work and why it is important. This book, Show Your Work, is going to tell you why it is important to share your work online. And then Stealing Like an Artist as well is going to tell you how to get inspiration, how to learn from the clone challenge that you've done, and how to see how you can transfer your learning from your clone challenge into your own work because you're going to get inspiration from all of the apps that you work on in the clone challenge. And then the last one is Refactoring UI. This is a very, very good book on UI design. It helps with the standard patterns for good user interface designs. All of these books are also going to be linked in the description. They're going to be Amazon links, but if you do your research well enough, you can find PDF versions online for free. But I'll link everything in the description for where you can buy them. So by the end of month 3, you should understand the fundamentals of visual design. You should understand how to recreate almost any UI in Figma. You should understand how to identify problems and propose solutions through user research. And you should have read at least one book. Also, you should have posted at least twice a week on LinkedIn or X. If you post at least twice a week on LinkedIn or X for 3 months, you'll have done 24, 25 posts. There's no way that you are not already bringing people along on your journey if you've done 25 posts. People know that you are learning in public and people love that. So months 4 to 6 is where you focus on projects and how to leverage AI in your design process. The question that people usually have is, how do I choose the right projects to work on? Remember the goal industries that you picked at the beginning? Your where. So for example, you probably picked health tech industry or you picked fintech industry. Choose projects within those goal industries because that's the way that you're going to use to say, okay, this is the work I've done within this industry already, and this is why I think I'm a fit for this role when you're trying to get a job. So you should aim for 3 to 4 projects in total. It could be one mobile app project, one web app project. Femke already spoke about the difference between a mobile app project and a web app project. One project that solves a personal problem, something that is personal to you, a problem that you face maybe while using an app or a problem that you face just, you know, in your daily life. It's something that you can actually design a solution for. So the dos and don'ts of projects is, first of all, you should try to design a new feature for an existing app. So an app that you already use, that you already use every day. Think about something that you wish existed on that app and go ahead and design it. You should solve a real problem that you've experienced. What is the real problem that you are experiencing? Do you have problems with productivity? Do you have problems with sticking with a to-do list? Do you have problems with keeping up with your fitness? There are so many areas that you can think about and you can go ahead and design a solution for that problem. Also, share your work online as you make progress. Don't redesign an entire app. You won't be able to do that. You can't redesign the entire Netflix. Don't pick overused apps like Netflix, Uber, because these apps are everywhere in every designer's portfolio already and you need to find a way to stand out. Also, don't skip user research. Make sure that you use the lessons from the UX research course. to actually understand how to conduct user research. So where can you find project briefs? You can find project briefs on uxdesignmastery.com, uxchallenges.co. You can also use ChatGPT to generate design briefs and UX challenges. You just need to make sure that you are writing the proper prompts, and that can help you come up with design briefs that you can work on. And then you can identify a personal problem and solve it, like I already said. So let's talk about the elephant in the room— AI. The old way of becoming a designer is that you design static screens in Figma, you'd write a case study about the static screens, But nothing actually works. People can't click through the screens. People can't use it. It's not, it's not working right now. The new way is you design static screens in Figma, you build what you've designed with AI tools like V0 or Lovable, and then you actually have a functional prototype that works because now designers are moving from people that just design screens and hand them off to an engineer to people that actually build what they've designed. The same way that UX and UI designers are no longer separate is the same way that a designer would now be able to design and also build what the app would look like, while maybe an engineer would focus on like the core backend functionality. So in this new way, AI should be your learning companion all through your journey. If I were you, I would take this video, put it as a link on NotebookLM, and I will ask it to create a learning plan for me. Based on this video. That's how you can use NotebookLM as a learning companion to suit your own learning style. It will help you with everything you need to do, maybe generate project ideas, generate briefs, create a different roadmap that could work for you because this roadmap is broken into 3 phases. But maybe you want your own roadmap to be 6 phases. Maybe you want your own to be 9 phases. Maybe you want your own to be just 2. Every content of this video can be sent to NotebookLM and it can create a learning plan. For you for free. So that's something that you need to take advantage of. You have the opportunity to be an AI-native designer from the very beginning, and you need to grab that opportunity. These are the learning materials for months 4 to 6. They are going to be linked in the description of this video. So by the end of month 6, you should have at least 2 projects you've designed, 1 user research that you've conducted with insights, 1 working prototype that you built with AI, and posted at least twice a week on LinkedIn or X. So keep posting. Now Getting job ready, which is like the phase 3, right? Everything that you need to do after the first 6 months when you've worked on projects, when you've understood the fundamentals. To become job ready, you need to focus on 3 things. 1, you should focus on growing your network. 2, creating your portfolio and understanding the job market. To grow your network, you need 2 types of networking. You need horizontal networking and vertical networking. Horizontal network is people that are on the same journey as you are, and your vertical network is people that are 2 to 4 steps ahead of you. People usually ignore their horizontal network and just move to vertical network. But people that are on the same journey as you are as important as people that are ahead of you, because people that are on the same journey as you are can keep you accountable. People that are on the same journey as you are can help you understand your competition. Remember, it's a competitive industry and you need to understand how well people that you're competing with are doing so that you can understand how to do even better than them. It's just the game, right? So for your horizontal network, you can find accountability partners in design communities on X and local meetups and connect with people even in the comments of this video and ask them if they would like to network. And then for your vertical network, you can find mentors who can review your work or refer you. This is why your profile should already show proof that you are working. So if you reach out to somebody and ask them to maybe review your work, they should be able to go through your profile and see see that, oh, this person has been doing a lot of work already based on everything that you've already posted. When they see that, they are more inspired to give you feedback or to mentor you. While building your network, it's also important to start creating your portfolio so that you can show all your work in one place and tell your story. Femke is going to break down exactly how to create a portfolio that stands out.

All right, so you've built some projects, you developed your skills. Now it's time to actually present your work. So let's talk about your portfolio. There are 3 things you need to do when putting your portfolio together. First, get a personal website. This is your professional home on the internet, not LinkedIn, not Behance, your own site. Second, include 2 to 3 case studies, quality over quantity. And third, get feedback. Before you send your portfolio out into the world, have other designers review it and tell you what's working and what's not. Now, within those case studies, storytelling is everything. Every project should have a clear narrative. What was the problem? Why did it matter? What was your approach? What was the outcome? Walk hiring managers through your thinking. Don't just show them screens. Here's how to make your case studies stand out. First, hook people in with visuals. Lead with compelling imagery that draws them in. Then make your case studies scannable. Use headers, break up the text, make it easy to skim because people won't read every word. They'll read key points. And third, show your personality. Let your voice come through. This is your work, so own it. Let's cover some common mistakes. The first one, poor visual design. If you're a designer and your portfolio itself isn't well designed, that's a red flag. Your portfolio is a design project, so treat it like one. Then making your portfolio hard to navigate. If someone can't figure out how to see your work, they'll just move on to the next candidate. Next, focusing on the design process instead of outcomes. Yes, show your process, but hiring managers care a lot about results. What changed because of your work? What impact did it have? And then lastly, ignoring your About Me page. This is where you connect as a human, so don't skip it and don't let it be generic. Here's a tip to really make your portfolio stand out: add a Loom video. Walk through one of your case studies on camera. This is a really great opportunity for you to show your communication skills, your personality, and your ability to present your work. It's a really simple way to differentiate yourself from pretty much everyone else. So what tools should you use to build your portfolio site? Well, Squarespace and Wix are great for beginners. They're easy to use, they don't require any code, but Framer and Webflow give you more design control and let you create more custom experiences. Now just pick whichever feels right for your current skill level. Here's 2 video resources that will walk you through Creating a Standout Portfolio. These will give you concrete examples and step-by-step guidance. Links to both of these are in the description. Once your portfolio is ready, it's time to actually land the job. Samuel's going to walk you through how to navigate the job market and crush those design interviews. Good luck.

Thanks, Femke. Let's talk about what you've been waiting for, actually getting hired, because a great portfolio means nothing if you don't know how to use it to your advantage. So now let's talk about understanding the job market. The thing is, your resume and portfolio is important, but you already know this, right? Femke already spoke about why it's important to make your portfolio stand out and how you can create a portfolio that stands out. So having a good resume and a good portfolio is common knowledge. What most people don't know is that they need a change of mindset. You need a change of mindset. Stop thinking about just, oh, I want to land my first UX design role. People just think about it that way. Or I want to land a first internship. So they're always thinking about it as, you know, landing their first opportunity at a company. You should reframe that mindset and change it from how do I get my first UX design role to how do I get my first UX design opportunity? A role is confined within a job that pays you a salary. An opportunity helps you to keep showing up, to keep showing proof, to keep working, to keep doing everything that you've been doing already, but for real problems. But this time around, people could pay you for it. It could be a freelance opportunity. It could be volunteering. It could be hackathons. But an opportunity is something that basically helps you to keep stacking proof that you can do this work, and all of that ladders up to a role. So instead of focusing on landing a job, find opportunities that help you gather proof. And you can find these opportunities by partaking in hackathons, or maybe even volunteering or unsolicited redesigns. Hackathons— try just do, do your research, find hackathons near you, and just go be there. Even if you're not part of any team in the hackathon, try to get an entry ticket or something and just be around people that are creating things. Be around people that are motivated. Be around people that are trying to launch new careers like you so that you can also start looking for people that can be in your horizontal network and your vertical network. You can also volunteer. And then also with designs as well, look at local shops around you, look at local businesses around you, check out their website and try to fix something, find their emails and send it to them. None of this is wasted. Don't always think that the end goal of everything that you work on should be exchanged in money. There's a lot of ways that you can get value, and these are ways to actually work on real life projects, not just made up projects. Between months 4 to 6, you've been working on made up projects, right? Months 6 to 9, you need to start thinking about how you can get real life opportunities. To work on. So to land your first opportunity, you need to hack the visibility loop. What I call the visibility loop is how you go from signal to discovery, trust to opportunity, and sometimes get that as feedback into signal. Let me explain it. Your signal is basically how you show that you're ready for an opportunity, that you want an opportunity. So all the time when you've been posting your clones online, when you've been posting videos, posting recordings of your work and how you've been showing your work online, you've been been showing signals, right? And then that leads to discovery. People are following you, people are following your journey, people are discovering you, but you don't know people are following you. And then the discovery leads to trust. When people see that you keep showing up, that this person really, really wants this, then they start to trust you, not only because you are improving with your work, but because you are showing a work ethic that signals that you are reliable. That's when people start to trust you, and this trust is what leads to opportunity. That is why, while so many people are focused on spamming LinkedIn and sending 100 applications in a day, some people are getting DMs for opportunity because they are showing signal. I've given a couple of people opportunities as well just because I see that they are showing signal. So you need to make sure that you're showing signal and you're building trust so that you can get opportunity. Now, this opportunity may not lead to a job offer or a role, but it should be something that helps you understand how to improve your signal that you are giving. So does that mean that the signal that you are giving, is it weak? Is it that because your work is not good enough? Is it because your portfolio is not strong enough? That signal helps the opportunity that you get and the feedback from the opportunity helps you improve your signal. So you should take every opportunity as feedback to improve the visibility loop. Till you convert an opportunity to an offer. So that way you're not obsessed on just landing the first UX design role, but you are focused on landing the first opportunity that can help you get more opportunities and help you stack proof. I can make a whole new video on how to land your first UX design job using the visibility loop strategy to your advantage. Actually, I already did. Watch this video next to understand how to land your first UX design job by playing a completely different game that helps you stand out. And I'll see you in that video.