Should you become a UX Designer in 2024?

Hey guys, come with me. Let's go all the way back to the internet boom in the late '90s. Hold that thought, guys. I'm not that old. I think I was about 8 years old when I took this picture, and that was 1999. Anyways, back to our trip. In the late '90s, between 1995 to 2000, the value of tech companies was starting to shoot up like crazy, and we're starting to see the use of personal computers in our homes and households. But like with every other bubble, there's always a bust. Between 2000 and 2002, the tech market crashed, and some of the companies that still exist till today that were able to survive that crash was Amazon and eBay. Fast forward to 2023, the tech job market has been threatened by continuous layoffs, the rise of AI and automation, and you're probably thinking, is this even the right time for me to become a UX designer? Well, I made this video for you because in this video I want to tell you why this is the best time for you to become a UX designer. Let's get right into it. The first reason is probably the most important to most people, and that is the fact that you can be well paid as a UX designer compared to other roles outside the tech industry and even within the tech industry. But there's a caveat to this. You have to be at the very top of your game to achieve your highest earning potential as a UX designer. I'll use myself as an example for this. When I joined the industry about 6 years ago, when I became a UX designer in 2017, between that time and now, my income has increased by 1,600%. That is about 276% annually. Of course, this is also influenced by the fact that I relocated from my home country, Nigeria, to the UK, but my chances of landing a well-paying job would have been limited if I hadn't transitioned from an architect to a graphic designer and then to a UX designer. It would have been possible, but then it might have been slimmer if I hadn't transitioned. Statistically, UX designers earn between £35,000 to £65,000 in the UK. That is based on your experience. So junior UX designers will most likely earn an average of £35,000, while senior UX designers will most likely earn an average of £65,000. But you can even earn way more than this if you're able to attract top tech companies and you are able to show them that you can offer the value that they need to grow their business and also solve the problems of their users or customers. Like I said, you need to be at the very top of your game to increase your earning potential, and you also need to position yourself within the right network so that you can find the right opportunities. Speaking about opportunities, one of the reasons why you should become a UX designer right now is that the opportunities in this industry are limitless. I transitioned to my first UX design role at a fintech company, and luckily for me, I didn't have to apply to a job to become a UX designer. Instead, I saw that there was an opportunity for a UX design role in the organization, and I transitioned into the first UX designer at the organization. If you would like to see how I became a product designer, you can watch this video that I've linked at the top there. So I literally just saw the opportunity to become a UX designer, and I, and I took it. Since then, I have worked in different industries from financial technology to social impact to education technology to food and delivery logistics. And then now I'm back in financial technology. The beautiful thing about being a UX designer is that the skills that you pick up as a UX designer are very, very transferable to every walk of life and even any kind of job that you might find yourself in. And the chances of getting bored are very, very slim. And if you do ever get bored, you can always start a freelance business on the side while you have your full-time job. Or you can start creating digital products that you could sell online using your UX design skills that you've acquired. Or you could even become a founder. Who says you can't become a founder? Brian Chesky, the co-founder of Airbnb, used to be a designer. Evan Sharp, the co-founder of Pinterest, was a UX designer at Facebook before he co-founded Pinterest. So you could find a problem and solve it and start a business from that. You can also create content around design, around what you know, around what you've learned, and you can also create content to help others as well, which is what I'm doing right now, which is why I'd love you to smash the like button on this video and subscribe to my channel so that I can keep making more videos like this. Also, you can specialize in a niche if you don't want to be a generalist. You can be a user interface designer if you love visual design and love to obsess on the tiny visual design details. If you enjoy writing, you can become a content designer. If you enjoy research, you can become a user researcher. If you like little tiny details for motions, you can become an interaction designer. The opportunities are just limitless and they are everywhere. As long as you are ready to upskill and learn new things and open your mind to the new trends in the industry, you can tap into as many opportunities as you want to as a UX designer. I have a quick update for you. In the last 3 years, I've been collecting design portfolios of top product designers on a Notion document. This has inspired me to create 3 versions of my own personal portfolio and also attract design opportunities from top tech companies. Globally. Now I want to share my collection with you through Folio. Folio is a design inspiration website curating the portfolios of top designers globally in one place. Folio will be launching soon, and I'd love you to be the first in line to experience the platform when we launch. Here's what I need you to do. There's a link in the description of this video. Click that link to join the waitlist so you can get to know once we launch in a couple of weeks. Let's get back to our video. If you're somebody that wants to have an impactful career, then a UX design career choice might be the right one for you. As a UX designer, your daily job involves making decisions that could have some level of impact on the customers of the company you work for or the users of the product that you're building. And identifying this makes you understand the huge responsibility that you have, knowing fully well that any decision that you make could have a positive impact on the lives of your customers or users Or it could be the opposite. Let me use myself as an example for this. My current role as a UX designer at a digital bank involves designing solutions that helps the customers of the bank to get the best support whenever they have issues with their money. Every day I've seen scenarios where design solutions that I have put in place with the team has prevented the customers from losing all their money to fraudsters, and in some cases has helped them against gambling addiction. Example. Of course, sometimes the customer outcomes are not as great, but I wake up every day knowing the amount of impact that I have through my job as a UX designer and how important my role is. This is the same in every other industry. You have the opportunity to choose the type of impact that you want to have as a UX designer, and when you make the right choice, you can have a very, very impactful and fulfilling career. Last time I checked, you still do not need a design degree to become a UX designer, and I don't think this is going to change anytime soon. In fact, some of the best UX designers I've met have never been into the 4 walls of a university. Why am I saying this? I don't want you to put a limitation on yourself because you feel like you don't have the right qualifications to become a UX designer. I've met people from all walks of life transition into the UX design profession from different degrees. I've met people that have had computer science degrees. I've met people that have had English degree. I've met people that have no degree at at all. If you don't know where to start, you can watch this video I made on how to become a UX designer in 2023. Also, I want to mention that one of the fastest ways to become a UX designer is to start by solving fake problems. Yes, in this industry, it is totally fine to fake it till you make it. So find problems that you can solve that don't exist. Find problems that you are encountering in your daily life that you can solve using the UX design principles, using the UX design process and using everything that you've been learning online. And once you've been able to gather all of this together, at the point when you have the opportunity to solve a real problem, or at the point when you have the opportunity to interview for a real job, you can always have a bank of ideas that you've worked on that you can present to the recruiter or to the employer so that they can know that this person is interested in this career path and has made some of the efforts required to solved problems in the past, even though they are not real problems. The last reason why this is a very good time to become a UX designer is that design is a future-proof career path. And what do I mean by this? The roles might change, the title might change. It has always changed. We've been called UX designers, product designers, digital product designers, software designers, and all sorts of names. But the core value that a UX designer provides is always going to remain the same, and that is to solve the problems of users and help businesses grow. As long as this core value offering remains the same, then that career as a designer is going to be a future-proof career. Again, why am I saying that design is a future-proof career? If you look around you in 2023, every business leverages technology in one way or the other. Therefore, every company is almost a tech company. By extension. And tech companies need designers that would help them to think about the strategy on how they can solve their users' problems to be able to make money and to be able to grow. So you need to be able to acquire these skills as a problem solver. First of all, whenever you think about design, don't just think about pushing pixels on Figma or trying to put rectangles together or thinking about the best color to use or thinking about how to make things look beautiful. Think about how to solve problems. This is why you always need to get to the root cause of the problems so that you can understand how to solve it. That is the value that you bring as a designer. And once you bring this value, you're going to future-proof your career because you'll be able to provide this value to any company or any client that you work with. A lot of people might say that the rise of AI and automation might take the job of designers, but I strongly doubt that because I believe that AI and automation is something that designers should understand and should leverage so that they can take advantage of that to speed their work process and also aid their design process as well. So I believe that the designers that actually take advantage of AI and automation would be the ones that will replace the designers that don't. Think about it, AI can learn from existing and present patterns to put design solutions together. But these design solutions, from what we see today, are at best generic. They don't solve every problem. A lot of user problems still require that human touch to be able to empathize with the user, understand what their core need is, to be able to proffer a solution to that need. This kind of empathy is only achievable by humans, and it's going to be difficult for a machine or some kind of language model to be able to to get in touch with this kind of emotion. It's possible that this happens in the future, but again, I'm saying that the designers that are able to leverage AI today and understand how it works and understand how to make the best use of it are going to be the ones that will replace the designers that don't. I do not think that AI is going to come and take everybody's jobs just like that. This is why to future-proof your career as a designer, to be able to understand the new trends in industry and see how you can take advantage of these trends without letting the trends overwhelm you. Understand that your core principle as a designer is to solve problems, and the trends are only a means to an end. You don't have to jump on every new trend to be able to provide value as a designer. Your core value as a designer is to solve problems, and once you're able to do this at every point of your career then your career is going to be future-proof. That will be all for today's video. I hope this video has cleared any doubts you had about becoming a UX designer right now or transitioning into a UX design role from another role. Which of these reasons are you most excited about? Is it the pay? Is it the impact that you can have as a UX designer? Is it the limitless opportunities? Is it the fact that you don't need a design degree? Or is it the fact that your career can be future-proof? As a UX designer? Let me know in the comment section and I'll be sure to respond. Don't forget to hit the like button on this video and subscribe to my channel for more videos like this. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.