5 Tips For People Who Just Started In UX Design

Breaking into the wonderful world of UX design has been a goal of mine for many years now. However, my pathway into the field has been somewhat complicated…

After graduating in 2011 with a degree in marketing, I immediately started working as a content intern in one of the largest digital agencies in the world. Every day I was surrounded by designers and developers working passionately with global clients. I saw them solving real problems and getting immense satisfaction from what they were doing. I wanted to be a part of that world too but assumed that anyone working as a designer must have graduated with a degree from an art school.

Fortunately, over the years, I realized that this is simply not the case. UX designers come from all walks of life; that’s what makes it such a diverse and exciting field to work in!

So, I took the leap and signed up for a UX design course. Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting hundreds of career changers who have transitioned into UX design. Speaking to them has made me realize that we all share similar insecurities and worries about our new careers. Am I good enough? How can I showcase my skills and past experience? Will people take me seriously as a UX designer?

If you’re just starting out in UX design and find yourself grappling with similar doubts, I’ve got some advice for you. In this post, I’ll share five key tips for new UX designers based on my experience so far.

1. Seek a mentor

Whether you’re just starting to learn UX design or you’re in your first UX job, mentorship is essential to your success in the industry. As user experience designers, we rely heavily on feedback from others to improve our designs and make them better for the end-user. A good mentor will provide you with a valuable critique of your work and help you to get unstuck when projects become confusing or overwhelming (and trust me, they will!).

Some of the most helpful (and often surprising) feedback I’ve received so far has come from my mentor, Joy Fonderson. As a seasoned designer, she comes from a place of experience that offers a completely different perspective to mine. It’s all about getting that 360-view of your work, and your mentor will see things that you completely miss.

Just recently, Joy introduced me to working with a grid so my mid-fidelity prototypes look consistent (and professional!) on all screens. We exchange thoughts about different design tools (I used to work in Sketch but Adobe XD is my new favorite) and how knowing more than one tool can be a great asset to a design team. Joy also sends me a great amount of additional reading so I’m never short of inspiration and knowledge.

If you’re lucky, your mentor will also be someone who inspires you by sharing their latest projects and taking you through their process. Above all, you will have the chance to talk through all the questions and frustrations you face as you progress in your new career path — with someone who truly gets where you’re coming from! Ultimately, mentorship is your doorway to rapid and continuous growth as a designer. You can learn more about the importance of having a mentor (and how to make the most of yours) here.

So you want a mentor — but where to find one?

The idea of going out and finding a mentor might seem impossible, especially if you haven’t yet built up a solid industry network. I was fortunate enough to be assigned a one-to-one mentor through my UX design course, but there are plenty of other ways to seek mentorship:

• Networking: UX is all about human interaction, and building your professional network from day one is a sure-fire way of meeting many approachable design professionals who are happy to give feedback and pass on their wisdom. Attend meet-ups in your local area, invite your UX design colleagues out for coffee, and join relevant Slack groups and channels.
• Find your design heroes and reach out to them: If you’re active on social media and professional platforms like LinkedIn, why not reach out to people you admire? It can be as simple as saying “hello” with a brief introduction and your reason for reaching out. Be specific, and ask about aspects of their practice you really admire — be it their portfolio, their chosen career path, or a particular UX research methodology they used in a project.

2. Build up your design portfolio

One of the toughest aspects of being new to UX design is a lack of real-world experience. When it comes to finding your first UX job, this can be especially frustrating: employers insist on previous experience, but you’re brand new to the field — how are you supposed to convince them of your ability?

This is where your portfolio comes in. Your portfolio provides you with an opportunity to showcase who you are as a designer and tell your unique story. What makes you a great UX designer? Why did you choose to work in this field? Above all, it invites employers to see how you approach design challenges. It’s, therefore, crucial to showcase not only the final product but how you got there; employers want to see your process and understand how you think as a designer, so use your portfolio to take them on a journey! Document everything while you learn; take photos, make notes, and keep all artifacts.

Not having a lot of experience doesn’t need to be a disadvantage. The trick is to compose a cohesive, compelling narrative — UX design is all about storytelling, after all! Try linking your past experience to your new career path; you’ll find that many of your existing skills are transferable to UX, so highlight relevant connections when telling your story.

Before taking the leap into UX design, I spent 8 years working in various roles in digital marketing. Graduating with a degree in marketing, working in digital agencies and also running my own content creation studio allowed me to dip my toes into many different aspects of marketing — from running social media for international clients and working with digital influencers, to becoming a videographer and editor for some projects.

While I knew UX designers are in demand, I didn’t want to just “waste” all these years of experience. This made me think about what UX design and marketing have in common. Both fields are extremely research-driven (or at least they should be) and rely on data about consumer behaviors, preferences, motivations, and needs. When I started working on my first UX design project, I found that I was actually quite at home with research techniques such as interviews, surveys, focus group discussions, and user personas. This made me realize that I’m bringing plenty of useful skills with me from my previous career, and that, as a UX designer, this is what you need to convey when telling your story.

So you want to build up your portfolio — but how?

As a budding UX designer, you need to get as hands-on as possible. It’s not about where you’ve worked, but rather, how you’ve taken your newfound design skills and applied them to real projects. Here are some ways you can build up your portfolio:

• Redesign an existing website or mobile app: Unsolicited redesigns are an excellent way to showcase your design process to potential employers. Pick an existing, fairly well-known product and set yourself the task of redesigning it! Don’t only focus on visual design, though — carry out real user research and analysis. Once you identify user pain points with an existing product, set yourself a hypothetical UX mission and create a case study with information about what you changed, as well as why and how your solution will serve the users better.
• Search for real-world projects: These will become the most valuable pieces in your UX design portfolio. Search online for volunteer projects, approach small charities or businesses you support and ask around in your personal network if there’s anything UX-related you can help with. Even though many of these projects will be unpaid, they will look great in your portfolio. Check out websites like donate:code for volunteer projects.
• Become a content creator: The more I learn about the UX industry, the more I realize how important it is to build a personal brand. Start blogging, publishing videos, or showcasing your design journey on social media. Even when speaking from a beginner’s perspective, this will show your passion for design and add a unique dimension to your portfolio.
• Apply UX to your current job: Practice makes (almost) perfect, so look for opportunities to apply UX principles and processes in your current job. Working in a coffee shop? Ask people coming in or out for a few minutes of feedback in exchange for a free coffee. Finding it difficult to find files on your company’s Google Drive? Meet with different teams, conduct user interviews and create new information architecture so the documents are easier to find and access. UX can be applied absolutely everywhere, so use your surroundings to your advantage!

If you’d like more portfolio tips, UX design expert and mentor Tobias Treppmann shares his advice in this guide to creating a killer UX portfolio.

3. Overcome perfectionism

When just starting out in UX design, it’s easy to get lost in the details. I went through a phase of thinking that every single wireframe had to be perfect, but this very quickly became a productivity killer.

Perfectionism not only leads to self-doubt; it also makes it incredibly difficult to reach your goals. Having high standards in your UX design practice is obviously a good thing, and striving for perfection can show your passion for creating seamless user experiences. However, design is never finished, so don’t get stuck on designing something perfect!

In fact, perfectionism isn’t exclusive to new designers. Many designers and their teams put too much time and energy into designing products that they believe to be perfect, without even consulting with a real user! This is what I call “misguided perfectionism.” Creating a beautiful interface won’t matter if it doesn’t solve real user problems. Instead, designers should focus on building testable prototypes as fast as possible so their solutions can be tested and improved.

Overcoming perfectionism doesn’t mean you can get sloppy, though! Sometimes when I get stuck and frustrated with a project, I’m tempted to send it to stakeholders as it is. However, I learned the hard way that this isn’t the right approach; on a few occasions, a client pointed out some errors or spelling mistakes in my presentations. Now, I always put the project to one side, give myself some thinking space and come back to it later with a fresh pair of eyes.

So you want to overcome perfectionism — but how?

If you’re prone to perfectionism, it’s important to recognize it and nip it in the bud. Here are some techniques I’ve found to be really helpful in combating perfectionism:

• Set deadlines and priorities: Break your main goal into smaller, more achievable goals. Prioritize and set deadlines for these small goals — this will stop you from dwelling on one aspect for too long.
• Ask for help: Excessive perfectionism can leave you feeling stuck, but sometimes it’s enough to ask your mentor or a colleague for another pair of eyes. Having another person examine or critique your work can help you to gain a fresh perspective and pick up the momentum you need to move on.
• Ship it out and get feedback: When in doubt, the best thing you can do is just put something out there! Design is an iterative process, and the only way to create a better experience for the user is to test, test, and test again!

4. Fight imposter syndrome

Do you have a tendency to feel self-conscious? Perhaps you find yourself doubting your abilities and accomplishments as a UX designer. If so, you might be experiencing imposter syndrome.

Imposter syndrome is a psychological pattern of behavior which causes you to doubt your achievements and experience a persistent fear of being exposed as a fraud. Let’s be honest, everyone feels it at some point in their career — , especially at the very beginning. Coming from a digital marketing background, I certainly went through this when I started learning UX. Almost every day I found myself asking: Will people take me seriously as a UX designer? Do I really have what it takes?

Perhaps the most limiting part of dealing with the syndrome is that it can inhibit your courage to pursue new, exciting opportunities. In extreme cases, it can cause stress and even depression. But don’t worry, imposter syndrome isn’t an actual psychological disorder, and it’s in your power to beat it.

So you want to combat imposter syndrome — but how?

First of all, don’t let the term “imposter syndrome” intimidate you. Once you know what it is and can recognize the signs, there are plenty of positive steps you can take to silence that voice of doubt! If you’re experiencing imposter syndrome, bear the following in mind:

• You’re not alone: The first step to overcoming imposter syndrome is to realize that you’re not alone: 58% of tech employees experience it, according to a report created by Blind (2018).
• Remind yourself of all your accomplishments and training: You’ve put hundreds of hours into learning new skills that have gotten you to this point, so take some time to recognize what you’ve achieved so far. A little self-praise can go a long way if you’re feeling uncertain.
• Tell yourself, “I belong!”: A big part of imposter syndrome is feeling like you don’t belong, or that you haven’t earned your place in the world of UX design. Of course, there are people who have been in the industry longer than you, but that doesn’t mean you’re a fraud. Everyone starts out as a newbie, so keep learning, keep growing, and know that you belong!
• Label it: Sometimes just labeling your thoughts will diffuse the “fraud” feeling. Once I knew that imposter syndrome was a thing, it became easier to tackle. When you start feeling anxious, recognize those negative thoughts for what they are and continue on your way!

5. Never stop honing your empathy skills

You’ve no doubt heard it a million times before, but I can’t emphasize enough just how important empathy is to your work as a designer. Detachment from your users and their problems can be detrimental to the user experience of the product or service you’re creating. For this reason, it’s crucial for UX designers to build genuine empathy in order to truly understand what the user needs.

But what exactly is empathy? IDEO’s Human-Centered Design Toolkit explains empathy as a “deep understanding of the problems and realities of the people you are designing for”. Empathy helps designers to connect with users’ emotions, goals, motivations, and context. Once this connection has been established, designers can start developing tailored solutions that will accommodate users’ needs and pain points.

So you want to become a more empathetic designer — but how?

When just starting out in UX design, you’ll hear the term empathy a lot. In the beginning, it can feel rather abstract. You know what it is, but how can you actually become more empathetic and get better at putting yourself in your users’ shoes? The good news is that empathy can be learned. Here’s how:

• Research, research, research: Every successful design project is based on user research. Time and budget constraints may tempt you to skip the research phase, but you’ll find yourself designing without empathy if you do. Spend time with your users (or representative users) and find out as much as you can about them in relation to the product you’re designing.
• Practice empathy in your everyday life: Even when you’re not designing, you can make an effort to be more empathetic. Observe those around you and imagine how they might be feeling. When chatting with friends and family, really try to picture yourself in their position. Did you know that mirroring another person’s facial expressions can help you to feel what they’re feeling? When interacting with others, try mimicking their facial expressions as a way of building empathy.
• Familiarize yourself with key empathy-building techniques: There are lots of useful strategies and techniques you can incorporate into the design process that will help you to build empathy. Take the time to familiarize yourself with key concepts such as extreme users and empathy maps — a visualization tool you can use to analyze user personas. Doing this from the very beginning of the design process can help to ensure that you and your team are on the same page when it comes to users’ thoughts, needs, attitudes, beliefs, and pain points.

Wrap-up

Whether you’ve just started learning the fundamentals of UX or are getting ready to start your first job in the field, these tips will hopefully help you to become a better — and more confident — UX designer.

Remember: you’re not alone! Everyone starts somewhere; all of those seasoned UX designers who you admire from afar have been in your position. So keep learning, asking questions, and seeking feedback — that’s what UX is all about!

About the author:

Jakub Michalski. Originally from Poland, Jakub moved to Berlin to pursue his dream of becoming a designer. Alongside his role as Creative Lead at CareerFoundry, Jakub is studying user experience design. When he’s not writing about UX, he can be found traveling, cooking, or cycling around Berlin.