How I got hired as a UI/UX designer with no experience?

Last year I was hired as a solo UI/UX designer at a Bangalore-based tech startup and had multiple offers to choose from, even before college got over.

Few months before getting the job I had no expectations to get even one offer because I had no professional experience in UI/UX design or a design degree to support my design skills.

Here are certain things that I did and anyone interested can do to prepare themselves to break into the UI/UX design industry.

1. Learn fundamentals

Before diving into anything it’s critical to learn the fundamentals of UI/UX design & basics of Figma Software or any UI-focused design software.

For this you don’t need to buy any paid course, you can easily learn it from Youtube or free design courses. I learned from Youtube videos & Google UX certification courses (it’s free if you don't want a certificate). Here is a list of 60+ useful resources for UI/UX Designers a bundle of free courses & videos for beginner designers to learn all the basics from.

Photo by Firmbee.com on Unsplash

2. Create dummy UI/UX case studies

As someone with no experience in design, I did not have any real projects to showcase in my portfolio. The next best thing I could do is create dummy case study projects.

I created a UI/UX project for a liquor delivery app. In the same way, you can also create UI/UX projects on topics like NFT marketplace apps, Fitness apps, Habit tracker apps etc., you can even create a new feature for existing products to help improve user experience(such as creating a new feature for Swiggy). Once you create these projects you can post them on renowned portfolio websites like Behance or Dribbble.

Two things you must include in these case study projects

1. Your design process(from research to prototype everything)
2. Design iterations & decisions(why did you choose a particular design & how will it be helpful to users)