If you are at the beginning of your educational path in IT, or contemplating about making changes in your career and starting learning UX design, you might have some doubts and uncertainties on whether UX design is something worth studying and working in right now. We can dispel your doubts: UX designers are very required in the majority of companies, since they help to make products appealing to users, thus raising the companies income and enhancing their reputation. Professionals in this sphere are in high demand right now, and
with development of various devices and UX methods came a variety of career paths for UX designers. In this article we want to share with you a few reasons why pursuing a career in UX design is worth trying, what type of skills you need to have in order to become a successful professional and how to start your education in UX.
So, why is it reasonable to pursue a career in UX?
Opportunities for career growth
Once becoming a UX designer, you will always have the opportunity to try something new and contribute to your personal, educational and career growth. The UX field offers a lot of variability: creating user design of software products is not the only thing you can do in this position. You may want to try yourself in a more specialized area - for example, UX writing, testing, analysis, management, etc. Diversity of possibilities makes it less likely for a professional to have a burnout.
Variability in devices / methods / technologies
Times when people only used web-pages that required creating UX design in one pattern are long gone. Nowadays there is a wide range of things you can work with: mobile apps for smartphones and tablets of various sizes, smart wearables, smart-home devices, AR/VR apps, interesting desktop products. There are also a lot of different methods you can apply and technologies you can use that make the process of creating UX design easier and more fun.
Opportunity to create important products
As a UX designer, you don’t always work with entertainment products. You can also create important digital products for healthcare, education, agriculture and other vital spheres of life. Your job will also include making products accessible and inclusive for people with special needs. All these products require a very well-thought, intuitive, seamless interface for quick and easy use.
…and opportunity to create fun products as well
The previous paragraph does not exclude this one: if you are more interested in creating products for entertainment, there is a wide range of apps and websites that you can work on. Social media, photo and video sharing platforms, chat messengers, content editing apps are just the tip of an iceberg of products that are very much in demand right now and require very easy and intuitive UX in order to be successful.
Contribution to the brand’s development and popularity
The UX of a product has a direct impact on the success of a company that produced it. For example, if you are working on an app for a clothing brand, good UX of the app can contribute to the success of the brand itself, because users will associate the app with the company.
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The professional role of a UX designer is constantly evolving with the development of technology; the requirements for the skills can also differ depending on the company that’s hiring. Here is a list of a few basic soft and hard skills that any UX designer should have in order to successfully start a career in any company in the world.
Hard skills
To research and analyze
One of the main tasks of a UX designer is to investigate user needs. To do that, one has to be able to conduct research - usually through questionnaires, data observation, studying competitors products, etc. Acquired information should then be analyzed in order to find answers to such questions as “What users like/don’t like about our product”, “How can we improve our product to be more user-friendly”, and so on.
Structuring information
UX is all about the comfort of a user and usefulness of a product. The main thing that can make a digital product easy to use is neatly structured information on a screen. UX designers should know how to structure information in an app or a website correctly to provide intuitive and pleasurable navigation in a product.
Creating wireframes
Wireframes are sketched versions of app screens, and they allow to roughly “try on” different design ideas without creating full-detailed screens each time. Creating them is UX designers’ job: they should be used throughout the whole working process.
Conducting prototypes testing
Product prototypes should be tested in the late stages of development until the release of a product. UX designers are responsible for conducting usability part of testing, which includes thorough analysis of beta-users feedback and fixing of any UX mistakes in a product.
Soft skills
Thinking critically
Critical thinking is an important skill for every person in general, but for UX designers it’s a necessity. It helps to analyze user feedback, separate constructive criticism from hate comments, identify flaws and admit mistakes.
Communicating and working in a team
UX design development can’t be done separately - designers have to work and communicate with the other members of development teams, as well as with the users, managers, product owners, sponsors, etc. To create a balanced product, the designers have to communicate effectively, articulate their thoughts clearly and listen attentively.
Understanding others
A big part of a UX designer's job is to understand what the users need from a product and how they feel when working with it. This requires empathy and emotional intelligence skills, or, in other words, the ability to put oneself in users' shoes and look at the product with their eyes.
Learning every day
As we said in the beginning, the role of UX designers constantly evolves with the development of technology and IT-industry. New tools, platforms, devices and standards appear every year, which requires new knowledge. In order to keep up with that and stay relevant, UX designers have to have a real thirst for knowledge. This includes reading thematic books, attending online-courses, sharing experience with other professionals and just generally staying curious about what’s new in the field.
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The good news is that it’s possible to start learning UX design for almost everyone, regardless of your previous experiences. But in order to get an official degree or certificate required to get a UX designer position, you’ll have to organize and start your learning process on your own. Let’s discuss the steps you can take to learn UX design remotely at home.
Start with learning the most simple basics
Even if you have experience in any other IT field, you should start learning UX design from scratch. Don’t plunge into serious aspects of UX design right away and start with the basics. The first thing you should do is learn the general glossary of terminology, since UX design has a lot of specialized terms that you have to understand in order to do the work. There are a lot of resources where you can learn that, but it’s better to choose sources where terms are accompanied by illustrations - thus it will be easier to understand and memorize their meaning.
Read thematic books & blogs
After learning terminology, it’s time to learn more about UX design in general - and there is no better way for a novice to do that than to read thematic books & blogs and listen to podcasts. In one of our previous articles we’ve already listed several books that can help you learn UX. Of course books, blogs and podcasts can’t replace educational courses, but they’ll help you navigate better in the field.
Get familiar with UX design tools
UX designer work is impossible without the usage of professional tools. It takes time to fully learn all their functions, but for the start it will be enough to get familiar with them and figure out which tool is applicable for which task. If you find it hard to do on your own, some educational resources offer courses where students are trained to use UX design tools.
Start practicing by doing simple tasks
When you’ve learnt the basics of UX and understood how to use tools, you need to apply your knowledge in practice. The best way to do this is start doing small simple exercises that you can find for free on the UX educational resources. It’s better to sign up for some courses for beginners that not only provide you with tasks, but also guide you through them and offer help and feedback.
Look into ways of getting a degree
UX designer job requirements can differ depending on the company. Small companies and startups are often ready to hire self-educated people, but large organizations usually require an applicant to have a degree. Apart from a traditional way of getting education in a college or university, nowadays there are more convenient ways to do this: for example, to go through UX design bootcamp that prepares you for the job in a matter of months. Some companies hold their own bootcamps or courses to train their future team members - so if you aim to work in a particular company, check if they offer such training.
Conclusion
UX design is one of the most important components of any digital product, which heavily influences its success, usability and demand. The task of creating a perfect UX design lies on the shoulders of UX designers. With the development of technology, UX design turned out to be a very attractive field for people who want to build a career in IT. Being a UX designer allows you not only to create user interfaces for different products, but also to impact people’s lives in a positive manner, making technology more accessible and comfortable to use. Learning UX design might not always be easy, but it’s definitely worth a try if that’s a career you’d like to pursue and if you are determined to study and work in a responsible manner.
