How to Become a UX designer – Guidelines For Absolute Beginners

UX designer is an acronym for “User Experience Designer”. UX design is a highly demanded profession and businesses need experts in terms of great user experience and usability on their websites or products. 

A UX designer’s key role is to create a positive impression through good user experience design. In addition to that, UX designers play an important role in making their customers loyal not just to the app or website they design but also to their brand as a whole.

Is Being a UX Designer an Attractive Career?

A UX designer can define the journey of the customers to a website that can be very conducive to the success of a business. The importance of a UX designer can be realized if you see the ranking in several established channels.

A UX designer job is interesting, challenging, but lucrative from a monetary perspective. It is fast becoming a highly sought-after job. A good UX design engineer deals with a lot of people and software and makes compelling websites and app that displays brilliant creativity and brings high job satisfaction.

What Qualifications Do you Need to Become a UX Designer?

UX design discipline is still in its infancy and in general, people aren’t very clear about the qualifications, required to become a UX designer.

Many employers not only pay attention to the certificate of UX but also certifying the practical skills is considered more important.

Given that, it’s ideal to be handy with related tools like Sketch and Adobe. Those are important tools for interacting with the users and analyzing the user interactions with your wireframes, prototypes, and mockups.

Moreover, having a knack for some supplemental areas such as graphic design, computer science, information architecture, visual design, web programming, or UI design can be an invaluable asset for being an excellent UX engineer.

In fact, there are a plethora of successful UX engineers in the world without a degree or proper training. But what excelled them to be brilliant UX designers could be steady dedication and affection in their jobs — thus the passion. It’s a prominent trait. 

There are a lot of ways to learn UX capitalizing on free courses online. For example, Uxcel is an excellent UX designer course to enroll in. It is an exam-based module that follows strict industry standards in UX design. After finishing the course, you will be given a UX designer certification that will be a key advantage for you to have when looking for your next design opportunity.

What Are The Plus to Become a Successful UX Designer?

Getting the hang of the technical areas in UX design is important, but you must also process soft skills. Creativity is one great example as equally essential. You will be able to expect your perfect creation when your technical skills match up with your creativeness and other soft skills, for example, your enthusiasm, empathy, good communication, and time management.

A UX designer needs to be aware of the INs and OUTs of a business. Being curious is one of the most important aspects because you’ll never overlook something important.

Indeed, the UX design job requires you to be highly communicative. The ability to read the mind of your clients and quickly catch the nitty-gritty can be game-changing soft skills to be an excellent problem solver.

What Does Having UX Courses Completed Help Me With For My UX Career?  

Learning UX design and having yourself ready for the job/career prior to landing a job has some benefits you could enjoy. Let’s get it below. 

Good understanding of the UX designing process:

You can gain a strong foundation in the User Experience Design landscape that obviates some hurdles and learning curves when you are just starting out your career.

Learning what you will do at work prior to landing a job means a lot. Your deeper insight brought by an overall comprehension will boost your pace of learning in the practical sectors and you will learn things way faster than starting from scratch. 

Build a Network:

It’s a boon to start building a network with your peer groups. For example, your tutors, mentors, or even classmates that you learned together in your courses.

UX community platforms like Career Foundry can be a helpful place to start networking with like-minded people in the same field.

In addition to that, there are other great benefits you can capitalize on from those industry-specific online communities such as interacting/debating with other UX designers or even finding a job opportunity. 

Job Opportunities:

Well-crafted qualifications may help you land a UX job at your entry-level. Relevant UX design courses that you have completed prior to job landing can be a great aid to increase your possibility of a successful job hunt. 

After some experience, you’ll likely find people are more willing to talk to you,  regardless of your formal qualifications. But what they more look at is your portfolios and previous career. Indeed, the qualifications or a degree can’t beat the practical ability that moves the needle.  

UX design is a fast-paced industry. The trends and changes are rapid and it’s always evolving. Here, it explains why practical sense and working skills are more important than a degree in the UX design field.

To keep up with the latest technologies and trends, consistent work and ongoing experience come essentially for a UX designer. A good UX designer should be aggressive to learn and embrace new ideas to become more confident. It all counts on your career development that directly measures your career success.

Essential Traits of an Excellent UX designer:

Some qualities are always present in a successful UX designer and these make them special. A UX designer should be:

Empathetic:

A good UX designer should be able to understand the frustration and the pain of the users to make a great design. Once a designer can see things through the eyes of the customers, it becomes easier to understand the reason for the failure of a design.

Passionate:

Making a successful UX design is not a career path or is not a hobby, but it is a passion. The designer should be overwhelmed by the immense possibilities of the design, pattern, and user interaction to make a grand design.

Good collaborator:

A UX designer can’t work in isolation and there is no room for compartmentalized thinking as he has to move with a team. There can be people from various other disciplines and roles like UI designers, stakeholders, programmers, C-level executives, users, etc.

A continuous interaction needs to be made to crystallize an effective design for which the designer needs to be humble and receptive to suggestions.

Intrinsically motivated:

One of the most important traits of becoming a successful UX designer is that the designer should be a self-starter and should be genuinely interested in making a great design.

Tech-savvy:

In this digital world, it is very important to understand the changes in technology and a UX designer can be successful only when he loves to work with technology.

Possible for UX Designers to Work Remotely?

Since the UX designer job revolves around programming and software, there is a great possibility to work from home as a full-time remote employee.

It’s possible to complete most of the work outside the business premise. However, some designers might face some hurdles in the remote working environment, for example, a lack of communication opportunities with clients or colleagues and insufficient interaction which can affect the quality of creation considering UX design is often a collaborative job. 

That being said, there are many companies that hire remote workers for UX design. UX design job is made of so many remote-friendly job sectors like online surveys, analytic reviews, the analysis of the products of the competitors, the testing of the usability design, etc.

In fact, being a remote UX designer is a highly rewarding position and it’s one of the highest paying remote jobs across all the remote job industries.

How Can I Figure Out If UX Design Is Fit To Me?

Source: Reddit

Though a lot is to consider for choosing UX design as a career, it is always better to do the research yourself before deciding on the career path. 

To do your job research, there are many ways that help you decide. The internet is full of helpful resources that you can benefit from right away. Lots of career blogs or UX blogs are there too where you can figure out things that you need. 

Career Foundry is one blog you may enjoy getting tips and guidelines for your decision-making. Or Career Contessa is also a highly regarded career blog that you can research on UX design career. It’s countless information that will aid in your better decision.

When it comes to job research, nothing beats community forums or community groups on social media. You will find lots of UX designers’ groups there and they can be truly the best places for you to get advice or information based on “the real experiences” from the peer groups. 

Conclusion:

Working in UX designing can be very exciting as well as highly rewarding. If you have a formal qualification in User Experience design, it can further help you understand the theories and make a solid foundation ahead of your start.

When you start your job as a fresh UX engineer, you can further hone your skills by putting yourself out there and learning from people in the industry. You will gain access to the evolving technologies and gain practical work experience that will solidify your portfolios.

The beginning is hard. And harder when learning curves are there. But a long way of learning curves means you are going through to achieve your valuable specialty for you, on the other hand. 

Your hard work will pay back!