How do you enhance your UX design skills once you are finished with your training? Education and experience are the key. Study design principles and tools to get a deeper understanding and complete design exercises to help you improve your skills and find more jobs.
Become a Life-long Learner
You may have landed your first UX design job, but that doesn’t mean you stop learning. If you want to progress along your career path, you need to work on building new skills and improving those you already have. Educate yourself by reading articles, listening to podcasts, and attending design conferences. Get used to constantly learning.
Become Familiar with Foundational Concepts and Principles of Design
Just because you aren’t in school anymore doesn’t mean you can leave what you learned behind. Make a point of focusing on the principles of good UX design and gaining a deeper understanding of them.
Principles of UX Design
- Visibility
- Feedback
- Limited choices
- Clear mapping
- Consistency
- Affordance
Improving your other skills will also help you gain a promotion. Some design-related areas to work on are:
- Project management
- Group Facilitation
- Writing
- Public Speaking
- Visual Design
- Data Analysis/analytics
- Data visualization
- Market research
- Content strategy
- Instructional design
Other skills that you should pay attention to are::
- Communication
- Empathy
- Listening
- Teamwork/collaboration
- Problem-solving
- Design
- Technical expertise
- Business understanding
Bootcamps and Certificate Programs
UX/UI design bootcamps and certificate programs are intensive classes held over a span of a few days to several months in which participants learn the principles of design and how to use software products for digital design. You don’t need to have any prior experience to take the courses.
For example, in Noble Desktop’s UX Design Bootcamp you will learn the fundamentals of conducting user research, creating user scenarios and personas, and building user flows. You’ll sketch, wireframe, prototype, and test with user interviews, then present findings to the class. This intensive UX class prepares you to understand the basics of user experience practice with class assignments designed to help you compile a professional portfolio.
Bootcamps and certificate programs provide hands-on experience that can help you get a job after the program is over. Some schools even give tuition refunds if you don’t get a job within several months. Some programs also provide a mentor to help students prepare for the job search.
Discover Your Weaknesses and Improve upon Them
Before you can progress, you need to identify what might hold you back. Take an honest look at your skill set, and if you need more input, ask a trusted colleague to tell you where you are weakest. And this doesn’t go only for design skills. Interpersonal skills are important, too. You are more likely to be promoted if you meet your deadlines reliably and follow through on what you say you will do. Keep your team members informed of your progress and if you are having a problem, give the team a warning that your portion may be late and ask for help.
Build a Strong Portfolio
A strong portfolio is the best way to showcase your abilities as a UX Designer. This hands-on collection of work demonstrates your design philosophy and past work. Ideally, you should choose three to five examples of your best work.
Feel free to express your creativity when creating or updating your portfolio; that is part of what being a Designer is all about. That said, most UX design portfolios include three basic sections: a personal introduction, a collection of case studies, and contact information.
You can organize the portfolio however you like. Some people choose to have a landing page with links to different sections, while others prefer everything on one page with clickable ‘read more’ buttons. However you choose to set up your portfolio, be sure to maintain consistency in layout and visual elements. It is also a good idea to use a photo or logo at the top of the page. This will be the first thing visitors to your page see, so it should be attractive and eye-catching.
The next section shows your work. Some people use logos from companies they have worked for and others use high-quality images from past work as entry points for case studies. Include a summary of the project and what you did next to the image. It is becoming more common to include gifs and videos in portfolios to catch the attention of recruiters and hiring managers. A short video introduction can be a good attention getter, as is a video montage of different work.
Above all, be sure that your portfolio reflects your best. Use examples of the best work you have done with the highest quality images. Make sure that there are no spelling or punctuation errors because this is a sign of sloppy work.
Practice
When you are an experienced Designer, choosing only three of your best projects can be a challenge, but what if you are new to UX design, where can you get examples for a portfolio if you haven’t worked as a Designer yet? Volunteer work and hackathons can give you extra practice to sharpen your skills.
Volunteer Work
In order to gain experience and collect examples for your portfolio, you can volunteer to do design work for charities and non-profits. You can also create designs for friends.
Hackathons
Hackathons are weekend gatherings of students and beginners interested in design and web development. The goal is to create and code a design in a weekend, and this can help you beef up your portfolio. Remember, showing the process and how you think is more important than the final product. Plus, there is usually free food!
Find a Mentor
If you need some extra help updating your portfolio or building skills, another helpful tip is to find a mentor. This is a more experienced person who has worked in UX design for a while. Having someone to turn to if you need to ask a question, get feedback on a portfolio or design, or are looking for career information, can be highly beneficial.
The connection between a mentor and their mentee is a relationship and like any relationship, it evolves over time. It starts out more formal and if the fit is right, becomes more like a pleasant business connection or even a friendship. Like any relationship, mentorship needs to be fostered to build trust. You wouldn’t walk up to a stranger and just start pouring your heart out, so you don’t want to do that with someone you would like to have as a mentor, either. So how do you find a mentor?
Use the Design Network
Hopefully, you have joined one of the online design communities like LinkedIn, X (formerly known as Twitter), Dribbble, Medium, YouTube, or Instagram by now. Reach out to designers whose work you like and ask questions. Start off by asking for advice, but don’t jump right in by asking them to be your mentor. The best mentorship is between people who have a relationship, so find a person you think has something to teach you and approach them via comments or email. Be succinct and respectful and don’t expect an immediate response. Professionals are busy and many tend to schedule responding to correspondence weekly or even monthly, so don’t snap back in a few days if you don’t hear anything. Be patient.
Build a Rapport
Once you have established a relationship and have been in contact with a person who you think would make a good mentor, you can reach out and ask them, but keep in mind that they might say no. In this case, have a backup plan such as asking if they could give you some direction or ideas where to find more guidance.
Improve Your UX Design Skills
If you would like to learn how to use software like Adobe XD to improve your UX design skills, one of the best ways to do that is to sign up for classes. You can choose classes that meet in-person or online to learn XD, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Some people prefer to attend brick-and-mortar sessions when learning new information, but that isn’t always available. Live online classes have a similar set-up with a real-time, remote instructor who can answer questions and take control of your monitor—with permission—to show you how to do things. Training is part or full-time and available weekdays, weeknights, or weekends.
The best way to prepare for a career shift to a field like UX design is to enroll in a bootcamp or certificate program. These are intensive training courses that run from a few weeks to a few months and will cover the design process and software in much more depth than tutorials can. Another plus of training is that you will leave class with a professional-quality portfolio that you can show to prospective employers.
Conclusion
It’s easy to take UX design classes and start a new career. Choose between in-person sessions in NYC at Noble’s location or sign up for live online UX design courses and attend from anywhere. Find UX bootcamps in your area and get started in a new direction today.