How-To

Career Tips: How to Become a UX Designer

With dynamic progress of technology and its integration into all the facets of human life, new professionals are on demand in creative spheres. One of the popular positions is UX Designers, and the question “How to become a UX designer” gets more and more popular. In this post, Icons8 founder Ivan Braun shares his experience with a bunch of useful tips and links for newbies.

Practice

Short how-to:

Design something
Do usability testing

Detailed steps:

1. Read About Face by Alan Cooper — I like it for being practical (unlike another book which is frequently recommended for beginners: Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman). My post about the book
2. Install Axure RP or some other rapid prototyping tool (the link goes to Cooper’s agency too. I swear I don’t have any affiliation with Cooper)
3. Make an interactive prototype of something
4. Read a book about usability testing. There are many; I like those that speak less about ideal usability lab setup – you won’t have it anyway. I like the book called Remote Research.
5. Make a usability study using your friends. Friends probably aren’t your target audience, but they’ll do fine at this stage.

But hey, no cheating: automated testing like User Experience Research Platform is not the same!

During the test, learn not to interrupt users and not to help them completing the task. If you’ve mastered it, congratulations: the hardest part is over.
Learn that you’ve designed it wrong, most part of your prototype.
Fix it.
Go to step 5.

Feel Good?
And know what? Congratulations! You’re one of a few designers who actually test their prototypes. The duality of the profession is:

Most designers understand the importance of usability testing
Most designers don’t test

You’re on a steep learning curve now. See how it feels? What you feel now is the peace of mind that most UX designers never achieve.

Theory

It’s not random that theory goes AFTER practice in this article. I recommended Alan Cooper’s book in the very beginning to “get a taste of the field”, before you jump into action. But that’s not enough.

Now that your first usability study is over you are ready to digest some theory. Otherwise, without practice theory just won’t stick in your head and will be as memorable as titles after a movie.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.
-Immanuel Kant

If you go right to googling “best books on UX” there will be a plenty of lists with books. It won’t hurt if you read them all. But if you’re looking for one that will drastically up your game…

I don’t know just one. I’m sorry. I know a few others, for starters:

Thinking, Fast and Slow – mental patterns, decisions – everything that’s relevant to your participant’s thought process is of a value to a UX designer.
The Social Animal – may be kind of a stretch to put such a serious book here. You may skip it for now, but don’t forget it’s in your best interest to understand people as good as possible in this field.
The Art of Choosing – a good complement to “Thinking, Fast and Slow”.
Universal Principles of Design – I like to skip over this one from time to time when I want to find new angles during UX studies. Pick any random page and try applying it to your product. It’s usually a rewarding experience or pure fun.

Why these? Because I think in order to understand the “whys” behind other people’s choices, you first need to understand yours. That will make you a passive observer, a truth-seeker, rather than one more subjective opinion of someone, who tested a product with users.

Conclusion

I’m sorry for repeating this phrase, but I think it’s paramount for becoming a successful UX designer:

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.
-Immanuel Kant

For some, it will be easy to read the books and hard to actually approach users and talk to them. For others, it would be extremely difficult to exclude “I” or “my opinion” and become a “spectator”.

Some don’t like to read and ignore theory, fully relying on his/her intuition.

All I can say is that you should use your strong suits but develop the rest as well. If you develop these skills you will be able to choose from a wide pool of UX designer jobs. For the convoy’s speed is the speed of its slowest part.

Some of the websites you can use to search for UX designer jobs:

About the Author
Ivan is a UI/UX designer who made it his credo to test all prototypes before releasing them. Even when they are made not by him. Even when they are not made by the Icons8 team.