So You Want A Job In “UX”
So you’re interested in getting a job as a UX Designer? That’s great! You’ve come to the right place.
My career in tech began around 2000 as a front end web developer. Early in my career a lot of my time was spent teaching the designers I worked with — many of whom came from print and graphic design backgrounds—how to apply their design skills to the web. In 2007/08, after a brief stint as an Information Architect, I transitioned officially into a role as a User Experience Designer because I was spending more of my time documenting who we were making the websites and applications for and how they should work than actually coding them.
After being a front end web developer and designer, and after a brief stint as an Information Architect, I transitioned full time into a “UX Designer” role sometime around 2007
Since then, interest in the field has grown quite a bit. I’ve been a design practitioner, built and led design teams at agencies, consultancies, a start-up, and large companies. I’ve also worked as an independent contractor. I’ve taught a graduate level university course on design innovation, led workshops, and done keynote presentations at US and international design conferences. I even wrote a book about designing product visions.
I’ve also made a ton of mistakes through the years and have learned several lessons from those mistakes. Hopefully, this article can give you a head start and help you avoid some of the mistakes I made along the way.
Phase 1: Getting Started
Whether you’re self-taught, you attended a design boot camp, or have years of formal education, there’s no single right way to start a career in design. From my standpoint, practical experience + results are king, and it’s more important than your educational background. Here are some overarching themes that will certainly give you an advantage in a highly competitive market:
The ability to communicate is paramount — In my experience, the best designers are the best communicators. The ability to listen deeply, ask great questions, influence others, negotiate, provide feedback, present and defend your work, and facilitate tough conversations (without being a jerk) is far more important than how proficiently you can use Figma, Xd, Sketch, Framer, Axure, or any other design software. Don’t get me wrong, you need to be proficient with the tools, but spend as much time (or more) practicing and honing your communication skills.
People skills are very important – Unless you’re one of an extremely rare breed capable of deeply understanding and empathizing with user needs, creating profitable business models, designing intuitive and aesthetic interfaces, and programming those interfaces all on your own, you’re going to need some help. Being able to collaborate and work well with others is a tremendously valuable and underrated skill.
Understand the technology – My background as a developer definitely made me a better designer. No, I’m not saying that you have to learn how to code to be a good designer (it doesn’t hurt though), but you must at least understand the medium for which you’re designing. Great design considers form and function. If you don’t have a clue about the limits of how something functions, you won’t be able to design for it.
Practice, practice, practice ➡ portfolio – The more time you spend designing, the better you’ll get. When you’re first starting out, look for every opportunity to practice your craft. Enter design competitions. Design and build websites for yourself, for friends, for local nonprofits and small businesses. Prioritize internship opportunities. Do the work for free at first, but start charging for your services as soon as you can. Look for jobs that you can pick up on freelancing sites like Fiverr. Then take the best examples from all of the work you’ve done and put them into a portfolio (make sure to get permission from anyone whose work you’re including in the portfolio site). Ask your best clients for testimonials and references to get more work.
There is no shortcut here. Gaining those skills and experience is a grind and can take several months to several years—it’s not an overnight process. Don’t believe anyone trying to convince you that you can land a six-figure salary and stock options at your favorite tech company after spending a few weeks in a UX bootcamp. They’re trying to scam you.
As a hiring manager, when considering applicants for entry-level design roles, I will only interview candidates that have a portfolio and enough of a combination of training and experience to be able to make meaningful contributions to the team within weeks of starting. Even interns need to show some level of design competency and experience during the recruitment and interview process. I’m unaware of any legitimate jobs that will pay people to be designers without a shred of experience.
A laughable and contradictory Google search result (Step 4 – Get experience 🤪)
Phase 2: Entering The Job Market
Once you’ve gained enough experience to build a network of references who can vouch for your work and a portfolio that illustrates your methods and skills, you may be ready to hit the job market. Of course, you may also decide to continue being your own boss as an independent contractor. Personally, I often found myself stressed out about how to find “the next client” even though it was never really a problem.
The first consideration when entering the job market is what type of organization you want to work for. Every company is unique, but as someone who’s spent time as a designer at different types of businesses, I can shed some light on the pros & cons of three of the most common types of businesses that employ UX professionals. These are generalizations:
The Start Up – High risk and high upside. Depending on the size and stage, you may be working with a very small team. You may even be the only designer – responsible for conducting user research, interaction design, UI design, branding, marketing, social media posts, content, customer support, even some software development if you’re capable. You’ll have to be scrappy and work almost all of the time, but you’ll likely also have a large influence on the overall experience of the product you’re trying to get to market. You’ll be underpaid relative to the amount of work you’re doing because “equity”. You might have to steal internet access from a local coffee shop. One week your paycheck may not clear. The next you may be unemployed. If you’re very, very, very lucky, you may get acquired or even go public (IPO) and become quite wealthy.
The Agency – Variety of projects and gruelling schedule. If you want to experience an array of different clients, industries, people, and projects, agency (or consultancy) life may be for you. Quite a bit of travel can be part of the package, but that can be exciting when you’re young and unencumbered by financial or family obligations. Agencies are all about meeting deadlines and billable hours. You’ll fly into a new city at 8pm, be up working on a pitch in your hotel room until 3:30am, and need to be onsite to deliver that same pitch to a potential client by 9:00am. You’ll be told by an account executive and creative director to do spec work to land a whale (a very large client). You will get to work with cool, creative, and smart people – many of whom will make impossible promises to clients that you will have to deal with later. You’ll get a lot of practice presenting your work, and you get to expense client dinners. You’ll be exhausted, but you won’t be bored.
The Corporate Job – More stability and more politics. You will probably get to work with a larger team that focuses on different specialties within product design. You may have a dedicated design and/or market research team to partner with. You’ll have training and development opportunities that will help you mature and grow your career. Your boss will have a boss who has a boss who has a boss… Your paychecks will clear, and your hours will be fairly predictable. You get PTO, a 401k, health insurance, and you may be entitled to an annual bonus or stock options depending on the industry you work in. You’ll get annoyed by middle-managers who encourage you to follow the process and insist, “we’ve always done it this way.” You’ll get to stick with one product, observe the users, and improve the experience over time. Your work may be seen, used, loved, or hated by several thousands – even millions of users. Things will move very slowly.
Once you’ve determined the best type of organization for you professionally, there are some additional things to be aware of as you embark on your career in design:
1. UI/UX Is A Red Flag 🚩
Bottom line: I would advise any early career designer against applying for a job with “UI/UX” (or “UX/UI”) in the title or job description. In the majority of cases, this is a clear sign that product design is an immature capability within that organization, and management is likely unclear about how to actually work with designers.
2. Be Clear About Your Specific Skills & Strengths
When you’re interviewing for any prospective UX role, make sure that you’re able to get a clear understanding of your day-to-day responsibilities. Some employers are looking for people who are primarily visual designers or primarily research oriented. Some will expect candidates to have strong programming skills. Some will expect all of the above. Be clear about your specific skills and how they may compliment what the potential employer is seeking.
3. Design Is A Team Sport
You may be working with other designers, you may be an individual contributor. Regardless, you will be working with teammates from a variety of functions, e.g., software developers, product or project management, business stakeholders, subject matter experts, marketers, sales/account executives, quality assurance, content creators, customer support, etc. As I noted earlier, the ability to communicate and collaborate effectively with a variety of colleagues—colleagues who don’t speak/think like designers—is critical. Do what you can to build relationships with these teammates and invite them into your design process. It’s not design by committee; it’s pulling the curtain back on the process to build transparency about how design gets done.
4. Your Job Is To Influence Others
If you take my advice from #3 and build strong relationships with your colleagues, the influence will come more easily. Design doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You will be required to present your work and convince others that it’s an effective design solution. You will need to convince developers who tell you “it’s impossible” that it’s actually possible. You should use research and feedback from users to help make your case. Be prepared to debate and defend your work.
5. Everyone Wants To Be A Designer
When I was a developer, it was much easier to tell people what could or could not be done because most people simply don’t know how to write code. As a designer, you don’t have that luxury. Everyone has opinions about design. Everyone feels empowered to share their opinions about design. Sometimes, people will even do design work for you by sketching up some user flows or wireframes for you (how thoughtful of them!). Part of your job—and your management’s job—is to remind people about the difference between opinions and expertise. Do your best not to be offended when people feel comfortable sharing their design opinions with you (sometimes those opinions may actually be really good!), but don’t hesitate to politely remind those people that you were hired based on your design expertise and experience.
6. Fall In Love With The Problem
Last, but certainly not least, fall in love with the users’ problems – not your design solutions. Too often, early career designers treat their designs as precious children that must be sheltered and defended at any cost. The sooner you learn that your solution is just one of nearly an infinite number of possible solutions to solve a user’s problem, the better. Don’t obsess over creating the perfect prototype, the perfect shade of blue, the perfect call to action, the perfect drop shadow, the perfect user flow, etc. Obsess over deeply understanding and empathizing with the users and their problems and/or “Jobs to be done.” Iterate and measure the effectiveness of your solutions quickly in order to solve those problems.
If you’re a designer in any phase of your career and you’re looking to break into the industry or make a career change, please feel free to get in touch. If you’re a hiring manager looking to bring in top tier design talent, I’m happy to hep with that as well!
Originally published on Medium.
