4 things you’ve been told about becoming a UX designer.. which are wrong
Starting my career
When I first started off in my career there were a number of beliefs I had about being a UX designer and I remember spending a lot of time worrying about them and letting them impact my confidence as a designer. Over time I very quickly learnt how untrue and often ridiculous these beliefs I had were. They may have come from a colleague or a blog post I read and I clung to these ‘myths’ - So I want to go through a few that I want to straighten out just in case anyone else is worrying about them!
Myth #1
You need to be good at EVERY PART of the design process.
You absolutely do not. In fact it is much better if you decide to focus on one area and become great at that. For example in the companies where I have worked, we try to identify each team members skills, whether that is interaction design, research, information architecture, visual design etc etc.
We then put these designers on projects that are most suited to them and we also try to find designers who fill the gaps we don’t have.
Yes it’s true that sometimes in companies, especially early start ups you have to have a degree of skill across all areas, however for those companies you’re expertise within each area doesn’t need to go as deep as if you specialised.
I always see it as being T shaped. Pick one or two areas you enjoy and want to strengthen and have some knowledge of the other areas.
Skill Matrix
Many design teams use a matrix like this to identify the different skills of their designers.
They then hire more talent to fill the gaps they don’t currently have in a team.
Myth #2
The design market is saturated
You will hear that there are huge numbers of people coming into the design market - people who have just graduated from University, graduated from a boot camp, moved across from another career. Firstly isn’t this the case for every career? Every year people graduate from University and move across from other careers.
But then every year we have new companies and growing companies who require more talent. In 2020 there was a 289% increase in employers’ interest in UX design in the UK. The report by Hired.com also found that “UX design was one of the skills with the biggest gap in supply and demand” (Interaction Design Foundation).
There has also been “increased levels of money going into UK tech and a 50% rise in overall UK tech jobs advertised this year compared to 2020.. with 2.3x more money flowing into UK tech from last year’s figures of £11.5 billion” (Gov.uk).
Let’s not forget the how more traditional companies have been pushed to adopt more tech practices due to the pandemic.
This trend will only continue to grow. So yes there is an increase in the the number of designers, but there is an overwhelming bigger increase in the number of companies who require design talent.
Myth #3
I have to spend a lot of money on bootcamps and qualifications
I did my first UX boot camp 2 years after working as a junior designer. It cost me £4,500. It was an intense 5 day course. It was a lot of fun, but it was not of value. I did not apply anything that I could use during my day to day job. It was all theory based and extremely basic.
Since then I have watched a lot of YouTube videos and read many articles and I have learnt much more from these.
It is also important for me to note that the majority of what I have learnt was on the job. I don’t know if this is what you want to hear, but I genuinely recommend putting all your time and effort into finding a job (which is very possible, regardless of whether you have experience or not - remember the increase in demand I mentioned above). Once you have your job I would start learning things which apply to what your role needs, instead of generic design topics. For example I learnt how to create a paper prototype during my boot camp - I have never needed to create a paper prototype especially when it’s quicker, easier and just as cheap to create an InVision prototype, or even a PDF prototype! So learn about what you will actually need to do on the job. And if you’re not sure, there are many designers like me who are willing to help you with this! Send me an email to uxdchat@gmail.com or message me on Instagram.
Myth #4
Need to be able to code
If anybody is saying this to you in 2022.. run. Run away from them.
Jokes aside, I was told throughout my first job that I HAD to be able to learn to code, even if it was just the basics, so I would spend hours trying to watch videos, try tutorials.. all of which I would fail at because there wasn’t a single part of me that enjoyed coding.
You do not need to know how to code. I don’t know how to write a single line of code - however I manage completely fine in my role and have done for years. Nobody expects this. We have developers for a reason. What you do however need to be able to do is understand how certain ways of building things can impact your designs. However this is something you will start to learn as you design and show developers your designers - my tip is show developers your sketches as soon as you have something and they will be more than happy to tell you how it will be for them to build.
Working with developers
This is a core skill for a designer. You will pick this up on the job. The developers I’ve worked with have always been extremely helpful and they will guide you on what they need is no need for worry!
Conclusion
I hope you found this valuable and hopefully if you had any of these concerns, this post was able to reassure you - if you have any other myths or comments you’ve heard about being a UX designer and you’re not sure then send me a message on uxdchat@gmail.com or send me a DM on Instagram and I’ll be happy to discuss it with you! Becoming a designer is not a huge difficult process - it takes a lot of hard work but we’re lucky we live in a time where there are so many resources out there for free and so many people willing to help make this easier!
Hope this helped at least one future designer and I’ll speak to you guys soon!
Ax
