With the tremendous growth of the tech industry in recent years, the demand for tech professionals especially in UX design has also increased significantly. The opportunities to become a UX designer are plentiful, but individuals with the required skill are few. Due to this teeming demand, many online and offline academies have either made these skills completely free or subsidized them to a significantly low amount.
UX design is one of the most sought after tech skills. This article will tell you how you can become a UX designer without a degree and stack up all those bucks.
UX designers are the bridge between what a user is looking for and what the company is looking to achieve. To become a UX designer, it is important to understand the importance of the role as UX designers are currently in high demand. One of the top user research companies – Nielsen Norman Group ran a survey of 963 individuals who transitioned to UX design and have now become professionals in the field. The firm discovered from the survey that these individuals were highly paid, independent and extremely happy with their chosen career path. And when asked to rate their career and job satisfaction as UX designers, the result showed that these UX designers loved their job 17 times more than they hated it.
And just as the skill is a sought after skill, UX designers are paid well as the average salary for UX professionals is $87,000.
Unfortunately, To become a UX designer, you must have a good knowledge of design and acquire the necessary UX design skills, fortunately, you do not need a degree for it. Most people who are thriving in this career or just growing an interest in the skill, did not require a university degree for it. To become a UX designer, you mostly do not have to study in a higher institution for four or five years. One can become a UX designer and be an expert in the field in a very short time with so many UX resources available on the internet and beyond. While 90% of UX designers have a university degree, only a few had a degree relevant to UX design itself. This further reinforces that anyone with enough interest and dedication and who can learn fast can find their calling in UX.
Here are some tips on how to become a UX designer without a degree.
Pick an Interest in UX design
To become a UX designer and to succeed in the UX design industry, you need to have a genuine interest in UX design. You must be passionate about design. In order to understand the rudiments of a knowledge-based program, first, interest is required. Without interest, it may be quite difficult to comprehend its complexities. Once you identify your passion for design, your journey can now begin properly.
To become a UX designer, you must learn the skills. You need to find a place where you can learn and shape your knowledge in UX design. On the internet, you can take a couple of Free courses. Some of these courses include the Google UX design certificate course and other courses which are available on Coursera, Udemy, Udacity, Pluralsight for online and self taught learning, while you can consult with a UX designer for one on one training and mentorship.
Learn The Skills
One key thing to note is that dedication is very important especially for the free classes. Oftentimes than not, because some of the classes are free, individuals tend to treat them with kid gloves. It is believed that people often do not value what they get for free, but to become a UX designer and a successful one, it is important to be very dedicated and committed to all of the learning processes.
Test Your Skills
To become a UX designer, it is important to conduct a skill testing process where you test and learn more about what skills you possess and what skills still need to be developed. You can test your skill on SimplifiedUX. A platform created to help new and existing designers test and grow their UX design skills. You can test your Wireframing skills, prototyping skills, how good are your user research skills? Persona development? Etc. SimplifiedUX has been designed to help you know your skill level, set skill goals and meet mentors who will help you grow and finesse your skills.
Create Learning Experiences
You cannot fully become a UX designer until you have started building products. It is time to look for different design challenges to get you started. Practicing on actual designs helps to improve your basic design skills like attention to detail, your color discernment and other little aspects of UX design. It will improve your design speed and sharpen your expertise. The more designs you work on, the better you get at designing, this practice also helps to build your portfolio. Your design portfolio is like your design CV, it is where you document all the designs you have worked on and it is what you provide to your client or employer, when you are looking to secure a design job.
Join a Community
Joining a UX community will give you access to further knowledge and insights about the industry, a community will help you network and grow in the industry. You will be exposed to ideas about the constantly growing field of UX, and you will get opportunities that’ll allow you to create and gain value for and from the people in the community.
To become a UX designer, it is important to become involved in the local UX community. Join social media communities like UX Twitter spaces, UX Twitter communities, Facebook groups, etc. look out for local UX meetups, you can find some on Meetup.com, or you can check out the UX community on Slack.
A community is as important as learning a skill. Join a community and you can easily find and mentor who will help you grow
