10 tips to get into UX without a bootcamp
How I changed careers at 39.
There are already quite a few ‘how to get into UX’ articles out there, I know this because about a year ago I read pretty much all of them. After some careful consideration, I decided the world needed another article 😉
Seriously though I believe everyone’s journey into UX is different so I thought I’d share what worked (and didn’t work!) for me. I didn’t have a spare £5k+ for a UX bootcamp, so had to find more affordable alternatives. And it is possible! I hope some of these tips are useful to you.
A bit of background…
I changed careers later in life after working in IT for around 18 years. I’d always wanted to do something creative, and after doing a bit of web design and discovering this thing called UX, I knew the direction I wanted to go. Here’s how I did it.
1. Have a plan
Work out the steps you need to take to get your first UX job, and by when. Do you have a target date? I had decided to opt for redundancy at work due to a restructure, so I had a year to prepare before I left the company. This was scary but also motivational, as I had a clear date to aim for.
I mapped out a project plan (basically a massive Google sheet), with a list of actions and target dates. This eventually grew to be my central place for useful UX links and resources, and I still use it now.
Creating a plan really helped me divide everything into small achievable steps and figure out what I needed to focus on first, rather than being completely overwhelmed with the sheer amount of work I’d need to do.
Also seeing my progress as I ticked things off really helped keep me motivated.
Deciding which order to do things was sometimes difficult, but I started with finding a training course, and writing up case studies for the UX projects I’d already completed.
2. Take a UX course
The most obvious one — but it’s good to get a solid grounding in UX by taking a course, especially if you lack the experience. There are plenty of UX courses out there, some are very good value or even free.
Bootcamps such as General Assembly are very pricy so this just wasn’t an option for me. I originally wanted to complete a Human Factors International certification after taking one of their courses, but when my employer was no longer going to pay (due to my upcoming redundancy) I looked for alternatives.
I took the Userfocus BCS Foundation course which I thought was good value and then went on to pass the BCS exam to become certified. The course is £1295 + VAT, and the exam fee was included.
There is also a Udemy course available which David Travis at Userfocus has put together, this covers a lot of the same content and helps you prepare for the BCS exam if you wish to take it.
https://www.udemy.com/ultimate-guide-to-ux/
I asked a few people in the industry at the time and they all said that experience was more important than a UX certification, but as I was just starting out I felt it was something that would add value. The course was great and I’d thoroughly recommend it.
I also recently discovered the Interaction Design Foundation (I wish I’d known about them a year ago!) and would also recommend their online courses. Membership is £120 for a year and you can take unlimited courses.
Also here’s an article listing all the free training courses available out there:
3. Read read read
…as many articles as you can to learn the UX terminology — there are plenty out there and Medium is great for this.
If you’re not on Twitter, now is a good time to start. I set aside 10 minutes in the morning to read various articles, and also set myself a goal of sharing one UX related article on Twitter each day.
I then saved the good ones to my Chrome bookmarks to refer back to. Pocket is also good to save articles you want to read later.
The only downside to this was that I often found that I would be in such a hurry to share ‘something’ I spent less time focusing on actually reading the information in the article properly. I now try to read more and share less.
Here are some websites and blogs I also recommend subscribing to:
4. Do some UX work at your current company
In theory any business can adopt a more user centred approach, so if you can influence your current employer to do some user testing, research, or user-centred design, then this can be great experience to help you get your first UX role.
Does the company website need a revamp, are there any potential usability issues you can see? Does anyone do any research with customers to find out their needs?
I convinced my manager to let me have the Adobe CC suite and worked on several projects, creating graphic design elements and doing user testing whenever we implemented a new system. I also provided consultancy for the company intranet and Sharepoint document management system, and I worked with different business areas to provide guidance on how to maintain their sites and ensure they were easy to use from an end user perspective.
If you are unsure how to start, draft up a proposal showing how you would carry out the research or testing, and try and get buy-in from key stakeholders. Alternatively you could just do some quick testing with family or friends and then present your results back.
Beware of confidential data if you are doing any sneak testing though, and make sure that the information you are showing is publicly accessible.
5. Learn the tools
Work out which tools you need to learn. Sketch for design and InVision for prototyping seem to be common at the moment in UX, as well as the Adobe suite for design. You can even get away with creating basic wireframes in Sketch without needing to use a separate wireframing tool like Balsamiq as well.
There are lots of free resources available for Sketch such as UI kits and icons:
Sketch is fairly affordable if you want to buy a licence yourself ($99) to learn it at home, and InVision also comes with a starter edition. This is the route I took, although I also bought a year’s worth of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite so I could be confident with the tools available but I’m currently thinking that I won’t renew, which will save me £600 a year.
Marvel is also great for prototyping, I set up a free account to create a couple of online examples for my portfolio.
6. Create a portfolio
Speaking of which you will need a portfolio for your UX case studies. Websites are the norm and look professional, although you could get away with a PDF version which you could share online and in interviews. PDFs also allow you to tailor your portfolio for the role you are applying for.
I chose the option to buy a Wordpress template for my portfolio website, as I thought it would be best to concentrate on building up my UX skills rather learning to code it from scratch.
However I regret that decision as the template I used was VERY time consuming to set up and make changes. The amount of time I spent fiddling about and raising support tickets, I could have coded my own version. Next time!
If you need some content for your portfolio (and this is advice I got from my course trainer David Travis) then carry out a UX case study for a charity website, or a website that you think needs improvement. Do some usability testing with colleagues and friends, and write about how you would improve it. This can go a long way to show that you know the UX process.
Another option is to team up with a developer and work on a side project together. In my spare time I worked on a project with a friend from work, this is the result.
Attending a hackathon is another way to create something that you can add to your portfolio.
This article talks about how to make your portfolio stand out in a sea of others:
7. Online presence
Make sure your online profile is up to scratch. If you haven’t already, lock down Facebook so that only your profile photo is seen by the public, not that album from Magaluf in 2009. Things like MySpace also have a habit of hanging around and can sometimes be the first thing that appears when you’re Googled :)
Update your LinkedIn profile so that it’s more UX focused, and make sure your profile picture is professional (taking it in an office environment helps).
Ask some colleagues to write testimonials for you.
If you only have a few LinkedIn connections, get adding! I did a random search for UX Designers and added quite a few of them, along with a message along these lines:
Hi Jon,
I hope you don’t mind me getting in touch but I’m just starting out in UX Design so am hoping to grow my network and connect with some like-minded UX people.
Some accepted, some didn’t, and also I didn’t really mind if I seemed like a stalker 😄 It’s important to build up your UX network, also you never know when a role might come along through via one of your connections.
Here’s a good article with some LinkedIn tips:
8. Go to Meetups
Networking is important when starting out, even if the thought of it makes you cringe. My friends used to tease me about my ‘geek meetups’ but they turned out to be really valuable.
Join Meetup.com to find UX events in your area. I found it really helpful speaking to fellow UXers who were also starting out to get tips and generally moan to each other about the job hunting process.
These events are also great for making connections with influential people in the industry. I got my current role through one of the speakers at a meetup I’d attended, after I saw a job they posted on LinkedIn. Thanks Chaymae Lougmani 😄
I got some business cards printed for these events but I only ended up giving out one in total. If you don’t already have them printed, they’re not essential — you can just add people on LinkedIn when you get chatting to them, which is much less formal.
Meetups and events I recommend:
Note: the UXPA hold an annual careers event in the summer, where you can get advice on your portfolio and speak to hiring companies —the advice I got was really helpful!
9. Find a mentor
A mentor is very valuable when you’re starting out in UX and feeling a bit lost and unsure of how to approach things. I’d recommend investing the time to find one and to meet up with them every now and then, whether it’s face-to-face, over Skype or just over the phone.
Meetups are a good place to get chatting to more senior UX people, as well as on training courses. Offer to buy someone coffee in exchange for some advice on a few things. You’ll be surprised at how helpful and generous people can be.
Here’s an article that talks about mentorship in more detail:
Candles has been created with the aim of helping people in UX find a mentor. At the moment it takes the form of a Slack channel but the founders are launching a new mentoring platform soon.
It’s a community of around 3000 UX designers, and everyone is really helpful if you have any questions:
10. Avoid burnout
It took a huge amount of effort to get through all of the above. Breaking everything down into manageable steps really helped though.
If you realise that you’re losing energy and motivation, take a break for a few hours / days / however long you need, and do something completely different.
Go to the gym, meditate, read, do whatever you need to relax and take your mind away from UX, as it can seem like complete overload at times.
I didn’t follow this advice very well and I found myself turning down invitations to go to the pub, or cinema, or dinner out, so I could study.
This really isn’t healthy and I wouldn’t recommend it!
So make sure you factor in some relaxation time in your plan. Like this guy:
Before you go
I’m interested to hear other people’s thoughts around getting into UX and what helped them, so please get in touch if you have any comments or questions.
If you’d like to say hello, drop me an email at hello@gemmasweeney.com or connect via LinkedIn. And my portfolio is gemmasweeney.com.
If you enjoyed this, you might like reading my other UX articles:
Charity website: a UX case study
Designing voice interactions with Alexa: a hackathon
Bulb energy: a UX case study
Icons made by Freepik and Flaticon from www.flaticon.com
