How I'm designing my own UX design career
A self-taught journey of 651 hours and $78.10 invested
Portuguese version of this journey (with animated illustrations):
A year ago I decided I wanted to change my career. Since I graduated from college in Social Communication I’ve been working as a video editor (mainly of commercial and corporate training videos), for 6 years.
After a few readings and talking, I decided to transition into UX design.
It's been an interesting journey for me and here I'll tell you what I've done so far.
My Journey Map
I created this map to give a better view of all the key points of my journey. Check it out:
About the books I’ve read, I mentioned above only the ones I believe are related to soft and hard skills in UX.
It might sound weird that I put “Positive Discipline” since it’s especially a book/model for parental education. I put it there because it has all to do with empathy, listening, effective communication, being kind and assertive, and developing a mutually respectful relationship.
The Spark
My career change started when I quit my job of video editing to travel to the USA and Europe with my husband, Renato. The goals of this trip were to practice English through immersion, experience a new culture, and have different challenges, like exchanging work for accommodation.
It wasn’t that simple, but briefly, we traveled for 4 months with no plans.
We stayed on a farm, in a hostel, and some of his friends’ houses. The decision to come back to Brazil was due to our budget and the feeling we’ve reached our goals.
Deliverables
- Video Demoreel — Activities on Worldpackers
- Video Sample for the host of the farm
- Drawings of the 30-day challenge
- Pictures of the experience (bellow)
January to March 2018
During these 4 months away I thought of many things, such as my career. I liked editing videos but not for a living.
I wanted to learn something new and I had no idea what this could be. I started reading Designing your life and it was really helpful!
Thinking like a designer (of my life) was inspiring. It felt free to look at things as an experiment, not as an “all or nothing” approach.
“Your life is not a thing, it’s an experience; the fun comes from designing and enjoying the experience.” Burnett, Bill. Designing Your Life.
I was also excited to read more about design and my husband told me about the UX Design field. So I started reading articles and searching for ways to try it without investing too much money.
Deliverable
• Mindmap of the exercises from the book Designing your Life in pt-BR.
April to June 2018
Here was when it started to become confusing. Only articles weren't enough. There is a lot to learn and many paths to follow so I decided to take a course.
I chose Interaction Design (IDF) because it was affordable, seemed to be a high-quality course and I could do it at home.
Deliverables
IDF Courses:
- Become a UX Designer from Scratch
- UI Design Patterns For Successful Software
- Images of some exercises from the courses (bellow)
Linkedin Courses:
July to September 2018
Things were getting clear so I did a Guerrilla Usability Test to practice what I was learning in a real case.
I also took another course on IDF and read The Lean Product Playbook.
Deliverables
- Guerrilla Usability Test
- Certificate from Interaction Design for Usability
October to December 2018
During this period I took the Daily UI Challenge trying to improve my UI skills. I tried to animate some screens to practice animation in UI and I did a UX Challenge.
I was trying to learn different tools related to UX and UI.
For the rest of the period, I was reading books about Whole Food Plant-Based Diet because I was excited about my side project Rica em Fibra (Rich in Fiber in English — a project about Whole Food Plant-Based Diet).
Deliverables
January to March 2019
As I’ve been studying by myself, I wanted a chance to see how a team of designers discusses and develops a product.
Renato works in a startup so I asked if I could try it there. His colleagues accepted and invited me to participate in the Design Critique meetings they do every week. I felt really lucky and glad about this opportunity.
I was also reading about Design Systems and I got curious to try it for my side project so I took this free course to learn how to make it using Figma. It’s still in process and I plan to write about it when I finish.
[Update] I've posted it here:
I participated in 3 Meetups related to UX skills as well.
Deliverables
- Case Study of the UX Challenge Designing a Landing Page
- Picture of the Meetup of Responsive Organizations & Non-Violent Communication (bellow)
Self-Learning
One of the advantages of self-learning is to have the freedom to learn what I want when I want, and how I want, but this can be challenging sometimes.
I needed a framework to follow and a way to get some feedback and measure my progress, so here are the things I'm doing to overcome it:
- Writing down my goals for the quarter;
- Managing my time in a well-structured routine;
- Finding information and prioritizing it;
- Splitting the projects and doing them in parts;
- Organizing the contents and projects on Asana;
- Avoiding unproductive procrastination (not having social media helps);
- Being self-motivated and proactive by checking my goals, taking new challenges, publishing things, and having weekly talks about my projects;
Organizing the contents and projects on Asana
I’m using Asana, as I was already using it for my daily tasks.
I’ve created projects and I use a board system.
Estimated Time studying
The total estimated time of my study is based on:
- Estimated time to complete the courses;
- Estimated time reading each book (using this website);
- Estimated time on each completed task on Asana (7 minutes each);
- Hours I set for study daily (minimum of 1 hour a day);
- Estimated time to finish each project/practice in UX and UI;
- Hours at the events related to UX (i.e. Meetups and Design Critique);
I haven’t considered the articles I read without putting on Asana.
Costs with education
The total cost it’s not high compared to the colleges and courses I’ve seen. But I’m not working in a paid company for now, and this could be seen as an investment as well.
Total: $78.10
The Linkedin courses were free — I was using the 30 days trial and the other books we already had.
UX Self-assessment
With all that said and done, I wanted a way to see in which areas of UX I was developing more competencies.
I searched for a few ways to do it and the one I liked the most was the radar with 8 key competencies of a UX practitioner from this website.
I have to give a score from 1 to 5 to each competency. Each competence underlies some behaviors (knowledge, skills, and actions).
As I’m a beginner I wanted to diminish the chance of giving me too high scores, by thinking I know something I don’t know.
So I’ve created a spreadsheet with the behaviors they specified and gave me a score from 1 to 5 in each behavior. Then I made an average of each behavior and the result was the score of my competencies. It’s still not perfect but I could justify each score.
I created my radar using this website and that’s my UX assessment:
It wasn’t easy to gather all the information for this journey map, but it was very valuable for me. Now I can see better my strengths, and weaknesses and set up my studies based on this view, returning to it over time.
I’m glad to have this opportunity and grateful for Renato’s support and patience. Thanks to his colleagues as well for letting me participate in the Design Critique meetings.
It’s been a privilege to rethink things in my life and to seek changes.
I‘m excited to keep learning and iterating on this journey.
Thanks for the claps👏 if you enjoyed this article. This will encourage me to continue sharing my journey.
Find me on Linkedin.
