How to Become a Self-Taught UX Designer

Creating your own curriculum, networking when you know nobody, and making what you need to get hired.

Photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash

4 years ago I quit my job, learned how to code, built a design portfolio, and became a UX Designer at a top company. I tripled my income that year.

I didn't go back to school, I didn’t sign up for an expensive bootcamp. I was scrappy and figured out how to make it work. The goal of this article is to help you do the same.

You can even grab a mentoring session with me if you want some more personalized help.

Let’s jump right in:

The biggest benefits of being self-taught:

1. Saving money (or even staying out of more debt like I wanted to after my undergrad experience)
2. Saving time (bootcamps are less of a commitment than a Masters, but they’re still a good chunk of time. Save years of your life potentially by trying to get some experience before you commit to a career)
3. The ability to curate your own education (No more spending time on classes you can’t get motivated to participate in because you might not be able to see how they directly impact your future career)
4. People find you to be an extremely motivated problem solver and human being if you can do it well on your own - and that’s great for getting your foot in the door. (Something I learned from my interviewers turned peers, after getting my first job.)

Picking up where we left off…

Once I had that initial overview of the field that came from massive content consumption, I needed to focus on creating a solid learning plan, a personalized curriculum. I needed to know what a solid learning plan for this field even was.

I knew that in the real world, it was more than just what you knew, but it was also about who you knew. The right people are invaluable when it comes to learning about opportunities to take advantage of, and getting feedback along the way.

After all of that, I would also need to convince people that I knew enough to get a job and get paid to keep learning. That would take some serious effort in all…