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Arswaw
Arswaw

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How did you become a UX designer?

My sister is looking to break into the tech industry. I suggested that her customer service experience might translate well into UX. She seems interested, but it's unclear how one would enter into the field.

My question is, if you're a UX designer, how did you make it happen?

Top comments (3)

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umurgdk profile image
Umur Gedik

In case she is not willing to join a program, course, etc. start with the tools. Get sketch installed, and then she may think about the web sites / applications she is least frustrated while using them. And then copy their interfaces to sketch. This is just for the getting use to the sketch (tool) to be a little bit fluent. After that, it might be a good exercise to look for the services / applications she uses every day and try to figure out which parts of the application is bloated, difficult to use, or frustrating and try to find solutions (like "if i had a small menu there i could easily access my blabla instead of jumping around 3 different pages), and implement the design in sketch.

I was a software developer (~10 years) I changed my career recently to UX/UI design just because of the frustration :) So this is why i recommend it. Also I'm highly biased towards to Sketch among the other ui design applications (yes i've tried figma and adobe xd) because sketch is the only one gets the ux and user interaction design best.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

There are programs that teach UX. Bootcamps, online programs, etc.

I think it definitely makes sense that customer service experience would translate well to UXβ€”both require communication, empathy and problem solving.

I think breaking in to UX can be a challenge because there are not always clearly defined roles in this area. I think it helps to acquire some adjacent skills along the way that are helpful. Product management and other design areas (graphic, web), strike me as good skills to learn alongside UX.

Tell her good luck, it's a growing field and once you're involved in tech, there is a lot of room for further career growth!

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marcellahaller profile image
marcellahaller

Hey, this post is very clear about the responsibilities of a UX designer and the necessary skills to work gapsystudio.com/blog/what-does-a-u.... It seems to me that this is a good material in order to understand whether this profession and work processes will be of interest to you.