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The self-taught UI/UX designer roadmap in 2021

A deep dive guide on teaching yourself UI/UX design from zero knowledge to a full-time role

Andy Chan

Published in

Bootcamp

18 min readMar 23, 2021

September 2020 was when I got hired as a UI/UX designer, even without any experience. Despite being a newbie, I still managed to get a 25% pay raise after three months. Yet, just based on my words alone, it seemed that the journey was smooth-sailing: it was only so because of the many hours put into understanding the ever-evolving UI/UX field.

You might be familiar with the Full-Stack Developer Roadmap, which is a very popular roadmap that describes, ideally, how someone should learn to become a full-stack developer. Based on that idea, I decided to create a UI/UX designer roadmap that precisely suits a self-taught UI/UX designer in 2021 (which is what I went through).

While this guide serves to be definitive, it is still non-exhaustive. Technologies and trends are constantly evolving in the UI/UX field. For example, glassmorphism has emerged as a new trend in UI design in 2020.

Another critical thing to note is that this an essential roadmap that requires autoregulation: you will need to tweak based on the job you’re aiming for and your past skillsets. For example, graphic designers can find it easier to learn UI/UX design because of the…

This is fantastic! If I may add, it's also helpful to go through a more structured "course" so you're not lost on which platform to look up to for which aspect of the learning. I recommend looking into the newly launched Google Certificate program that hold some promise to get someone off the ground...