Why you might be struggling to transition to UX Design
Barriers that make people question their desire to switch into this field.
Over the past few months, I’ve had a chance to mentor students transitioning into design. It’s no easy task for these students, and I learned a lot on how brave these people were to be willing to change their careers to better themselves, their career, and sometimes even their families (while being in the midst of a pandemic). When I was in college, I could barely stomach to guts to change majors or even decide on minor.
While any move into design may be daunting, career ‘transition-ers’ have it more challenging. They might come from a background that isn’t immediately relevant, they don’t know how to start, and they are bombarded with so many bootcamps and courses to help them land their dream job. In fact, based on my observations, a lot of beginner-friendly resources out there only discuss the glamor and benefits of a design career.
Compare that to folks in college, who have more time to learn about their career and maybe even able to take design courses or join an already established club in their school. Being encapsulated in the same environment can create a sense of safety and time to explore what else is out there. But younger folks have their own unique challenges of being ‘inexperienced” which leads companies to hire more senior level folks and up the role qualifications.
If you clicked on this article, you might be one of these people.
I’m still not sure if design is the right career for me.
I’m considering a bootcamp but it’s expensive.
It sounds like a cool job but I’m not sure what I’ll be doing.
While I won’t be able to address all of these questions in this article, if you are finding yourself stuck, I’m here to tell you, you’re not alone. While any career transition (regardless of field) is incredibly challenging, there are a few things particular to design stood out as a mentor.
I hope to address the most common preconceptions that people have while getting into the field, and hopefully help you better understand aspects of the role that I personally wish I learned when transitioning to design.
You think designing is an individual task
One of the initial things that attracted me to this field was that UX design sounded like an individual task, meaning that for every project, you take in X inputs, do some magic, and then output Y. Which sounds fantastic for people who can work independently.
The thing to understand is that design is an incredibly collaborative field. Most of what you design are based on a series of decisions and assumptions that you make. And in order to do that, you must seek out people with the right knowledge and tools, while making sure that you are able to articulate every design decision well enough. In fact, one of the most sought after skills in a designer is facilitation, and having the ability to gather people with perspectives into a room to tackle a problem together.
When I look back at my career, some of the best decisions I made on projects were not my own, but my co-workers. The ability to frame your work as a team project instead of siloing yourself will help you focus on advocating for the user while proactively reaching out to the expertise of others in areas of the project that feel a bit fuzzy.
You think you can’t ‘catch-up’ with technology and new tools
This is a fairly common concern with new designers who are intimidated by the amount of new design tools, frameworks, and plug-ins that come out every week. If I’m being honest, most of the time I’m not even aware what half these new tools are. Instead, I place my focus on the actual problem that I’m solving for. Tools and frameworks can help facilitate a problem but are not necessary in your job (unless there are specific tools your company must require, in which case, I would question the purpose of that as well).
If you’re currently someone who’s nervous about these tools, know that they exist to offer different ways to solve a problem. Each designer has their own unique set of skills and approach to problem solving, so embrace that, because it can help you stand out as a designer.
And similar to the types of coding languages, design tools all have the same fundamentals and work similarly. And compared to coding a completely new language, design tools have a relatively low barrier of entry.
You think design is a relatively ‘easy’ career
Don’t go into UX design because you think it’s an easy job.
Don’t pay 15k for a bootcamp before speaking to actual designers and learning about their day to day responsibilities.
Don’t just listen to the glamor of the role– hear the bad and tough things of being a designer.
If you’re in the middle of a career transition, explore other fields if you haven’t already- research, software engineering, marketing, copywriting, product management, analyst, data scientist, etc.
Surround yourself with people who came came from a non-traditional background. How did they switch careers? How did they build their design experience? What would they do differently if they could go back?
Think about your personal interests. What are you long term goals? Is a career in design going to help you achieve that?
All of this isn’t meant to scare you or make you second guess yourself. These are realistic questions to ask yourself, and even as a designer, you’ll be asking a LOT of questions. So get an early start to apply that to your own career.
I’m not saying you need to have a clear vision of seeing yourself as a designer in X company or role in 5 years, or that you need to align your entire life and passion into design. For most people, that’s not realistic. Your goal is to identify potential friction and work backwards to see why you feel that way. If you got nothing else from the article, I hope you know that it’s okay to feel scared about switching into design, but don’t let these roadblocks stop you from switching into the field.
As you continue to learn about design, I encourage you to to spend some time thinking about:
1.The parts of field that fills you with enthusiasm.
2.Parts of the field that drains you.
Discuss those with a mentor or friend to identify learning opportunities, which will help you identify the type of designer you are, as well as you, as a person!
If you are in the midst of a career transition or curious about transitioning to design, what are the biggest challenges are you facing?
