You aren’t a UX designer unless you can design
I am a product designer working in Asia and have been working as a product and UX designer for about 5 years, and for whatever reason my YouTube frontpage has recently been flooded with videos talking about how to break into UX design. When I watch these videos, not a single goddamn one mentions the most fundamental aspect of UX design: designing.
There are so many people who are so desperate to find some corner of tech that they can exist in for the insane salaries and great workplaces that they think that UX is going to be their savior. In their mind, it’s a role hired so someone can just ask them advice all day about what the almighty user wants, and they will consult their magical Medium articles and respond with edicts.
To them, a UX designer is someone who gets to sit on a beanbag chair in a lush, sunny office all day, scribbling some thoughts down on their brand-new iPad Pro (provided by the company, of course) before emailing those thoughts to the lowly UI designer and taking a leisurely 2-hour lunch, grabbing some free food and getting a massage on the 7th floor. “UI doesn’t matter” they whisper to themselves. “UX is where all the real work is done.” They sneer about pixel pushers and compare themselves to architects. When their designs are bad, they brush it off as “not their job,” since “they won’t be doing it in the real world.”
Bullshit.
Are you brand new to the industry? You want to be a UX designer? Start by designing posters. I’m serious. Get an Adobe subscription, read Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Muller and Thinking With Type by Ellen Lupton, maybe Logo Design Love by David Airey and actually learn how to design. Make some movie posters for your favorite movies. Draw some pictures. Turn your favorite TV show into an icon series.
Once you’ve done that, start designing some consequential shit. Something useful. I had to hire a junior product designer a few months ago and every portfolio gave me enough website landing pages to print out and hang myself with. News flash: you’re not a fan of “simple, clean, minimal design,” you’re terrified of designing anything with more than 6 elements.
Design an applicant tracking system like Greenhouse. Design a tool to monitor oil valve pressure at an oil field. Design a call-center script response system. Design an inventory app. Design an online gradebook for distance learning. Design something that doesn’t require you to scalp some Alegria illustrations and write the words HOME ABOUT CONTACT PURCHASE again for the thousandth time.
Learn to design.
