My UX design journey so far
Growing up, the only thing I considered any kind of career ambition was my odd desire to get a BA in English. After that, I vaguely imagined, I would probably become a lecturer or an author, whichever came first. Life had other plans, and long story short, I worked in customer service for six years after getting my BA — in Linguistics. I knew on some intrinsic level that it was not the job for me, so I left and began on my quest to find the one career that combines as many of the better parts of me as I would want.
Months ago, I randomly began to think of UX Design. In this day of subliminal messaging via a myriad of social media app feeds and in-app ads, this may not have been as random as I recall it to be, but honestly, no specific or tangible propulsion comes to mind. It was just something I found myself thinking about. I watched a couple of YouTube videos like this one by Sharon Onyinye about young women like me who were making the leap into UXD. I was still intrigued. I signed up for a free 7 day UI Design Short Course on CareerFoundry. I found myself still intrigued by the general concept of UI/UX. However, since the course attempted to create a clear and definite differentiation between UI and UX, I came away knowing that UX Design was what I really wanted to know more about.
The distinction felt natural to me and without questioning it too much, I signed up for an Introduction to User Experience Design course on Coursera. I was still very cautious, so finding free resources was a priority. I stuck through the course with my interest and curiosity still intact, finally coming to the acceptance that this was something I wanted to channel more effort towards. Afterwards, I dug around to find out options available to me and which one felt more up my alley and then enrolled for the Google UX Design Professional Certificate on Coursera. The Professional Certificate consists of 7 courses which promise to prepare total beginners for entry-level UX design jobs in 6 months or less.
As I am mostly still in the theoretical stages of UX design, my biggest complaint so far is the similarity between design processes. A part of my brain tells me that they may not seem so similar once I begin applying them to different design challenges, so I’m waiting to see. At this stage, I am most interested in UX writing and interaction design and I’m eagerly looking forward to fleshing out my ongoing student portfolio case study and building my first proper hi-fidelity wireframes. I’d appreciate all the encouragement and good wishes thrown in my direction, to help see me through to the finish line. Hopefully, I’ll make regular updates or convert my notes to resources that can help anyone else who is interested in learning UX design.
Not quite two months into my certificate course, I find myself still thinking about UXD, still curious and growing bookmarks and playlists devoted to this new thing that I am learning.
