How to start in UX

Illustration of a unicorn

The

Ultimate

Guide

With

All The

Secrets

You Will

Need To Know

Become

To

A Fabulous

Design

Unicorn

Scratch that... There are no magic formulas in design. But if you are looking for guidance, here's a starting point.

 

A free, self-guided class to help you take your first steps into digital product design.

With all the great content available online (plus a bit of discipline), we believe you should be able to learn the basics of our profession before investing in cost-prohibitive more formal education and training. Read more

Illustration of a woman wearing colorful sunglasses

Open knowledge sharing can democratize design—ultimately making our industry more inclusive and culturally rich. This guide is only possible thanks to some amazing designers and leaders who have been thoughtfully sharing their experience and knowledge over the years.

Jakob Nielsen
Vivianne Castillo
Koos Looijesteijn
Christina Wodtke
Rubens Cantuni
Reena Merchant
Tatiana Mac
Chris Kiess
Bobby Ghoshal
Jared Erondu
Tanner Christensen
Tony Fadell
Don Norman
John O’Nolan
Lo Min Ming
Alexis Collado
Ryan Quintal
William Channer
Timothy Achumba
Iheanyi Ekechukwu
Sanjana Galgalikar
Paula Scher
Aga Szóstek
Maximilian Schmidt
Maggie Gram

Cassie McDaniel
Stuart Silverstein
Cyd Harrell
Isabelle Yisak
Tiffani Ashley Bell
Pablo Stanley
Ruben Pater
Linnéa Strid
Nic Chan
Ellen Ward
Máirín Murray
Thelma Golden
Jen Cardello
Andy Fitzgerald
Jorge Arango
Lucia Wang
Abby Covert
Sheena Iyengar
Thom Mayne
Matt Lavoie
Quintin Carlson
Tatiana Vlahovic
Mallory Kim
Nikki Anderson
Tony Fadell
David Kelley
Michelle Chiu
Pascal Potvin
Jonny Czar
Jon Yablonski
Taras Skytskyi
Erik Johnson
Kathy Brew
Roberto Guerra
Val Head
Meghan Wenzel
Lillian Ayla Ersoy
Erik Johnson
Diana Malewicz
And many more

Curated by Caio Braga and Fabricio Teixeira, edited by Deanna Horton. Special thanks to Michela Picchi for the illustrations. Made by the UX Collective.

This is our first iteration of the guide; if you have thoughts, suggestions, links, and ideas: hello@uxdesign.cc

Abstract, colorful illustration with organic shapes

Not a bootcamp.

There won’t be a design job waiting for you at the end of this guide. The question we want you to answer is: Is UX, as a career, what I'm interested in?

Not one of those “free” e-books.

We are not trying to sell you software licenses or capture your email address to spam you after you download a PDF. It's all publicly available.

Not a 5-step tutorial.

We’re not offering "How To Create Personas In 5 Simple Steps" tutorials. Instead, we want to show you the methods you can use as a designer and help you think critically about when to use them.

How it's structured

The goal of this guide is to un-complicate design and eliminate the jargon. Read it at your own pace—by yourself, with a friend, one chapter a week, or all at once. Each chapter is structured like this: 

Lesson
A brief introduction to the topic and why it’s important to you as a designer.

Reading list
A list of articles available online—for free—that will give you a deeper understanding of each concept introduced in the class.

Watchlist
Inspirational talks and documentaries to watch between classes.

Reflection
Questions to get you thinking about how each concept applies to you.

Practice
Exercises you can do to apply the concepts you learned.

What's included

1

2

3

CHAPTER 1

Why design?
Why now?

CHAPTER 2

Industry
overview

CHAPTER 3

Design with
capital D

4

52

6

CHAPTER 4

Purpose &
community

CHAPTER 5

The architecture
of information

CHAPTER 6

Talking
to users

 

7

8

9

CHAPTER 7

Balancing form
& function

CHAPTER 8

The job of a designer

CHAPTER 9

The road
ahead

Thanks to these
fine folks


1

Why Design?
Why now?

Design is all around us: from the chairs in our home, to how we read the news, to the screens on our smartphone. But what’s in it for you?

Being a designer is about believing that there is a better way of doing things.

Goal

Reflect on your personal reasons to start a career in digital product design.

Illustrations by Michela Picchi

 

People often think that design is all about the way things look. Aesthetics is an important part of design, but it’s not the only one. 

Here is what design is all about: making things better than they were before. Identifying something that is not working, going deep into the problem, exploring potential solutions to fix it, and then deciding which one of the solutions works best to the goals of the project.

Industry experts tend to use a lot of jargon when talking about design — in some cases as a way to protect their position of specialists. Hopefully, as you grow into your career as a designer, you are not going to perpetuate that same type of practice. 

And then there is UX. User experience. User-centered design. Which is the same as design, but because you are solving the problems of a person (the user) you want to make sure you are checking in with that person to understand what their problem is and to validate whether your solution is really solving it for them. And when we say "them", we're talking not only about the individuals who will use your product, but also their communities and the world at large. Initially, UX was mostly focused on digital interfaces like websites and apps, but is now quickly expanding into other platforms (e.g. TV, messaging apps), formats (e.g. voice interactions), and locations (e.g. interactive experiences anywhere).

“Design is the rendering of intent.”

Jared Spool

You might be venturing into design because you believe you are a natural creative. Or it might be out of anger with the status quo, a burning desire to provoke change. Maybe it’s because you are tired of your current job. Because you want a higher salary. Because you think design is cool. 

Understanding your motivation is key, and you need to take the time to find it. 

The journey to becoming a designer can be stressful. Learning all the methods, tools, processes. Developing good taste and a good eye. Iterating a design many times to get things right. It takes time. And that’s precisely why you need to know your reasons: keeping that broader goal in mind will be of great help when you’re halfway through the journey and in need of extra motivation.

Over the course of this guide, you will get a better understanding of the steps designers go through when creating digital products. You will learn about concepts like usability, UX research, ethics, accessibility, visual design, and much more. For each chapter, we recommend you go through the reading list first, then choose a few videos in the watchlist to get inspired by great names in our industry. At the end, we offer a number of questions that can help you reflect on how the concepts you learned can apply to you as an individual and to your own career goals.  

Don’t rush into the next class. Give yourself time to digest and fully understand the concepts we’re introducing here. 

This will be a journey into the unknown, as you might not be familiar with some of the terms included here. But also a journey into yourself. Self-awareness is one of the most powerful tools a designer can have in their tool belt, and the first step to being able to change things around them.

We hope you enjoy the ride.

Reading list

1.
The Design of
Everyday Things

Start here. This book will open your eyes to how embedded design is in our everyday lives. By Don Norman.

Borrow this book from local public libraries or buy it from local bookstores.

2.
A 100-year view of user experience
Jakob Nielsen (9 min)

3.
A unified theory for designing just about anything
Christina Wodtke (9 min)

4.
What is design?
Koos Looijesteijn (8 min)

5.
What’s a digital product designer?
Rubens Cantuni (6 min)

6.
The meaning of design
Reena Merchant (7 min)

7.
Do you really want to be a UX designer?
Chris Kiess (9 min)

8.
What it means to be a designer who’s creative
Tanner Christensen (8 min)

Watchlist

Take some time now to go through the questions below and write down your answers somewhere (e.g. a Google Doc). Think of this as your journal, where you keep track of what you have learned so far.

What is design for you? What are 3 reasons why you want to become a designer? What are some products or services you consider to be well designed, and why?

What are your top 3 questions and uncertainties at this point in your career?

What impact do you want the products you design to have on the world around you? What are some behaviors you want your product to enable — on the individuals who use the product, in your community, or in society at large?

Reflection

See it in practice

1.
Pick a few companies you identify with and check if they have any design positions open.
What are the skills listed on the job descriptions you found? How do they describe the responsibilities and challenges of the role?

2.
Search for experienced designers and learn more about their work, projects, and portfolio. Focus on people who are working on something that interests you.
How do they define what they do? What do their career paths look like? How do they present their work? What's similar and what's different among them?

Here a few places to get started:
Linkedin search (companies you admire)
Women who design
Product design shots on Dribbble
Blacks who design
Your IXDA local group
Interaction gallery on Behance
Latinx who design
Queer design club

Illustration of the word desire filled with abstract shapes
Abstract, colorful illustration with organic shapes
Book cover: the design of everyday things

2

Industry
overview

How to find your place in an ever-growing industry and an ever-evolving discipline.

Hey, there’s room for everyone.

Illustration of a colorful banana

Goal

Understand the big picture of the design industry, and consider potential career paths for you.

Illustrations by Michela Picchi

 

Since companies started to realize the importance of user-centered design, our discipline has seen immense growth. Every now and then, we hear stories of companies who have become hugely successful because of good design. These design-driven companies are radically reinventing entire industries by putting their customers first and providing experiences that change the old way of doing things. Same problems, new solutions. 

From a business perspective, design has gone from a nice-to-have that will make things look better, to a crucial element that drives user engagement and, therefore, profit. Companies of all sizes are looking for designers who can help them achieve their business goals. So the next thing you want to think about as you start to define your career path as a designer is where you want to work and in which terms.  

You can be a designer in a large tech company, at a small startup, at a consultancy. You can work for non-profit organizations, small businesses, enterprises. You may prefer not to associate yourself with an organization and become an independent freelance designer—so you can select the specific projects you work on. You might focus on research, or visual design, or UX strategy. You could become a content writer, an information architect, or really specialized in motion design. Whatever your work style may be, it’s essential for newcomers to understand the possibilities ahead of them.

“If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design.”

Ralf Speth

Design becomes really valuable to companies when we focus on listening to customers and understanding their expectations and needs. Companies that can anticipate and exceed customer expectations and solve real pain points will see more loyalty and brand love in the long run. Think about some of your favorite brands today—chances are you’ve had positive experiences with that brand in both physical and digital channels (like their website or mobile app, for example). Even more important: people stick to brands that have a positive impact in the world; brands that are mindful of pursuing profit but not harming the environment, the economy, or culture.

When companies can quantify the impact of good design (in other words, when they can show that it improves their numbers), they want to invest more money into design. Modern, design-driven companies are often investing part of their revenue into hiring more designers, expanding their digital product teams, and increasing the influence designers have inside their organization. This creates a really optimistic scenario for anyone starting their career as a designer—it creates exciting opportunities for doing great design work.

Designers don’t work alone. Design artifacts (the things you create on the job—like a mockup or a prototype) are a blueprint for the product that users will actually engage with. Product managers use them to make strategic business decisions about features, and developers use them to make sure that what they code matches the design you envisioned.

Multi-disciplinary teams are the essence of digital product design. As a designer, you’ll learn to work with developers and product managers to achieve the best possible outcome and user experience—while balancing things like the technical feasibility of an interaction, or the business viability of a product feature. You don’t want to design something that’s impossible to build, or that will create more costs than profit for the company you work for (with exceptions, of course). Design is a conversation. 

Of course, this is a pretty simplified view of how teams are structured. Designers also work with so many other disciplines across an organization, like Marketing, Brand, Legal, Data Science, Customer Service, and others. Don’t be scared, though: the reading list for this chapter will give you a better sense of the other roles designers work with, and how they intersect with the work of a designer.

Reading list

1.
Designing for
the Digital Age

An overview of multi-disciplinary teams needed to design successful products and services in the digital age. By Kim Goodwin.

Borrow this book from local public libraries or buy it from local bookstores.

Watchlist

What would you describe as your dream job as a designer? What types of digital products and services do you see yourself creating? For what industries? In which channels? For which audience?

When you hear about companies you admire in the news, what makes you excited about working for them as a designer? What are some of the not-so-good news about those companies, and how would you feel about working for them when those things happen?

Think about your average day. What are 3 issues you have to deal with on a regular basis (big or small) that you believe could be solved with good design? Which ones do you think are not solely a design problem, and why?

Reflection

See it in practice

Jakob Nielsen is known for defining the ten usability heuristics checklist, a comprehensive list of broad usability rules of thumb listed on the readings section of this chapter. It's a handy checklist still broadly used in the industry. See in practice how designers apply his usability checklist as part of their process and try it on your own: pick your favorite app and do a similar analysis following what you learned.

Abstract pattern
Book: designing for the digital age

3

Design with
capital D

The methods and practices within Design (the discipline) and how they will help you design (the verb).

Some people will try to convince you there’s “one design process” you are supposed to follow every time. There isn’t. Let’s dig into that.

Goal

Learn about the most common design methods and practices.

Illustrations by Michela Picchi

 

Design is a discipline that takes discipline. To achieve the best outcomes, you need to make sure you (1) focus on the right problem (2) explore feasible solutions and (3) translate everything you learn into a design that works.  

Design methods are techniques you can use for (1) investigation, (2) exploration, or (3) validation. As you dive into the specifics, you might feel overwhelmed by how many methods are out there, what they’re called, and how you’re supposed to actually do them. You’ll see a lot of articles and e-books out there promising to teach you “The 10 Best Practices For Card Sorting”, or to save you from “The 5 User Testing Mistakes You’re Making Right Now”. That’s just not how design works.

The most important thing to remember is that design is about problem-solving. The most strategic designers understand that they need to deeply understand the problem (and bring others along on that journey) before jumping to conclusions.

“Design isn't finished until somebody is using it.”

Brenda Laurel

At your job, you’ll receive design briefs that—more often than not—encourage you to jump straight to a solution: “Can you add a new social sharing feature to a mobile app?” This also happens in design exercises for job interviews: “Can you design an interface for a 1000-floor elevator?”  

Pause. Step back. Resist the temptation to only design what people ask you to design. 

Use design methods to lead your team to the right questions. Who uses the elevator? What are the most common floors they are trying to reach on a daily basis? How do they navigate the building before getting to the elevator? Why do they use the elevator? When do they use the elevator? Do they feel safe using the elevator? Who doesn’t use the elevator? Who can’t use the elevator? Why are we building a single elevator that serves 1000 floors? Why does a 1000-floor building exist in the city in the first place, and how does it impact the landscape around the building?

Design is hard work. After you learn the most common methodologies, it will still take time until you feel truly confident with them. You’re not going to be perfect on day 1, and that’s okay. Practice makes perfect. As you work on projects, seek out methods that will help you achieve your specific goals at each step. Learn as you go. You’ll have years and years to practice.

Reading list

1.
The User Experience
Team of One

A comprehensive practical guide on applying basic ux methods and deliverables, for teams or on your own. By Leah Buley.

 

Borrow this book from local public libraries or buy it from local bookstores.

2.
Description or prescription?
Aga Szóstek (5 min)

3.
UX design methods & deliverables
Fabricio Teixeira, Caio Braga (17 min)

4.
The illusion of different design processes
Maximilian Schmidt (4 min)

5.
On design thinking
Maggie Gram (20 min)

6.
Design criticism and the creative process

Cassie McDaniel (12 min)

7.
How to remove subjectivity from the process
Stuart Silverstein (19 min)

8.
Design's unsexy middle bits
Christina Wodtke (12 min)

After going through the lists of design methods, which ones do you feel the most excited about trying? Why?

Some methods require soft skills (e.g. moderating a user testing session), while others require technical skills (e.g. prototyping). Which ones do you feel you will be stronger at? What are the skills you already have that make you strong at it?

Looking at the bigger picture, which skills do you think you will need to develop in the first 5 years of your career? How do you think you can improve those skills?

Reflection

Build your own guide

Start a quick reference guide for yourself with the methods you learned in this chapter and the ones mentioned in the portfolios you found in chapter 1. Which methods are you most excited about? What are the methods you want to dive deeper into?

Surreal illustration of a horse
illustration of a person wearing colorful sunglasses
Book: the user experience team of one

4

Purpose & community

Understanding the role of Design beyond producing designs—and the far-reaching impact it can have on the world at large.

Design is not only a job. It’s a way to provoke change in the world, and that comes with responsibility. What type of change do you want to create?

Goal

Be more aware of the impact of our design decisions.

Illustrations by Michela Picchi

 

You’ve probably heard in the news that social media apps can cause addiction, or that location tracking apps can represent a threat to the user’s privacy if their data gets into the wrong hands.  

Although most digital products are created with good intentions, we can’t always control or predict how they’ll be used by people once they’re out in the world.  

Your duty as a designer is to keep that bigger picture in mind as you’re creating a product — just as architects must account for the safety of their buildings.  

As a designer who works for a company, you’ll be asked to use your design skills to generate more engagement, more views, more profit. 

Use your voice to advocate for your users. Speak up to protect them from addiction, misinformation, and violations of their rights. Push back on company decisions that can potentially spread misinformation, misbehavior, or injustice. Bring this mindset with you every day. You can define where your product’s boundaries are, and block your design superpowers from being used for evil.

Should you decide to choose courage over comfort and challenge our understanding and practice of empathy, human-centered design can be more than a cliche.

Vivianne Castillo

The other side of this is to make sure your product can be used by everyone. The term Accessibility speaks to whether your product is usable to people with varying abilities. As designers, we tend to think that the users we are designing for people who are really similar to ourselves. That’s not true. You’ll hear this motto quite a lot in digital product design: you are not your user. 

As designers, we spend most of our day imagining and building experiences that, when added all together, take up a significant portion of people’s lives. They affect the relationships they have with other people and with the world around them. Each design decision we make has the potential to include, or exclude, people. It’s part of our responsibility to make users feel welcome, included, and represented in the experiences we create. UX Design—and the mindset of bringing users into the design process—exists to reduce gaps between who is creating a product and who is using it. Inclusive design is about closing the gap between people. 

Over the next few years, you’ll hear the term Accessibility more and more as you start to engage with the design community. While following accessibility guidelines is a good starting point, designers should also be the ones advocating for better practices when it comes to creating products that are truly inclusive of all audiences.

Topics such as Design Ethics, Inclusion, and Accessibility obviously can’t be summarized in one page, but you will have time to learn about them over the course of your career. The most important thing for now, as you start out, is to understand why these concepts need to exist and keep an open mind toward learning more about them.

Reading list

1.
Design for
the Real World

The attempts by designers to combat the tawdry, the unsafe, the frivolous, the useless product; a blueprint for sensible, responsible design. By Victor Papanek.

 

2.
Accessibility
for Everyone

A guide for the accessibility landscape; learn how to plan for, evaluate, and test accessible design. By Laura Kalbag.

Borrow these books from local public libraries or buy from local bookstores.

Watchlist

From your readings, what’s the difference between accessibility, inclusion, and diversity? What are some practical examples of how each one is applied to the design work?

There are several design decisions that carry a lot of bias (e.g. "male" usually comes before ”female” in gender questionnaires). Over the next day, keep an eye on other biases in the products and services you use (e.g. apps, websites). Where do you think these biases come from, and what do you think should have been done differently to avoid them?

Reflection

See it in practice

Tech companies have (finally) start to be under scrutiny and to be held accountable for their critical issues related to lack of accessibility, discrimination, malpratices. Examples are the Domino's accessibility lawsuit, the numerous fake news issues on social media, and racial bias on artificial intelligence software.

As designers, we play a big role in fixing and ultimately preventing these issues from happening. The first step for seasoned and new designers is to understand the impact of our work on our society and keep society at the center of our design process. You can read more about case studies (here and here) and practical guides on this topic to see it in practice. 

Take this opportunity to evaluate the apps and sites you use and how they follow or not some concepts introduced in this chapter.

Abstract shapes
Illustration of a unicorn
Book:L design for the real world
Book: accessibility for everyone

5

The architecture of information

The visible and invisible structures that organize the world around us: from the menu on our favorite sneaker store’s website, to the path we need to take to find the truth online.

What are the different ways you can organize the world around you?

Goal

Understand the importance of organization, prioritization, and clarity when designing digital products.

Illustrations by Michela Picchi

 

As a designer, you want the people who are using the product you designed to be able to easily find what they’re looking for. Information Architects are the professionals responsible for categorizing the ever-inflating scope of information on websites and other digital applications, in a way that makes sense for users. 

Not every company has dedicated Information Architects inside their teams, and it’s imperative for designers to think about the architecture of information on the products we create. How do we want people to navigate our app? What should we label menu items? What hierarchies and relationships do we want to create between the different areas of our product?

“Some things are simple. Some things are complicated. Every single thing in the universe is complex.”

Abby Covert

The changes we make to an interface can impact and reflect the organizations we work for. A new content structure we propose might challenge how the company is currently structured, how teams are organized, customer support channels, and internal workflows. 

These decisions can also have an impact on society at large. Our communities are in the process of moving a lot of key social interactions to digital spaces (e.g., telemedicine services, live streams in social apps, census survey from the government, virtual concerts). With that, the way we organize and provide easy access to information becomes even more critical. 

How do we empower people to navigate these new digital spaces? What are the 1-to-1 and 1-to-many interactions we allow them to have? Decisions that appear tactical and straightforward (like how to design an app’s navigation system) can have a profound impact on someone’s day.

In this chapter, we’ll review some basic definitions of Information Architecture, learn how it has historically affected the products we use, and understand how to more tactically apply it to the products we create.

Reading list

1.
How to Make Sense
of Any Mess

A seven-step process for arranging the parts of something and making it understandable as a whole. By Abby Covert.

Borrow this book from local public libraries or buy it from local bookstores.

Watchlist

How would you explain the practice of information architecture to a colleague?

How does information architecture apply to your everyday life? What’s the organization of the spaces you visit, or the digital services you use every day?

What are the types of content you consume on a daily basis? In what format is each content piece usually presented (e.g. text, tweet, video, audio, book, etc.)? How is that content organized or categorized?

Reflection

Try if for yourself

The reading list in this chapter just scratched the surface on Information Architecture and how it is deeply ingrained in the design practice. To see it in action, search for case studies and guides on the many methods related to it. And experiment with it on your own: document the steps included on the sign-up flow of your favorite app. As you practice, you will naturally start paying attention to how information is organized around you.

Upside down illustration of a person
Abstract shapes
Book: how to make sense of any mess

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