8 ways to get started in UX and Product Design
so you want to be a ux designer but you don't know where to start well it's easy come on let me show you just kidding hi i'm M U Sunny i'm a senior product designer working in Malaysia
i understand how overwhelming it can become
especially when you're starting out in ux with no experience no degree i hope
that this video will help you think of some ideas to start in this ux design
field so grab a drink
and let's begin idea number
one draw inspiration so let me show you one of the websites that are useful is
dribble this is the website i always go to and you can just filter by product
design or web design another good site is called
behinds so on the hands go to create the
fields filter by ui-ux so draw inspiration from work that you find interesting
observe how these amazing designs are done another really useful site is called
mobbing you can filter
by apps and patents so as a designer you got
to know the common design patterns used in ux this pattern library on robins
allows you to do that so elements like bars container you know buttons floating
action buttons
these are all terms that as
a designer you should know another site that i would like to recommend is ninja
this is a brilliant design inspiration site for marketing sites landing pages
and you can also filter by different categories
another site that i like to go is called
screenland.com this is amazing if you are working on marketing sites one more
that i would like to share is called really good ux dot io this site what it
does is sharing all the good
products filtered by
category as well they even help you analyze what makes this really good ux
don't just browse mindlessly try to understand what makes the product a good ux
open your digital notes at pen and paper
or any place that you take your notes on drop
down what makes these apps amazing what are the great ux practices that they
did differently another practical idea for you to get started in ux is to learn
a design
tool my go-to design tool for this is figma so
this is figma it's actually a collaborative design tool they have multiple
features for design including prototyping design systems and plugins it's used
by companies like slack twitter
GitHub so on sigma play with the interactions
play with prototyping this is my favorite tool on earth if i were to only pick
one software to install on my mac it will be sigma number three watch YouTube
tutorials like this one so go on YouTube search for ux design and you will see
loads of content up here that are free
for you to watch so yeah just make use of the free content that you could find understand how other people present their ideas how
people get through interviews what is the process like in their day-to-day life and a place on YouTube that i really recommend is awards i highly recommend awards because they offer high
quality talks by great design leaders in the industry step number four create a mock project one of the great ways you could get started with challenges is by going to a site called ux2.co you can find all the ux challenges
that you can train yourself practice with real world exercises for example if you would like to understand how to do a usability test they will give you a scenario to start with with tasks tutorials and tools another great place that i would like
to share with you is called ux challenge so ux challenge gives you prompts for example e-commerce could actually create a design case study for your portfolio based on the problem statement that they present you with all right tip number five check out job bots find out
what companies around the place that you live
are looking for in a ux designer and one way to find out is search for ux
design jobs see what they're looking for this helps you get an edge of what's
happening in the industry
what are people looking for and how can you
actually stand up don't worry if the qualifications of these jobs says like you
need at least seven years of ui design experience for example when i got
started i just applied without
looking at the
qualifications part because i didn't have a degree or a background in design so
this is irrelevant to me all right tip number six so one thing you can start
preparing is your portfolio and your cv what i recommend
is go to bestfolios.com strategize and think
your way backwards there are all these amazing designers resumes and portfolios
that you could check out so study how people do their portfolios how it's being
structured what
kind of copy that they
include in the portfolio that stood out amongst other people in the industry
right and don't worry if your version isn't
perfect yet so for your portfolio i recommend
using notion this is my notion portfolio where i'm actually still experimenting
with multiple different platforms and i find this is so far the fastest
way to build my portfolio so tip number seven
optimize your LinkedIn profile let me show you how i use LinkedIn to optimize
my profile change your headline to let's say ux designer another way you could
actually optimize your profile is to say open
to work once you optimize
your profile saying that you're open to work it will actually help recruiters
find you on LinkedIn when you're on your LinkedIn profile and you change your
profile picture switch to open to another
thing that you could do is to share your
design work your learning’s on your journey to becoming a ux designer search
for something like ux design a hash tag you can learn how other people are
sharing their knowledge on LinkedIn right
via this hash tag so yeah this is one of the
ways that you could provide value stand out from the competition and share your
learnings make friends along the way on linkedin so the next tip is to get a
mentor go on adp list find mentors on the site you can even filter by what
expertise and design that you want to
learn more from say ux design so prepare your
mock project your resume your portfolio or whatever that you have right now
book the mentor session during the mentor session show them what you have done
so
far identify what you can improve on go back
improve it and come back again another tip that i'll give is to go on skill
share i will share my free trial link in the description below on skillshare
what you can do is to just browse
for ux design and here you can see all the
amazing tutorials that people have already prepared so next tip is to read read
free articles online let's
say nelson Norman find anything that interests you understand what makes a good
user experience one more site that
i would like to share is
called lawsofux.com you don't need to go and memorize all these terms one by
one but more of just to go through the overview and the takeaways
of these laws understand
what these laws actually mean and how it can actually help you to design better
another way that you could try is Google about ux books and these are all the
popular books in the market
that can actually help you design better one
of the other tips that i would like to recommend is to work on a real project i
understand that when you're starting out you don't have a client to give you
real projects yet but maybe you
know reach out to a friend
reach out to your local charity to offer and design their website for them so
the last tip i would like to give out
is to set realistic goals
and deadlines try to commit to a three to six month deadline of achieving your
goal let me know what do you want me to share more about in the comment