What to do EXACTLY to start UXing?
as you know, Iâm a cultural anthropologist. And Iâm also a UX Researcher. How did it happen? Sadly, not a moonlight, not a cool auntie giving me job in her startup â just a lot of hard (at first: unpaid) work. Then, internship, then a proper job â continue reading and you shall get a handful of hints how to proceed with your occupation transformation *drums*.
Some introductory babbling
Ok, so hereâs my first insight and first advice to all of you, young social scientists, trying your best to become a UX warrior: be prepared to do a shitload of money-free effort, so you NEED to have either way some external support (I lived with my parents), some serious savings or somehow divide your time between learning and your day-job. It's how our life is, but itâs not ok. Itâs not right, when guys from poor environments can excel their talents and polish their skills, cause they canât afford unpaid internship, not to mention private UX schools. I was lucky, in my generation itâs still not obligatory to have such certificate, but it opens a lot of doors. Iâm double lucky, cause finally anthropology/ ethnography became recognized as a valid and valuable vocational training. Many of UX specialists come from business-oriented backgrounds: they just âre-orientedâ in their previous jobs. We need folks with consulting or graphics roots, but the second they become overrepresented, the industry looses broader perspective: we all put different flavors on a plate. Psychologists, frontend devs, linguists and social scientists, we are all needed. UX Research differs from Marketing Research simply by its orientation: we want to investigate the real human person within our product/service, not the product within the market. I know that CX (Customer Experience) is for some a new brand term for UX. Itâs true, BUT only in some specific contexts. And every time we replace user/person/human with âclientâ, we use free market narrative and see the design process through the narrow, capitalistic logic. But thatâs a different story.
So, what to do to transform into UX someone? Â Oh sister.
1.      Easy stuff.
Join all the UX-related groups and pages on Facebook, subscribe to newsletters, visit all the meetups and free/low cost workshops, follow Them Famous UX Gods on Twitter â not gonna prepare a list now, go Google yourself.
Oh, and if youâre still a student: check if any faculty at your uni has any technology/design related courses or even associations. You donât have to sign in, just go there and listen. Itâs the very last moment in your life, when you get formal knowledge for free. Thatâs what I did during my Erasmus scholarship â I took my sneaky butt to IT students-oriented lectures. Iâm pretty sure that host Erasmus supervisor still hates me, she kicked me out from almost all of the courses (âyouâre from anthropology, you canât sit with usâ). Official way doesnât always work. World might not be ready for you. Be ready to bite back.
2.      Tough stuff (aka everything else).
Think. Think who you are: what are your skills? What are their names in UX/commercial research lingo? What do you mean theyâre not the same? Wait, so in-depth ethnographic interview is not correct? HOW COME.
Yep, my young padawan. We all spend hours reading Clifford, Hastrup and Geartz, and yet it taught us nothing about communicating non-etno-peeps what kind of tools are we using. Yes, they are tools, not sacred means of humanitarian contact. Get over it.
Start with reading blogs (e.g. Medium offers a tone of cool short articles) to update your vocabulary. Then read books: âUX Researchâ by Brad Nunnally and David Farkas, or if you know Polish: âBadanie jako podstawa projektowania UXâ by Iga MoĹcichowska and Barbara RogoĹ-Turek. Desk research, IDI, observation⌠yep, continue. Iâll get some coffee.
You know your skills (more or less)? Cool, now think again: what do you want to do within design process? For social scientists (anthropologists, sociologistsâŚ) itâs natural to aim into UX Research specialization. There are others, the names and scope of competences can vary a lot in every company. In general, you have UX designer or product designer, a person whoâs responsible for flow, interaction, logic and basic interface structure. In package come also UI designer, who will make the prototype beautiful, usable and real-life-looking, so developers can start production. There are unicorns, that just do everything. You can think about it later.
Once you know what you want to do, I recommend learning more about general usability and design process. You will need this knowledge no matter which specialization you want to pursue. And, darling, you need to have be able to back up your future design decisions â people will challenge them. Theyâll challenge them so hard. Pages like Coursera or Udemy can help you â you just need a lot of motivation to finish the courses. You register (and pay) to get access to recorded video lectures, sometimes there are readings. If you pay for a course on Coursera, then youâre able to participate in a class project and get feedback on your work, afterwards you get a certificate. Cool beans, I did the free version, cause I was poor. I found myself some offline occasions to practice.
Other options are (mentioned above) local meetups: find a UX community in your area and check if theyâre organizing anything. Even better, ask if they need volunteers: youâll help, youâll meet interesting people and youâll get the free pass for all the events. Same goes for conferences: email them and ask if they need volunteers. Some NGOs run continuous projects (does TechSoup ring a bell?) and they always welcome new people. Donât be shy, all the programmers build their portfolio that way, you can do it too. Learn and help the world, even if itâs just for a few months. Same organizations conduct mentoring programs â I took part in TechLeaders by Women in Technology: totally recommended! You do your own project and have a personal couch to give you feedback, inspire and most of all, guide through the process. Go for it, mate.
If youâre a student, join or start an association. Itâs easy, itâs free, you can play your âIâm an university student doing great scholar thingsâ card, while dealing with institutions. Find people like you, creative, eager to learn and responsible (Iâll write a post on that one day). Think about a small project you can do together: new website for your institute, new service for foreign students, series of meetings with interesting specialists. The latter can become mentors/patrons for any design project you want to run â these people are busy, but also very friendly and enjoy sharing their UX wisdom.
Alright, how about internships? Well, theyâre the hardest to get. The more known the company is, the more advanced recruitment process becomes. They might ask you for your portfolio, for sure theyâll ask you for a CV. Luckily, in IT itâs more common to pay interns (everywhere else â not so much). My internship turned into a fixed contract, so hooray for me. But even if you donât get hired, internships are crucial. Worst case scenario: you just brew coffee and get a happy stamp on your Linkedin profile. Better case scenario, you learn things, you network and leave the place way smarter.
Last but not least: UX schools and long-term paid courses. Oh my. Iâd love to enroll. Iâd love to have people watching out for my education. But, as all the good things in life, itâs expensive and itâs requires free weekends (your lifestyle has to be regular enough to not skip classes every week). Plus, if youâre not from a big city, they usually itâs just not happening in your area. I got my skills anyway, but I canât show THE paper. Still, I can show my two diplomas from the best uni in my country, so I think Iâm covered đ
Another thing is: UX is quite a young discipline, at least in terms of vocational training. There are very few places offering legitimate knowledge. Still, UX is hot, is trendy and it opens our pockets, so there are also âschoolsâ offering courses with âexpertsâ with two years of experience. Just donât fall for that.
Did you manage to read all of that? Neat, mate. Now go and learn some Axure đÂ
⌠or let me know YOUR STORY.