My husband is in his second year of medical school and it feels like we might finish paying off student loans in our late 80s. We are pinching pennies so hard that I can’t remember the last time we ate out. When I decided I wanted to become a UX designer, I knew we couldn’t afford graduate school. Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I got creative.
A year later, I am a product designer. Here’s how I did it.
Step 1: Think Like a Designer
The first step to becoming a user experience (ux) designer is to understand the design process and how to apply it to a design problem. Design is simply solving problems in the best way possible. This mean that you have to change the way you think. When you learn to think like a designer, you are half way there! The best way to start this process is by reading about other ux designer’s processes. But where to start? Email subscriptions. Great companies and smart veteran designers curate regular emails. These email are full of articles that teach you how to think like a designer.
Email Subscriptions
You don’t have to read every article, just read the ones that peak your interest. Articles are great for motivation, encouragement and learning new things. If you don’t think you can learn UX design from an article, read this and tell me you didn’t learn anything. These emails will introduce you to so many articles. Through them, you will learn how to think like a designer. They will also inspire and encourage you throughout your journey.
Here are my favorite email subscriptions:
InVision’s Blog
This is one of my favorite email subscriptions. Not only do you get amazing articles, but the email design is gold. Pay special attention to the clever copy.
UX Design Weekly
This is another great learning tool! This weekly email contains great articles from all over the web. It also offers weekly design tool suggestions, portfolio inspiration, and occasional discounts on classes and tools.
Web Design Weekly
This email subscription is great for front-end web developers/designers. This email is geared towards hybrid developer/designers. If you are looking to brush up on your CSS, Javascript, HTML, React, and Angular skills, this is the email for you! I subscribe to this email because it’s important for designers to develop a good understanding of the front-end process.
Journey Into UX
I found this email recently and it has been a huge encouragement to me. These emails don’t have any links and are relatively short. They are full of encouragement and career advice. This subscription won’t overload your inbox, just try it and I bet you’ll love it!
Hack Design
Hack Design is a email course with 50 lessons sent weekly. If you follow all 50 lessons, you will have a comprehensive understanding of design. Hack Design dives deep into typography, layout, design thinking, prototyping, and content management. Take the time to go through all of these lessons and you’ll have a great design education — for free!
Books
I have finished a few great design books, and I have a long list of design books that I want to read. If you are looking to learn about the latest Sketch hack, you’re better off reading an article. Design books are a great tools for learning about the relationship between people and products (aka: human-computer interaction). Book are also helpful when learning new skills like drawing or time management. I borrow almost all of my books from my library’s Overdrive, so they are FREE.
by Don Norman
If you’ve been looking in to design for more than 5 minutes, then you’ve heard about this book. If you want to be a UX designer, you can’t ignore this book. It’s the handbook for design thinking. It’s long, sometimes complex, and essential to understanding the design thinking process. If you take it slow and read the entire book, you will have a good grasp on design thinking.
by Mark Kistler
I am horrible at drawing. Stick figures and smiley faces are my jam. I realized that if I can’t draw, I can’t quickly communicate my design ideas. I can’t create a wireframe every time I need to visually communicate an idea. This book helped me create realistic basic shapes and develop an eye for depth and shading. If you are drawing-challenged, this is a great place to start.
This book is great for anybody who is trying to work smarter and create something. If you are trying to learn UX design by yourself at home, this book is essential. It gives you so many different examples of productive routines. It also provides honest advice on how to continually stay creative. I found this book very encouraging.
by Malcom Gladwell
This book may not look like a design book, but it contains invaluable lessons about human psychology. We all make thousands of quick, seemingly thoughtless judgements and decisions every day. Blink breaks down the psychology of these decisions. This book is full of interesting research that can be applied to your design process. It’s a fun, easy read and that will help you understand your users better.
Books I Want to Read
Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about People
I love to read. I love to design. Reading helped me fully grasp design thinking and how to apply it to my projects. These books and articles have helped me become the designer I am today. I hope they can help you too!
What your favorite design reading resources? Let me know in the comments!
