How to get a UX/UI Designer Job in 2021?

It’s normal to worry about finding a new position when you’re looking out to start a new career in UX/UI especially in 2021.

Its totally legit to get into this path of career, as the demand for good UX grows and grows.
Statistics show that the demand for UX Designers have raised by almost 40% and so do the salaries.
The average salary of a mid-ux designer in the usa 2020 was $134,183, which is certainly not the worst.

No matter if you have already some experience in the field of design, or you are shifting from another field to UX/UI. Is it possible to land a job as a UX designer with a professional background as a general designer? Accountant? Nurse? 

Today we want to dive into this topic and see what possibilities there are for you to get into your next dream job, or at least in the industry.

Little Spoiler: It’s definitely possible. You can jump into a career as a UX/UI designer without having experience in the industry.

How does this work for me? 

In this article, I’m giving you an insight into the industry, why it is so interesting for a career change, and what are the next steps to get started right now. 

Giving you an idea of what is important to impress potential employers and make them understand what value you can bring into the company.

Let’s get started. Here is our agenda for today:

1. UX/UI Design – A brief overview
2. How important is it to have experience in Design?
3. What role plays common sense in UX/UI Design?
4. What can I put in my beginner portfolio?
5. Sources of knowledge?

1. UX/UI Design – A brief overview

Who doesn’t know the difference between UI and UX? Sure, both are closely intertwined and rarely exist without each other, but few would be able to pinpoint the exact differences between the two. To change that, the following will first define the two systems, and then explain what the advantages, disadvantages, and differences are between the two.

User Interface

The user interface is the surface on which the interaction between man and machine takes place. The goal of this interaction is the effective control of the machine on the part of the human, who uses the feedback from the machine to make operational decisions more easily. This requires both a physical component (the hardware) and a logical component (the software). In the best case, the interface should be intuitive, efficient, and pleasant to master.

There are numerous different UIs in existence. The two most important or relevant are the Graphical User Interface and the Web User Interface. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) is the graphical user interface that is controllable by mouse and keyboard. The result is displayed by the computer on the monitor. The Web-based User Interface or Web User Interface (WUI) ensures the display of web content that is generated via the Internet and can be viewed by the user via a web browser.

The user interface is therefore the actual design of the interface that ensures a successful, seamless, and pleasant interaction between the user and the product. Much of the work on the interface consists of observing and evaluating the behavior of the interface user and optimizing on the basis of this.

User Experience

It’s unlikely to become a good UI designer if you don’t know what UX is.

User experience is all of a person’s behaviors, emotions, and opinions about a particular product, system, or service. User Experience encompasses every practical, value, and meaningful aspect of human-machine interaction and is therefore highly subjective. The user’s individual experience is dynamic and changes over time.

User experience design, therefore, starts with a solid understanding of how users interact with a platform. Based on this, you can define “personas” – user types that have specific characteristics that help you determine what particular requirements the platform should have.

Summary 

In fact, it is quite difficult to separate the two terms as they are very closely related. A UI is often part of the UX, however, a UX can exist without a UI. What they have in common is that both can be applied to almost any product, are focused on the user’s comfort, and increasingly make up problems on the design, rather than the product. While the user interface is what you see, i.e. the external representation of a product, the user experience consists of emotions, a feeling of what impression the product leaves on the recipient. While the user interface is a part of the product, the user experience is the whole package, the complete experience that the user gets.

The common thing here is that a product can work despite poor UI if the UX is successful. Conversely, it is difficult to make your product successful if you have an excellent-looking design but the usability is lacking. Therefore, it is advisable to combine both components to make your product as interesting as possible.

2. How important is it to have experience in Design?

Oftentimes what people mean when they say they need experience is that they need something in their resume or CV which shows that they have some prior specific experience from a popular company or one that is deep in the field. Does the fact that they worked or interned there prove that the person is knowing actually what they are doing? Not necessarily. 

Possible employers will discuss the work that you show them. So while an entry in your resume can be helpful, it should be something that you really can showcase in your portfolio and talk about in job interviews. 

Your UX portfolio and core knowledge are the points where employers will look at the tone of your work, your attention to detail, and the way how you take learnings from one project to the next ones. 

Your portfolio will show the work you’ve done, no matter if it is from a volunteer position, a former UX job, a course that you made or a personal project, or maybe you made a project especially to excel in this job interview because the job means so much to you.

The examples that you will show, will represent the value that you can bring actually to the company, and these case studies might be a maker or breaker. 

Here comes the good thing about it.

While UX designers mostly work on UX/UI Design related topics, it is demanded that you are a good problem solver.

Developing a system for people, helping them to do things better, quicker, more efficient, or effective, is a problem-solving mindset that a UX Designer needs to succeed.

If you can translate the way that you solve problems into your portfolio, you have good chances to land that job!

3. What role plays common sense in UX/UI Design?

This brings us to the next point. What role plays common sense in UX/UI Design.

You will be a problem solver who is specialized in digital processes. 

Step back from the whiteboard and analyze the problems like it would be offline and in the real world, it helps – a lot. it shows flaws, and lets you understand, what parts from common sense you can just apply to the process of designing the usability of a product.

Rethink your previous experiences and look for skills and competencies that apply to the field of UX/UI design. 

It is beneficial to have a sense of the inherent connection between what you already did what challenges await you in your new career. Your task is to gather these connections and communicate them clearly so future employers can see the resulting benefit. 

4. What can I put in my beginners portfolio?

I guess as you made it here, you already know what a portfolio is, if not, no problem, let us short cover what this includes

A UX design portfolio is a (mostly) online (sometimes PDF) presentation of a UX designer’s work. A personal website to show the things you worked on, or currently work on. 

But the goal of your UX Portfolio is not only to show commercial projects for company XY. It mainly should show your design approach, your process. Not just visuals.

The UX part of UX/UI is all about, how to find out what our user needs and why. And then later to translate this into the mockups of an application – test it, and improve it.

You should be detailed showing the process that you used to get there. No one is interested in seeing how nice you can build some mockups in Figma, AdobeXD, or any tool of choice – As the name already implies it’s only tools. What’s really interesting is, how will you contribute to the daily work as an individual to lead the group to usability success.

How do you identify and solve user problems? 

The showcased process including research, ideation, prototyping, and testing is called a case study.

In your UX portfolio, case studies tell the story of your projects. They use text, images, videos, and animations to showcase the whole UX process —from discovery to solution and everything that goes between. At the end of each case study, you will show outcomes and success metrics.

What did your work do for the user, and how did your work help the business?

Case studies are the core element in presenting work to potential employers for them to understand who they are hiring and what level you will be settled in. 

5. Sources of knowledge?

If you are just starting out with UX/UI and you’re not entirely sure how your future workday will look like, there is plenty of information from fellow UX designers, books about processes, tutorial videos, and online courses to bring you on the right track:

Here are some picks which you might wanna take a look into:

(Sidenote: There are NO affiliate links in the book recommendations)

Start with the UX basic books that every designer should read at least once in their career.
After finishing these books, you already have a solid knowledge of problem-solving and understanding why some things are considered a problem. Also, you will understand how to solve things by using design.
It’s a common misunderstanding, that design is only a visual outcome.
It is a process to achieve a certain goal that doesn’t exist yet.

So run to the library and come back with

• Don’t Make me think, by Steve Krug
• The design of everyday things, by Don Norman
• Microcopy – the complete guide
• Universal Principles of Design

After you finished these, you will have already a solid theoretical education as a UX designer.

To get some insight into a UX Designer’s life (not only on Dribbble, that’s no real UX Designers!) go and look for some blogs and vlogs. I find Instagram not very helpful. The most you see there are some images of context-less interfaces or some self-claimed gurus who want to sell you something in the end.

What I find a better source of information here is Youtube.

Great channel about UX Design, Tools, Trends, and UX Portfolio is definitely VAEXPERIENCE. Check him out, this guy knows what he is talking about and it will help you a lot to prepare for your first, second, third, and maybe even fourth job.

Don’t even consider taking a boot camp. This is totally not the way to become a UX designer.

Nobody will teach you in 3 weeks what takes years to master. 

These boot camps promise you a lot, but fall short in UX interviews, when it turns out, they really only scratch the surface, giving you superficial knowledge that will let you drop out of the companies funnel.

Gain your knowledge slowly but steadily, through a good mix of practice, research, and learning – this learning can be specific courses, boos, youtube videos, or even real-life events that you attend, which focus on a certain topic.

So, you made it almost to the end of this guide, and i hope you could take away some good tips and information.

Keep your eyes open on this website, we will try to publish a lot more on finding jobs soon.

As for then, feel free to browse through our job vacancies, MOST of them are remote right now!

Stay healthy and be nice!