Professional Tips on Boosting Your Career in UX Design
Friday, September 14, 2018, 6:00 AM | Leave Comment
As in virtually every field of work, there are only a few who become legends in UX design by dint of their sheer brilliance and ability to capitalize on opportunities helped undoubtedly by a dash of good fortune.
However, it does not mean that the rest of the people who are working in this new and fast-growing sector cannot enjoy fulfilling and financially lucrative careers.
Even if you are a complete novice and taking baby steps in this field, there are quite a few things that you can do to boost your career and put yourself on the fast track.
Some tips from successful professionals in UX design:
-
Fill in the Gaps in Your Knowledge and Skills
As everyone knows there are no shortcuts to success. A career in UX design calls for multidisciplinary skills so you cannot rest easy just by learning the basics.
You need to find out what gaps there exist in your knowledge base and plug them. Pay special attention to subjects like Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Visual Design, Usability Engineering, Research and Prototyping, and Design Validation.
There are plenty of online resources that you can refer to and obtain in-depth knowledge on these topics.
-
Continuously Practice and Hone Your Design Skills
It is no secret that while you need the talent to be successful, success comes faster to those who become experts in their fields simply because they have taken care to learn things well and then practiced it over and over again till they have perfected them.
If you want to make a success of your UX design career, make a list of all the skills that you will require to use regularly and start practicing. It may seem to be a big bore initially but then you will learn to set your own challenges and overcome them and, in the process, become a master of those techniques.
-
Develop a Core Expertise
While every UX designer needs to have all the basic skills for a complete appreciation of a design project, it is a good thing if you focus on one subject as your area of specialization. By doing this, you will be considered to be an expert in this aspect and it will be easier for you to find UX designer jobs NYC than candidates with general skills.
-
Accumulate Experience as Much as You Can
The more experience you have in developing different UX design projects, overcoming unusual challenges and events, meeting and interacting with people from different backgrounds and industries, the more solid your UX design foundation will be.
Try and acquire competence in as many software tools as you can so that you know the relative advantages and disadvantages of each in a particular context.
Similarly, you should make every attempt to appreciate different perspectives that colleagues have of the organization. The more you get to know how different people in different functions view things, the swifter will be your career progression.
Travel for leisure or to attend conferences and seminars, and you will find that as you interact with more people, your own horizons change and expand and make possible easier generation of new ideas and solutions.
Ensure that you are an active member of different UX design communities on the social media as it permits a very good opportunity for interaction for the exchange of knowledge and networking for skill up-gradation.
-
Establish That UX Design Is Really What You Want to Do
Even though you may have embarked upon a conscious strategy to educate yourself in all possible aspects of UX design, upgraded your skill set, and taken steps to broaden your perspective, you really need to take some time off to reflect on whether UX design, exciting and challenging as it may be, is really what you want to spend the rest of your life doing.
Find out and convince yourself that this is going to make you happy and there are no competing interests that will always hold you back from giving your best to your area of expertise. The reason that you need to do this kind of introspection is that you will find that your career really will take off if you are truly passionate about UX design and you don’t have to push yourself to come to the office and spend a full working day devoid of satisfaction.
-
Get a Fix on Short-Term Career Goals as Well as Long-Term Objectives
As a UX designer, you can expect to have all your days full of action, researching, planning, testing, and implementing design projects.
A busy work schedule may leave with little or no time for any career planning and as a result, you just keep on getting carried with the tide and sooner or later, you find out that you have lost all enthusiasm for directing your career to a more worthwhile direction.
You should make a conscious attempt not to get carried away but set out some long-term career objectives; think of where you would like to be in 10-15 years’ time and then make a list of things that you will need to do so that you can achieve your objective.
Break down the long-term into shorter and more manageable time periods with specific goals that you should try and fulfill. Make it a point to be as specific as possible so that you can evaluate what you have done and whether you have been successful. Making long-term and short-term plans are very important as otherwise, you will tend to lose all control over your career.
Conclusion
To excel in UX design and craft a very successful and rewarding career, you essentially need to establish that you are passionate about it and then go about filling in the gaps in your knowledge base. Thereafter, you should hone your skills until you are an expert.
You must use every opportunity to gain experience and broaden your horizons so that you appreciate the different perspectives of people you have to deal with. Set yourself measurable goals and objectives so that you can stay on track with your short-term and long-term career objectives.
Throw us a like at Facebook.com/doable.finance
