How To Become

a UX Designer
From online courses to creating your own portfolio,
here’s what it takes to establish a career in the field of
UX/UI design.
Table of
Contents
1. What is UX Design?
2. What Does a UX Designer Do?
3. Career Outlook for UX Designers
4. How Much Can I Earn As a UX Designer?
5. What Does the UX Design Career Path Look Like?
6. What Skills Do I Need to Become A UX Designer?
a. Hard skills
b. Soft Skills
7. The Design Portfolio Is (Nearly) Everything
8. Roadmap: How to Become a UX Designer
 1 What is UX Design?

UX design stands for User eXperience design.

In a way, the term is self-explanatory: UX design is all about
creating products that are easy to use and enjoyable for the
people who use them. UX designers focus on how a product
works and how users interact with it. They seek to create
products that are both functional and user-friendly.
In order to do this, UX designers must have a deep
understanding of human behavior and psychology. They conduct
user research in order to better understand the needs and wants
of their target audience.
2 What Does a UX Designer Do?

A UX designer might work on a wide variety of projects,

from websites to mobile apps, VR hardware or even a voice
command interface.
In each of these, your focus is on conducting research that
helps you to understand the user and their needs more deeply.
With this data, you can then create and test a design solution that
solves the user needs.
Generally speaking, the work of a UX designer can be grouped
into three main categories:

Gain insight into user needs from interviews, surveys,

RESEARCH and other user research methods. This data will then
be used to inform your design decisions.

After analyzing your user research data, you’ll design

INTERFACE
layouts, structures, and user flows that best fit the
DESIGN user needs.

Throughout the design process, you’ll test your

UX TESTING work to make sure that it continues to align with
user needs.
3 Career Outlook for UX Designers

Job market trends continue to fluctuate as the global economy

begins to readjust to the “new normal” of life post-pandemic.
However, for UX designers—who work in a variety of industries
from healthcare to education to tech—the outlook is positive.
In fact, analysis from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics by
CompTIA found that job postings for tech positions (not limited to
working for tech industry companies) totaled over 2.2 million
throughout 2022—representing a 52% increase over the
previous year.
This aligns with overarching trends of growth that are very
promising for job seekers.
For example, there were about 261,000 jobs added in October
2022 alone. Despite this being the lowest since December
2020, it's still a 59% increase from the 2019 monthly average of
164,000.
Read more: The Latest UX Job Market Trends
 4 How Much Can I Earn As
a UX Designer?

The overall compensation you can expect to receive as a UX

designer will depend on your location, the company you work
with, as well as what experience and skills you bring to the table.
Currently, Glassdoor estimates that the average UX design
salary in the United States is about $98K/year.
Compare this with location-specific annual salaries (both in and
out of the USA).

Toronto, Ontario,
London, United
Canada:
Kingdom: £59,951
San Francisco: CA $86,383
USD $127,000

Hong Kong:
Berlin, Germany: HK $73,000
New York City: €56,695
USD $120,041

Singapore:
SGD 10,025
 5 What Does the UX Design
Career Path Look Like?

The career path of a UX designer often begins with a UX/UI or

product design generalist role, where your work touches multiple
aspects of the product design process. As a new UX designer,
you might work on anything from user research to information
architecture; visual design to interaction design.
If you enjoy this generalist role, good news: it's one that can
easily age with you as you gain years of experience. However,
you can also opt for a specialist path, whether that's in user
research, UX writing, interaction design, or leading a team of
designers.

UX DESIGN CAREER OPTIONS

GENERALIST SPECIALIST MANAGER

Hone your focus into Pair your design

This role allows you
one part of the experience with
to work on multiple
design process, like leadership to
parts of the design
UX Writing or manage a team of
process
Interaction Design designers.
 6 What Skills Do I Need to Become
a UX Designer?

The skills of a UX designer encompass a wide range of topics, from

learning the basic principles of visual design, to designing an entire
project on one’s own. UX designers are expected to have both
hard and soft skills when they enter a new job in the field.

Hard skills are teachable Soft UX design skills can

and measurable, and be a little harder to
include things you’d likely define, and are often a
learn through formal combination of personality
education. For UX traits and learned
designers, hard skills behaviors. They include
include: things like:
● Proficiency with industry ● Critical thinking
standard design tools ● Active listening
like Figma ● Effective communication
● Visual and User Interface ● Emotional intelligence
(UI) design skills and empathy
● Information Architecture ● Collaboration
● UX Research and
Analysis
● Wireframing
● Prototyping and Testing
7 The Design Portfolio
is (Nearly) Everything

As a UX designer, your design portfolio is your best marketing

tool. It's a visual resume that not only helps you land your first
job in the field of UX/UI design, but also grow and uplevel your
career trajectory.
Your portfolio plays a major role in the interview cadence for
most UX/UI design positions. It's so important, in fact, that
applications can be moved forward or ignored based on a quick
glance through the portfolio.
For this reason, the majority of career-track courses focus on
your portfolio as the key course deliverable. Your UX portfolio
can be used to demonstrate your UX and UI design skills, work
experience, highlights from your various projects, as well as
how you understand and apply design thinking throughout
your process.
 8 Roadmap: How to Become a UX
Designer in 8 Months (or Less)

Ready to pursue a career in the field of UX/UI design? You can

use this roadmap to keep track of where you are in your learning
journey, and help you choose the right “next step.”

1 4 7

2 5 8
3 6

1 Find Your Inspiration 5 Invest in a Career-Focused

UX Design Program

2 Learn Design Fundamentals 2 Connect with a UX Mentor

for Feedback

3 Learn UX Tools 3 Put Your UX Portfolio Online

4 Commit to Your 4 Begin Your Job Search

UX Education
Roadmap: How to Become a UX Designer in 8 Months (or Less)

1 Find Your Inspiration

One of the best ways to get started on the path to becoming a
UX designer is by compiling a list of resources that you can turn
to for insights and inspiration along the way.
→ Read: Best UX design blogs

2 Learn Design Fundamentals

As a UX designer, the success of your work depends on how well

you're able to create an effective visual solution. Because of this,
your design career begins with learning the fundamentals of
visual and UI design.
Visual design skills allow you to take all of the conceptual
knowledge of UX design, and spin it into an effective, usable
interface. And, for many UX jobs: UI skills are a part of the job
description.
Roadmap: How to Become a UX Designer in 8 Months (or Less)

3 Learn UX Tools

By familiarizing yourself with UX tools early on in your education,

you’ll be able to practice each technique and establish good
design habits.
Ready to get started? Sign up for our free email course:
Figma 101.

4 Commit to Your UX Education

Rapidly gaining new skills and switching careers can be

challenging, and often requires long hours and an extensive
amount of self-motivation and discipline. All of these
obstacles can be overcome so long as you’re inwardly
committed to success.
Learn more: Acing Your UX Bootcamp: How to Develop Atomic
Habits That Drive Better Time Management
5 Invest in a Career-Focused UX Design Program

Education has become increasingly accessible: an intensive UX

design bootcamp can help you be job ready in a matter of
months, rather than the years required by traditional college
programs, and make you more practically ready to step into a job
as well!
Learn more: The Best UX Design Bootcamps

Kickstart your UX Academy is a fully online, award-winning

bootcamp that equips you with the UX/UI skills and
design career portfolio you need to launch a new career in the field
of UX/UI design.
Roadmap: How to Become a UX Designer in 8 Months (or Less)

6 Connect with a UX Mentor for Feedback

It is possible to be a self-taught UX designer and land a job in the

field. However, it's extremely challenging to do this without any
feedback or guidance from somebody who has already
been successful in the industry. A UX mentor can provide you
with honest, actionable feedback about your designs, and
help you avoid some of the common mistakes that are made
by beginners.
If you don't have any friends or contacts who work in UX design,
there are a number of ways to find a mentor, such as:
● Asking your network of friends and family if they know
anyone who works in UX design.
● Attending local UX meetups, and getting to know people
there.
● Reaching out to designers on social media, and asking if
they would be willing to chat with you for 30 minutes about
their experiences in the industry.
Learn more: How mentorship works with UX Academy.
Roadmap: How to Become a UX Designer in 8 Months (or Less)

7 Put Your UX Portfolio Online

As you compile your design training projects into a UX portfolio,

keep in mind that hiring managers aren’t just looking for a pretty
interface. They’re also interested in seeing how you analyze and
define a problem, engage in research and idea generation, and
develop a viable solution.
Curious about what a good UX portfolio looks like? Check out
our list of 10 UX/UI Design Portfolios that will inspire you.

8 Begin Your Job Search

Whether you’re a UX
Academy student
working with a career
coach or are going at it
solo, job hunting is a
marathon that requires
discipline, motivation,
and a lot of coffee. Treat
each application and
interview as a learning
experience to continue
moving forward.
Learn more: 9 Common
UX Design Interview
Questions
Your Journey Begins…
Now.
Ready to take the first step towards a career in the field of
UX/UI design?
UX Academy Foundations is an online course that teaches the
fundamentals of visual and UI design in just 4 weeks. This course
includes 1:1 mentorship with an experienced designer—and
an automatic $500 credit towards our award-winning UX
Academy bootcamp.