How to be come a UI/UX designer coming an engineering background ?
I'm a computer science engineering student .who is turning to UI/UX design as self-thought . #design #graphic-design #engineering #computer
9 answers
Kiah’s Answer
UX design is a field where people start with many different backgrounds. Starting with an engineering background can be very beneficial, because you understand the different components of a system.
The most important thing to know in UX design is how your user will think and act. This means you have to be the bridge between the engineering side (what is possible) and the human side (what is desired). There are many differences between engineering and UX. UX design doesn't really have a series of repeatable steps or a language to learn; instead each new problem will require different thinking to solve. Sometimes the problem is fixing a communication process between people, sometimes it's developing software to meet a need.
There are many ways to learn UX design on your own, and one of the best ways is to read case studies to see what other designers do and how they talk about their work. Read through design systems to learn what kinds of things that designers think about, and see how you like different design systems, think about how you would solve those problems. Learn about best practices and all the kinds of challenges designers are faced with (Neilson Norman Group has excellent articles and videos).
If you decide you want to get a UX job, you will need to start to put together a portfolio. Some people put together a portfolio in a boot camp (I did General Assembly), some volunteer to help local businesses, some make up projects with hypothetical work. It's better to have real examples where your work has real impact, but the most important thing your portfolio should do is explain how you think and how you solve problems; always explain "why" you think something. Be careful of all of the websites that just make beautiful looking designs that could not function in the real world, or look nice but do not solve real problems or meet users' needs. This is where your background comes in handy; you might have a better sense of what is feasible to develop.
I think having an engineering background (especially if you have front end development skills) and developing your UX expertise will make you a strong candidate for many jobs.
Remember, UX designers generally love people (since humans are at the center of what we do), so try to find some in your local community who you can talk to and ask questions.
Bonne chance, Kiah
Kiah recommends the following next steps:
Charles’s Answer
Charles recommends the following next steps:
Richard’s Answer
Alyssa’s Answer
Jayaprakash’s Answer
You already have many tips given by the prior author and i will also suggest that you look at sites like coursera and udemy to upskill your self in these aspects i have mentioned .
Alternatively, you can attend bootcamp courses such as General Assesmbly (UXDI Full time)
Srinivas’s Answer
https://www.nngroup.com/ux-certification/
https://www.interaction-design.org/courses
https://www.ideou.com
If you find the courses to be expensive in the above options, you can try taking a course on Skill Share
https://www.skillshare.com/
Once, you do the basic courses on UI/UX design and Design thinking, you can apply for internships for getting a real world experience and you will be in a good position to find some jobs and excel in the UI/UX Design career path
Lucy’s Answer
UX is User Research to understand the user needs. This involves knowing different methods of interviewing people, documenting said interviews and then performing qualitative an quantitative conclusions over them. Some basic psychology is needed but not a lot. In this side I recommend reading a lot about the different studies that have been done about reading patterns, the gestalt approach of hierarchy of elements, how to design personas, how to conduct user interviews, how to assign metric values to different user feedback, how to choose between standard interview, to focus groups or Gessel chambers. How to conduct proper User test (which is not to be confuse with User research)
UI involves principles of graphic design: color balance, composition of elements, hierarchy of information, typography, brand consistency, brand identity and overall look and feel. In this regard I recommend books about graphic design fundamentals, books abut the basics of UI kits, web design best practices, books about the User Centered Approach and mostly about mobile design (which I personally believe it is crucial)
Full Stack Designers do UI/UX design as well as coding the frontend. In this regard you if you are a computer science engineer you are all set! you already know the basics of HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript (and Jquery) , Bootstrap 4, perhaps some Angular. I would only recommend you dig deeper about interactive design and best practices of it.
Lucy recommends the following next steps:
Sabuj’s Answer
Muhammed’s Answer
Muhammed recommends the following next steps: