Posted by HOW TO GAIN EXPERIENCE IN UX DESIGN AND LAND A JOB
UX design means User experience design. It is the process of creating the experience a user will observe when going through a website or app. UX design deals with everything a user experiences when dealing with a website or digital product such as usefulness, usability, overall perform and brand perception. UI design is a branch of UX design which focuses on the design of a website’s interface.
WHAT ARE THE COMPONENTS OF UX DESIGN?
It’s important to learn the basic components of UX design before heading on to how you can gain experience on it. If you knew the components already, this is only meant to help refresh your memory. What are the components?
- Visual Design:
Visual design is a branch of UX design that focuses on the aesthetics of a website by implementing fonts, colors, images and other elements.
- Information Architecture:
This is basically the structuring and organization of the information in products and services on websites to enhance findability and usability. It is also responsible for the way pages and navigation are structured.
- Interaction Design:
In interaction design, a close observation of users needs and wants is important because Interaction design is all about examining the interactions between the user interface (UI) and the users. It improves the relationship between users and the products.
- Accessibility:
In simple terms, accessibility is simply the ability to be reached. In UX design however, it is the measure of a users ability to use a product or website and the ways with which accessibility can be improved.
- Usability:
Usability is a measure of how well a user in a specific context uses a product/design to achieve a target efficiently, effectively and in a satisfactory manner. Good usability is essential to achieving positive user experience but does not guarantee it alone.
HOW TO GAIN EXPERIENCE IN UX DESIGN
Experience is a very important factor for most employers so it’s really important you know how to get experienced in UX design. Below we’ll learn how to get experienced and start earning money from UX design. UX design also relates and fits into project management.
-
Learn the basics of UX design:
You cannot be a UX designer without learning the fundamentals of UX design by learning the skills which are crucial to the role such as user interface Design, web design, prototyping among others.
UX design training camps, youtube and UX design courses are a sure way with which you can learn the fundamentals of UX design. UX design bootcamps or training camps cover user interface Design, responsive design, design research and strategy etc. In bootcamps, you spend a lot of hours in classrooms and working on projects and by the time you’re done you could have an industry-ready portfolio.
-
Learn ways to use key design tools:
Designers typically rely on a wide range of wire-framing tools to design user interfaces. An examples of such a tool are; Sketch, Axure, Figma, Invision studio, marvel etc. Any designer should be familiar with Photoshop for interface design.
-
Build personal projects:
Up until this point, we have been dealing with mostly learning the theory aspect of UX design. Building your own projects will greatly help you in UX design because it’s a great way to gain experience and refine your skills in designing. It is also important to work on a wide range projects which will enable you to harness UX design skills in as many areas as possible.
-
Develop Your portfolio by showcasing your UX designs:
After developing your UX skill set, it is important to start building up your portfolio and start applying for UX design jobs. Depending on the company you’re applying to, it is advisable to do background research about the company, know what the job really is about and hone your CV in a way that lines with the company’s values.
-
Apply to UX design jobs:
When searching for a UX design job, you’ll discover that there’s a lot of diversity in the UX designer job market. This is because UX designers work across so many industries. Examples of typical UX design jobs you’ll see when applying for jobs are; UX researcher, UX analyst, UX, usability researcher, interaction designer, UX strategist, Experience designer and many more.
WHAT ARE THE COMPONENTS OF UX DESIGN TO FOLLOW TO GAIN BETTER EXPERIENCE?
UX designers turn an idea into a working product typically through the five elements of UX design. It is important for us to follow these elements vehemently in order to create a perfect interface for the users.
UX design is divided into 5 parts that make everything visible which makes the designer’s work so much easier. It is important that you go through all these components through your projects to up your experience. The components are as follows (from bottom to top):
- The Surface plane
The surface plane are the things that we can see on the site. It’s made up of texts and images. A number of these images are illustrations like the site logo or the photograph of the product that’s up for sale.
- The skeleton plane
The skeleton is made to optimize the arrangement of elements such as the placement of buttons, photos, controls and text for maximum efficiency. It helps you do things such as finding the shopping cart or remembering the logo when shopping.
- The structure plane
This is an expression of the abstract structure of the product. The skeleton defines how certain interface elements are placed on the checkout page. The structure however defines how users got to that page and where leave to when done. To make you understand better, let’s take this instance; if the skeleton defines the placement and arrangement of navigational elements which allow the users browse different product categories, then the structure plane would show you what those categories are.
- The scope plane
The scope is simply wether or not some special features and functions are included on a site. For instance the ability to bookmark products on a shopping webiste – wether that feature or any at all is included on a website constitutes the scope of the website.
- The strategy plane
The strategy encompasses not only what the people running the product need out of it but also what the users need to get out of the product too. Let’s take a shopping site for example, the strategy of the website is simply to sell items and that of the users is to buy the items. The scope is always decided by the strategy of the product.
CONCLUSION
Hey, we’ve come all this way and what a journey that has been. Let’s recap what we’ve learnt about gaining UX design experience so far: Learn UX design basics, learn how to use the various UX design tools, Build personal projects (after developing your personal projects, add them to your portfolio), apply for jobs. If you follow all of the above mentioned steps, you should be well on your way to getting a handful of experience.