A Beginner's Guide To

Careers in
UX Design
Table of Contents

1. Introduction 3

2. Why You Should Become a UX Designer 4

What is a UX Designer?
Why You Should Make This Your Career
A Day in the Life
Who Can Become a UX Designer

3. Interviews with UX Designers 7

Jorges Story, Self-made UX designer

Tims Story, Building Cross-Disciplinary UX teams

4. How To Prepare For a UX Design Career 11

Some Tips to Prepare for the Job

Hot Links to Great Resources

5. All the UXful Advice You Need 12

Words of Wisdom for People Starting Out in UX

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Introduction

User Experience Design has become such a buzzword, that, almost every
day I encounter someone with interest, questions, or misconceptions
about this profession.

In this guide, I try to bring you perspectives on UX Design as a career

why you should do it, how to get started, and advice youll need along the
way straight from experts who were once in your shoes.

A UX Designer is a curious creature every company wants one, to help

them understand how customers think about their products, and to de-
sign and deliver amazing experiences.

But thinking about user experience is not just the job of the designer.
At Springboard, we think of UX not just as a profession, but as a way of
thinking that should permeate each part of our organization. Thats how
we can be sure to build things that people love. Whether you are a prod-
uct manager, engineer or entrepreneur, learning the principles of UX will
help you to think critically about your work and deliver better experience
to your customers.

As you read this guide, I'm sure you'll have questions and feedback - and
I'm counting on you to get in touch. Hit me up via email, or on twitter
and let's chat!

Cheers,
R A J I T DA S G U P TA (@ R A J I T D G)
G RO W T H L E A D
S P R I N G B OA R D

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S EC TION 1

Why You Should

Become a UX Designer
What is a UX Take a moment to think about your favorite website or mobile
Designer? app or electronic device. What makes you love it? Is it really
intuitive to use? Did it feel familiar the first time you used
it? Maybe it even has an uncanny way of knowing what youll
want to do next?

Well, odds are, a User Experience (UX) designer spent hours

researching and designing it so you can have a seamless experi-
ence.

UX
UX design
design is
is aa combination
combination of
of tools,
tools, methods,
methods, and
and frameworks
frameworks
with
with which
which you
you can
can solve
solve design
design problems
problems in
in aa methodical
methodical way
way
while
while focusing
focusing onon the
the users
users of
of aa product
product or
or service.
service.

UX designers use a mix of information architecture and graph-

ic design skills to create products that are beautiful and simple
to navigate. They think critically about a users goals and in-
tentions when visiting their website or app, and how they can
better serve them through design.

As a UX or UI designer, you might be involved in wireframing

and prototyping, conducting user research and A/B testing.
You should be an excellent communicator, so that you can walk
engineers and product managers through the thought process
behind your designs, and help them better execute them.

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Why You Should As a UX designer, your job is literally to learn and help
Make This businesses build higher quality experiences for their custom-
ers. User research firm Nielsen Norman Group recently ran a
Your Career survey of 963 user experience professionals and found that UX
design, as a career path, is one that brings high levels of career
satisfaction, quality of life, and pay. The survey also pointed
out that there is no single defining characteristic of user expe-
rience careers.

The field is relatively new, which means that you

help define it and make the career your own.

UX design is a pretty new field that is growing and will con-

tinue to grow -- in importance. As technology becomes more
complex, companies will need UX designers to create simple,
impactful, and delightful customer experiences. CNN predicts
that UX Design jobs will grow at 22% between now and 2020,
with over 2 million new jobs being created.

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 A Day in As a UX Designer in almost any industry, youll work on a
the Life range of products, working most closely with product, engi-
neering, and marketing teams.

DAY-TO- DAY, YO U W I L L

Create mobile and desktop Compile your findings into a

interfaces story

Analyze data to identify Provide direction on new

opportunities and points of opportunities for your business
friction
Collaborate with business
Conduct user research to stakeholders in product,
explain how people are using engineering, and marketing
your companys products and to provide the best user
website experiences possible

Who Can There is no traditional background for UX designers -- they

Become a UX come from a variety of backgrounds, and your design thinking
skills and portfolio matter more than your college major. In
Designer fact, product and UX design teams welcome a range of skillsets
and interests. You could have studied psychology, sociology,
math, or the humanities in past lives all of these perspec-
tives are welcome on UX design teams. Your best assets will be
your empathy for your users, hunger for continuous improve-
ment, and desire to learn.

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S EC TION 2

Interviews with UX Designers

Quick

J Jorges Story
Self-made UX designer
Facts

Name: Jorge Baltazar

Location: San Francisco
Title: Senior UX Designer
M O ST VA LUA B L E A DV I C E
Company: Hotwire
Landing your first UX job is challenging. College Major: Geography
& Landscape Architecture
Without proper mentorship, youre completely
Years as a UX Designer:
making leaps of faith. My biggest learnings 4 Years
came from trial and error.

How did you get into UX design? How error. I realized early that hiring managers
did you land your first job? are looking for the complete package.
Like a lot of people before me, I just I realized early on that every gig is a
accidentally became an UX designer. I learning experience. Knowing what youre
coded my first website in my undergrads. good at and most importantly what
I then started coding for friends and local youre bad at will save your ass. Never be
businesses. While doing so I used a lot of afraid to tackle something. Ultimately its
what I learned in landscape architecture that level of tenacity that will determine
to influence my work. I realized that there your success.
wasnt a whole lot of difference between
designing for physical and digital spaces. What does a typical career path/ad-
I then started focusing on the usability of vancement for a UX designer look like?
the sites I coded and from there started There are an infinite number of roads
focusing solely on usability. to a career in UX. The traditional route
is getting a degree in human-computer
What have been some unexpected interaction or anything similar. More than
challenges related to landing a job? likely most people come from unrelated
Landing your first UX job is challenging. backgrounds such as architecture, graph-
Without proper mentorship, youre ic design, anthropology, and psychology.
completely making leaps of faith. My Personally, I studied geography and
biggest learnings came from trial and landscape architecture. It wasnt until I

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learned front end development that I dis- What lessons have you learned that you
covered UX. Since then, I havent looked wish you knew when just starting out?
back. Ill give you an abridged version. This
can be its own book. I wish I had learned
What about the lifestyle and pay
earlier the importance of self-promotion.
aspects? What kind of life should a UX
Your credibility and exposure is something
designer expect to lead and what is the
people often dont talk about. In addi-
earning potential?
tion, I wish I knew the right questions to
The lifestyle and pay is great. Actually, ask early on when taking on a new client
it was recently named one of the best or job. There are a lot of bad clients and
careers for work-life balance. A junior de- design managers, finding the bad ones
signer is expected to earn between $50- early will save you a lot of time and grief.
$70k per year. Senior designers earn well
into the six figures. What are your biggest words of wisdom
In terms of lifestyle, there are different for newcomers to the field?
types of UX lifestyle, all depending on Be nice and be curious. Design is a collab-
where you work. Agencies and start-ups orative effort. You want to be the person
will most likely be more demanding. In- that people want to work with. Being
house work can be pretty stable. Free- curious is just a part of being a design-
lance work is lucrative but very volatile. er. This means being an avid reader and
playing with everything (video games,
How has the UX design landscape apps, etc).
evolved? How do you see the future of
the field?
The UX field has been evolving and grow-
ing rapidly. Companies are starting to
value design more. More than ever, de-
signers are at the big kids table when
making big decisions. With this refocus
on design, design teams are growing and
new specialists are emerging. The future
looks great for UX designers.
With more companies investing in design,
there will definitely be a need for design-
ers. In terms of the field, companies are
focusing more on customer experience.
With that said more of User experience de-
sign will be beyond the digital space such
as physical products and service design.

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 Quick
Tims Story Facts
Building cross-disciplinary
UX teams Name: Tim McCoy
Location: San Francisco
Title: Director of UX Design
M O ST VA LUA B L E A DV I C E Company: Pivotal Labs
Get out and talk to your peers. Get out and College Major: Engineering
do things in the community (like meetups). Years in the Industry:
20 Years as an Engineer &
Hackathons and startup weekends are UX Designer
immensely valuable for people starting out

What led you to the field of UX? terms of being an inclusive discipline. The
Ive been in the industry for almost 20 field isnt just for design specialists -- its
years. I started out as a front-end devel- for everyone involved in the creation of a
oper in 1995. I was lucky enough to work product.
with an early web shop that really under- UX isnt about creating experts who
stood and put a value on user experience are the luminaries in their fields. Its
back when websites were advertising or cross-disciplinary. People can jump in
brochure/marketing based. from a variety of backgrounds -- and
Our team strove to build strong customer these varied perspectives are essential for
relationships. I was interested in these UX yielding great results.
related business challenges and started
What are the most important
talking to interaction designers on some of
personality traits you seek out when
our projects. I dug deeper and deeper and
looking to hire a UX designer?
have been learning by doing ever since.
Humility is an important trait. UX de-
What inspires you about the field? signers are constantly looking for ways to
Theres a real person on the other side of validate and invalidate their assumptions
the screen, who Im aiming to reach with -- which sometimes means being wrong.
my work. What Im doing is materially You cant have an ego in this field.
affecting others, and there is heightened Being collaborative is huge. When youre
pressure for me to do a great job. not in your office creating designs, youre
working with business, technology and
In your opinion, what is the biggest way user stakeholders to map out your proj-
that the field of UX is evolving? ects direction.
I like the direction the field is going in

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Why do people leave the field? What and working more closely with stake-
dont people enjoy? holders to provide direct mentorship to
People leave the field because they are teams. From there, the next steps turn
frustrated or they feel like the road isnt into running a team an office of de-
as smooth as they would hope. UX is not signers in-house. Theres a strong growth
just about producing great design. Its trajectory as well because UX design and
just as important to be able to demon- product management have a lot of over-
strate and advocate for your values. lap. Many people with UX backgrounds
become product VPs.
Whats the workload like as a UX de-
signer? Can you share details about salaries?

The best UX designers really care about UX designers can afford great lifestyles.
the products that theyre designing -- if Salaries are comparable to engineers.
you love what you do, youll inevitably
What advice do you have for a UX de-
take that home with you. You internalize
signer who is just starting out?
your work as something that you really
have an investment in. If you dont have Get out and talk to your peers. Get out
passion for it, youre not going to be suc- and do things in the community (like
cessful. meetups). Hackathons and startup week-
ends are immensely valuable for people
At Pivotal Labs, we have a sustainable
starting out.
pace culture were lucky. You do spend
time doing things like talking to users at These opportunities will give you a crash
odd hours and going on trips to go to course in collaboration and working with-
interview users and customers and stake- in constraints. Youll be able to develop a
holders. But youre also one step removed portfolio of work. This is a field where you
from the line of fire. can get a great formal education, but
you can also absolutely learn by do-
How about the career path? ing. So much of this stuff, you can really
When you progress past an individual learn on the job. No matter your college
contributor role, you can get involved in major, the field will be welcoming to you.
the more strategic side of UX, which is
matching user goals to business goals
and product direction.
Whether youre working in-house or
for an agency, theres always a man-
agement layer related to any initiative.
Youre consulting into and across projects

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S EC TION 3

How To Prepare For a

UX Design Career

Some Tips to Most important: kickstart a portfolio! Maintain a digital scrap-

Prepare for book (e.g. in Evernote) of products or apps that delight you.
Try to think of why they are great. Try to redesign apps you use
the Job: based on these principles.
 et experience running with an idea and turning it into a product.
G
Start with small freelance projects. If your friend has an idea for
an app, design it even if it they never build it, youll have a
portfolio piece.
Learn how to wireframe and prototype weve got helpful links
below. Brush up on your Adobe Creative Suites skills, or pick up
Sketch, which becoming more and more popular with designers.

Learn a little CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. You dont need to be a
master coder, but designers who can code (even a little bit) can
better understand what goes into converting your prototypes into
webpages and apps, and itll help you work closely with engineers.
Work on your communication skills. UI/UX designers should be able
to talk anyone through their proposed designs, as well as do user
interviews and field studies to get feedback on their designs.

Hot What is User Experience Design? Overview, Tools and Resources,

Smashing Magazine
Links
UX Design Learning Path, Springboard
A Beginners Guide To Wireframing, Tuts
6 Steps to Creating a Knock-Out Online Portfolio, 99u.com

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S EC TION 4

All the UXful Advice You Need

Words of Everyone agrees that you learn best by doing. At the same
Wisdom for time, it can really help to have words of wisdom to guide you
along the way. We asked 10 of the most influential UX design-
people starting ers for pieces of useful advice for their younger selves. Here we
out in UX share their top personal and professional advice.

P RO T I P:
Follow them on Twitter for more honest, insightful,
thought-provoking, and sometimes funny tidbits.

Be Hungry
"Be insatiable. Always be present. Dont let a label define you or what you
look to accomplish in life. Look to everyone and everything for answers,
even when they dont seem to relate to the question at hand. You can be
anything and everything you want to be."
@iamlucid
- Joshua Garity
FO U N D E R, C A N D O R E M

Be Foolish
"The best way to learn anything is through making mistakes, and I would
not want to deny my younger self that opportunity. As Winston Churchill
once said, Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusi-
asm. Dont listen to anyone, make your own mistakes, and then when you
@boagworld
fail, get up and try again."
- Paul Boag
CO- FO U N D E R, H E A DS C A P E; W R I T E R, S P E A K E R

Follow A Process
"Document everything! Having an extensive reference of well-ordered UX
design to browse through helps you learn and also find solutions to prob-
lems as your reference builds. Remember to document real-world experi-
ences as well, because these patterns can be referenced too."
@matthamm
- Matt Hamm
CO- FO U N D E R, SU P E R E I G H T ST U D I O

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 ...But Dont Be Afraid To Buck The Trend
"Learn to separate UI trends from practical or useful UI design conven-
tions. Just because a current trend is widely used doesnt necessarily mean
its the best way."
- Mike Kus
@mikekus
GRAPHIC AND WEB DESIGNER

Its All About The User

"Dont get lost in myriad design methodologies and patterns. Its import-
ant to learn about design frameworks and have a rigid design process, but
the start is always very simple: Who am I designing this for? What does he
need to achieve? How can I help him to achieve that? Then its just a mat-
@pavel_macek
ter of iteration and learning what works and what doesnt."
- Pavel Macek
L E A D D E S I G N E R, S C R E E N H E RO

"Always consider the final outcome and context for the user/customer.
What do they need to accomplish AND in which context. For example. If I
am trying to install a bike rack on my car, and I go to the manufacturers
website. The goal is to successfully install my bike rack and get on the road
as quickly as possible. The context is, Im standing outside my car in the
@jackzerby hot sun with my kids crying because they want to go to the park NOW.
Design with those parameters in mind. KNOW THY USER. Just like with
successful marketing, understand their pains, problems, frustrations, and
use their language to communicate. Dont guess and fall prey to designer
arrogance (which we all do from time to time)."
- Jack Zerby
CO - FO U N D E R O F F L AVO RS. M E & G O O DS I E; D E S I G N D I R EC TO R AT V I M EO

People Are More Important Than Skills....

"Understand that in a collaborative profession like UX, people are more
important than skills. If you have an aptitude for research or design, youll
master those skills in time, but having the right relationships can make or
@kaniasty
break your career. When I made my initial career change into high tech, I
knew very few people who did the same thing I did. When I went back to
school for Human Factors at Bentley University, it was like a whole new
world opened up for me. Of course, a big part of it was the learning, but
the network of people I ended up meeting was just as valuable. So meet as
many people as you can who are as excited about UX as you are, and ask
them for advice.
- Eva Kaniasty
FO U N D E R, R E D P I L L UX; P R E S I D E N T, UX PA

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 ...Even If They Dont Always Get It
"Chill out, for starters! We designers know the importance of what we do,
and we want everyone else to get it. So we find ourselves fighting to get
the message out there, which can lead to exhaustion and deflation. Ive re-
@lishubert
alized that working so hard to imbue my knowledge into those outside the
field is not the point. It doesnt matter if the business or technology team
gets what I do. What matters is that you are passionate about what you
can control, do what you are responsible for (and more) to see that pas-
sion come to life, and enjoy the ride!"
- Lis Hubert
E X P E R I E N C E D E S I G N CO N SU LTA N T, S P E A K E R A N D W R I T E R

So, Get A Mentor. Or Two

"Get two mentors. The first one should be somebody older and influential
in the field you care about. They will help by giving you perspective and
teaching you the sorts of skills you need to get hired by somebody like
them. The second mentor should be somebody a couple years older than
you. They will tell you what you really need to know to do the job youre
@lauraklein likely to get. I dont know what life is like for somebody who is just starting
out in tech these days, but somebody whos only been doing it for a couple
of years will have really good insight. So, find two people: someone to help
you get your next job and somebody to help you do your next job."
- Laura Klein
AU T H O R O F UX FO R L E A N STA RT U P S

And Most Importantly, Live Your Life Well!

"Hey, younger self! You will spend some time idealizing long term goals,
and thats a good exercise. Youll think about your ideal job, employer,
lifestyle, family, and more. But in reality, youll get very little satisfaction
chasing those things, so you should never wait around for them. Spend life
living. The most fun is in charting the actual, sometimes smaller (some-
@kevinmhoffman times not) decisions that will confront you whether you want them to or
not. Your goal should be to get better at making decisions when they can
have the greatest impact on your life.
Also, as much as you can, realize that self-doubt may help you with humil-
ity, but not much else. Also, dont take yourself too seriously. Also, exercise
more. Also, dont overuse the word also."
- Kevin M. Hoffman
FO U N D E R, S E V E N H E A DS D E S I G N

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Considering A Career In UX
Design? Check out these
additional resources.
UX Learning Path
A free curriculum to get started in UX

UX Design Workshop
Learn UX with a mentor, and build a portfolio

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