How to become a UX Designer with NO experience ✨

i'm kind of getting librarian vibes from this from this look i think it's glasses or like is it like the the puffy shoulders i don't know what it is anyways [Music] [Music] thanks so much for clicking on this video i mean you voluntarily clicked on this video and i highly appreciate it if you don't recognize my face and have never seen my face before my name is greta and i am a ux designer that really loves lifestyle and fashion and all that kind of stuff but i've been really enjoying incorporating what i do as my job ux design into my videos i feel like you get to know me a little bit better so i made a video recently it's actually my very last video so if you want to check it out i'll leave in the description box whatever um so i made a video talking about what my day to day looks like as a ux designer in quarantine and just a little disclaimer i am fairly new i would say i'm like entry to mid level at this point so i'm not completely like completely completely new but i'm also definitely not an expert at this point but i'm getting there okay from my last video a couple of you were like can you please talk about how you transitioned into ux design i had some people like go out of their way to personally message me and be like hey you gotta do this video okay so i feel like i have to do this video now and this is something that i was really interested in when i was getting into ux design so i'm very excited to give you kind of like the insider scoop as to how do you even go from having absolutely no experience and getting your first job in ux design so let's do it [Music] i assume if you clicked on this video you have an idea of what ux design is but if you don't know what it is ux design is user experience design and essentially there's different definitions of what it is but it is the process of creating positive and useful experiences for users now ux designers and also product designers which are quite similar they can create products that are physical like a coffee maker or digital products like an app or a website that kind of stuff user is just someone who uses a product so you're a user because you use youtube or you use instagram you're a user of instagram the ux designer or the product designer makes sure that these products are easy to use and they allow you to accomplish your goals so if your goal with a coffee maker is to make coffee a ux designer product designer has to make sure that that coffee machine is super easy to use so that you can easily make coffee as a ux designer i focus on digital products so not necessarily physical products but that would be cool to look at in the future but right now i mainly deal with digital products like apps websites that kind of stuff [Music] when i talk about my journey to ux it's important to kind of backtrack to college so i graduated in 2018 from emory university here in atlanta and i studied psychology and french so two very different things but two things that i loved so much it's great if you are younger let's say you're in high school and you already know that i really want to do ux design i really want to do product design so it's really great if you can major in something like interaction design or computer science which probably means that you can code too which means that you're a unicorn if you're a ux designer that can also code they like to call you a unicorn because you're really special and you're very rare but it's not the end of the world if you don't psychology is a great field if you're looking to go into ux design because as a ux designer it's really good for you to know and understand people's behavior because you need to understand why people do what they do why people interact with the product the way they do for you to make it even better for you to make that product even better and what's interesting is that i was actually during most of my time at emory i was actually pre-med um and i you know i can argue that sciences are creative as much as people like to say that they're not but i always felt like i was just neglecting a very creative part of me that just wanted to create i used youtube that's honestly why i started my youtube channel is because i was just like man all these physics classes these biochemistry classes i just want a creative outlet but then i realized like why don't i try to find something that combines my love for research my love for things that are logical and analytical and also things that are creative so that's where ux design came about okay so once i decided you know what ux design girl i can do this this is really cool once i had my heart more set on it i had a decision to make i was like okay now how am i gonna get professional training i can't you know just start applying to ux design jobs i mean maybe some people have done it before i don't know but i was like i think i need some kind of training some kind of education and i had different options so first of all i could self teach now i don't know of many people who have completely self-taught themselves ux design when you start applying for jobs people like to see recruiters or hiring managers like to see that you have some kind of like professional training a second option you have is grad school now this one's obviously quite popular um it's great because it's very like you know no one can deny grad school grad school like you have to apply you have to get in you have to pass to get your degree you get a full degree at the end and obviously the drawback is that it can be so expensive and it can take a while it can take like two years i think that's like the average that i've seen and there's different programs um there's like georgia tech's hci program human computer interaction there's i think it's university of michigan hci it looks great grad school is awesome it can just be really expensive and it takes two years on average is what i've seen and then the last option uh is a boot camp so a boot camp essentially is kind of what it sounds like it's like when you go um like to a workout boot camp it's like really it's like a short uh workout but it's extremely intense that's kind of what a boot camp is for ux design and there's different ones like general assembly there's springboard i know georgia tech has a ux boot camp ux ui boot camp so obviously a bootcamp is great because it's so much shorter uh boot camps can be like three to four months so very very short very quick it's cheaper obviously it's less amount of time so it's cheaper than grad school it's like i've seen like fifteen thousand dollars eighteen thousand dollars i'm not saying it's like super cheap because girl also boot camps are technically less of a risk so grad school is kind of it's a bigger commitment so what if like halfway in you're like crap i don't like this i don't know why i decided to do this um it's i think it's more of a risk to do and like put down all that money and all that time all that commitment to grad school than a bootcamp because i mean at the end of the day a bootcamp is only three to four months it is still quite expensive but it's not as much of a risk as grad school and i chose roll i'm so dramatic i chose to do a boot camp with general assembly here in atlanta i did the user experience design immersive full-time program [Music] it was a three-month intensive program with all ux design training it's like over 500 hours of professional training and user experience design and it was intense when they say boot camp girl they're not kidding i'm not trying to freak you out it's not like impossible it wasn't like you know at the end of the day i still feel like emory was more intense like my education at emory but this was intense because it was such a short amount of time and you had to there was just so much to learn in three months because imagine like two year grad school program versus three to four months in a boot camp and you're trying to get as much as you can in those three months it was very intense it was monday to friday 9 a.m to like 5 p.m in class only and then girl don't forget about those projects you have projects that lasted you know you were probably working until like late at night you do have to pass all the projects for you to get the certificate at the end and yeah it was intense in my specific bootcamp at general assembly i was taught by one main instructor and then also an assistant instructor essentially we had five different projects and the last project was like a real world client project which was really cool you can definitely add that on your portfolio because it technically well it really is real world work um that was really hard to say i'm pretty sure no yeah i'm like 100 sure that all the classes are remote um which is such a bummer because i they out they actually offered you like an online version or an in-person version also you can choose between part-time or full-time i highly recommend to do full-time because it's just like i think it's definitely faster i think it takes longer to do the part time as great as a boot camp can be there's definitely some drawbacks now i just want to put this in as a disclaimer and let you know about the real deal because it's only three months you really have to make sure that it's really up to you to learn more outside of the class because like i said the class only teaches you so much and your instructors only teach you so much if you just do the bare minimum like nine go to go to class nine to five that's it i think it can be really challenging for you to find a job outside like when you finish the boot camp after graduation i've noticed people who just like really really went for it and put in the work outside of the class have done so much better [Music] so since i decided to go with a boot camp at general assembly i want to talk about some things that are really important for you to do if you decide to go with a boot camp so the first thing has to do with your portfolio so if you're interested in ux design you probably have heard of this it's kind of like um pretty much anyone in a creative creative-ish field has a portfolio of some kind like a photographer has their portfolio that showcases all their photographs but ux designers we have case studies so these are just like showing your process of how you created a product how you redesigned a product whatever it may be it just shows you like your process and your skill and all that kind of stuff that's your time to shine honey something else i want to mention about a boot camp that can be a little negative is that you risk looking like other boot camp graduates so boot camp graduates are kind of easily detectable when you're applying for jobs because our portfolios tend to look very similar because we were taught the same way we were taught the same things and usually we have the same projects assigned to us and these projects are the ones that end up on our portfolio so i highly highly recommend once you're done with your with your boot camp because you probably won't have time during your bootcamp trust me um try to add in a project that is outside from your uh from your boot camp a project that is not a school project because it's so much more interesting to recruiters or to hiring managers if you can talk about a project that you did not in school a project that is not like a concept design which means that it was just like a fun idea you weren't actually working with a business it was just something assigned to you that was graded so yes it's super important for you to add at least like one project on there that shows that you did work outside of the boot camp and the second thing i want to talk about is network okay i cannot talk about this enough it is so important like during your boot camp especially to network because if you procrastinate and you don't network during your boot camp you're going to feel really behind when it comes to graduation and when you're ready when you're starting to look for jobs because you're going to be like crap like i don't know anybody except for like the people in my class and obviously most likely they're not going to be the ones who are going to refer you because they're also looking for jobs i use linkedin a lot girl i even went as far as to get linkedin premium when i was broke as a ux designer it's really important for you to not just reach out to like current ux designers or current product designers it's really good if you can reach out to people who are in like adjacent fields so as a ux designer you're going to be working with pms project or product managers you're going to be working with software engineers you're going to be working with marketing people so it's really good if you have experience learning about these other people that you're going to be working with because something very big in ux design is collaboration it's very important for you to know how to collaborate in a team because if you don't that is like one huge red flag to a hiring manager or a recruiter if you can't collaborate in a team especially in ux design more than linkedin honestly the meetup app so if you've never heard of the meetup app it is so great it essentially is just it's a mobile app that has different interest groups on it and you can attend different events hosted by these different interest groups so they have ux design specific interest groups there's interest groups for like whatever you can think of there's one for youtubers there's one for um software engineers i'm sure there's one there's ones for like product managers or people in marketing so this was awesome because i really loved meeting people on here and so essentially you just go to these events and obviously because of kovid you know she's out here preventing us from meeting people in person so with that all of the events have been virtual which is actually kind of great because a lot of the meetup events that i couldn't go to before because they were like in san francisco california or they were in new york you know obviously i couldn't travel there at the time but now that all these events are virtual you can essentially go to any meetup event that you want which is great some of my favorite ux meetup groups in atlanta specifically are ux helpers there's ux research that one's really good ladies who ux and [Music] it's either ladies who ux or ladies that ux that one's really good and then also latinos and tech that one is very close to my heart of course but that's not just ux design specific that's pretty much anything in the tech world [Music] once you graduate once i graduated in december from my boot camp i was like yes i'm ready to get paid let's do this when i was like when i had my portfolio done and i was like so excited i was ready to put myself out there and like start interviewing kovid hit a lot of the applications that i had saved or starred for entry-level positions in ux design had disappeared and i was freaking out because i was like what am i gonna do something i would recommend to you is don't be extremely picky when you're looking for your first ux design job outside of a bootcamp because honestly at the end of the day any experience is experience it's better to say that you worked at a really tiny company even if it's not something you're really excited for even if it's not what you were envisioning for yourself it's better to have some experience than to be waiting around for months and months and months and months when you're interviewing especially as an entry-level designer you really have to advocate for yourself honestly if you can show them that you're so passionate and you're really willing to learn and you're excited to learn and you're really good at working with people i think that you're just like that's amazing as an entry level of course like it changes once you become more senior level because ux tends to be a career where you transition from a different career unless you're you know someone who knew from the get-go that this is what they wanted to do and they studied it in college that's different but if you came from a different background it's really important for you to know and come up with your story like what is your story how did you get into ux design why ux design out of all the different careers that you wanted to that you could get into and i think that's important no matter what career you get into because it's really important for people to know and for you to know like why did you choose this career like that's super important um but yeah so i hope this was helpful drop down any questions that you have in the description i am such like a youtuber youtubers do this all the time feel free to dm me on instagram or you can obviously leave a comment and i'll answer you guys but yeah thanks for watching i hope this gave you some inspiration or encourage you to take the leap of faith if you've been wanting to because i believe in you but yeah thanks for watching and i'll see you somewhere else somewhere on the internet [Music] bye [Music] you

Channel: Greta Luna Priego

Views: 22,688

Rating: 4.8997998 out of 5

Keywords: Greta, Luna, Priego, latina, college, advice, fashion, style, petite, curly, hair, ux design, product design, user experience design, product development, bootcamp, ux design bootcamp, general assembly, springboard, career transition, career, transition, professional, user, experience, ux, technology, women in tech, latinos in tech, design thinking, design, how to become

Id: 8Ztgeenl0Ss

Length: 19min 17sec (1157 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020