There are two ways we develop ourselves.
Either we learn something while doing or start doing something while learning.
The same goes for UX designing. You can either start with a theory and practice the same in the design or start designing and develop your theoretical skill. What would you choose? Post your answer in the comments section below after you are done reading this write-up.
With the UX design, your practice will sharpen your skills and theory will help you get the refinement in your practice. So, if you start designing to learn the UX design, it will be more welcome.
We follow the same method at Felix ITs. Our students learn new things while actually building a design for an app or a website.
So how would you learn new things in UX designing while practising it?
Start with building a prototype
But how would practice if you don’t have an actual project with an actual requirement? No time to waste. You can start with a fake requirement and a fake client. Ask your friends what they would like to see in the app, quiz yourself, tweak the requirement, and challenge yourself with new and awesome design requirements.
After you are done with the requirement, start analyzing what would you require to build this design. Start researching for the ones, analyze your data, draw ideas, get conclusions, and come up with the solutions for your design challenges.
Start building your first prototype and be proud of yourself.
After you are done with the prototype, test it. Test the prototype with the same friends you had asked for the requirement. Get their feedback and implement in your prototype and test it again.
Analyze your current interfaces
Our brains have a habit to learn something new when we repeat things. Since childhood, you have trained your brain to repeat the things and then you get no difficulty doing the thing again and again.
So, if you repeat on many fake projects as mentioned above, you will surely be a boss at it. But you should be practicing in a certain direction. Analyze your progress at every stage, take notes, observe your mistakes and rectify them in the next version.
Learn to use new software like Adobe Xd, Axure or Sketch which give you the freedom to learn with unlimited variations.
After you are done with the practice by yourself, you might need help from the expert. But sometimes, experts won’t tell you the secret of a good UX design, and that is ‘Understanding the problem and giving a sustainable solution to that problem.’
Yes, you must learn to understand the problems faced by users and how they can get ease at exploring the app or website. You won’t get this training at any institute but we at Felix-ITs make sure you learn this. Well, we don’t have any parameters or syllabus for this but we make you learn through our ongoing projects.
As a UX designer, your job won’t be just limited to revamp or create a better design but you need to understand the whole journey of the user.
Start asking these things when you start designing…how the user came to this point? What happened before that? What device they must be using? How my design will look on different devices?
Another approach you can adopt is storytelling. Afterall giving a good experience is not less than a good story.
People love ‘why’ you are doing it rather than ‘what’ you are doing. Your solution must help them in one or the other way. This way you can sell your story and might buy in your stakeholders for the same.
Here’s a short story you can implement in your UX roadmap.
Address the users’ problems in the first screen. Address the problems they are facing. Make them the hero of your design. They are customers, they are kings. Let them know what you are offering and how your design or app can solve their problems in the easiest way possible.
Addressing their emotions will definitely work for you. Once they know they can trust you, they will start exploring your design and get their problems solved.
UX design is not just about solving people’s problems. You can always provide them with the information they need. How about a travelers’ blog structured in the app where tourists around the world share their experiences in your app and other people get inspired by the stories? This can happen.
The design must be user-centric is the key.
At Felix-ITs our UX experts let our students work on real-life projects where they get the requirement from the client themselves and start designing for a better design. This way they get to practice the element, tools, and theory they learn in the classes on the real projects. Have you seen such an approach anywhere else? You must not.
Visit www.felix-its.com and get enrolled in our UX designing workshops after you are done practicing your UX roadmap.