How You Can Become a Self-Taught UX/UI Designer

Designing is a hard and confusing process, especially when you have no idea how to start or what to focus on.

Designing products can be a difficult and overwhelming process. It includes a lot of theory, knowing what best design practices are, and includes even psychology.

Some of you might think that you must have a design degree to start a UX/UI design career.

We all know the importance of education. Your design can be the difference between success and failure. Everything depends on the knowledge that primary education gives.

Luckily, if you don’t have a design degree, you still can start your UX/UI design career.

The best way to do so is to start your self—education journey. Today, it doesn’t matter if you have a design diploma or not. Your knowledge, portfolio, and skills decide everything.

If you want to launch your UX/UI design career, it’s important to plan your self-education.

You don’t want to spend days and weeks on relevant skills. You just want to start learning today and get results after X time.

This is why I want to help you with my 3-step strategy of self-education for UX/UI designers.

Self-Education With Online Materials

When you want to start your educational journey, it’s important to learn skills and knowledge with the proper materials.

Your strategy should include high-value sources only.

Unfortunately, there are millions of videos, articles, and podcasts on the Internet.

When I was just starting to learn UX/UI design, it was very hard to find valuable materials.

Video format seemed to be the easiest way to learn. I was able to see the immediate theory implementation and replicate this experience.

What seemed like a good idea, translated into hiatus in real life. My major problem was finding well-structured resources.

Since I decided to learn for free, my major option was YouTube.

When I started to learn, I couldn’t find a strategy for my self-education. One YouTuber was talking about wireframing, another explained product creation, and so on.

It felt like I was learning a piece of skills here and there, but I don’t have a general understanding of UX/UI design work.

I decided to try another source and switched to Udemy. There were so many free courses, so I thought they would work better for me.

When I started to check free courses, I often found that course authors don’t create too deep courses, or they are focused on specific directions.

Again it wasn’t something I needed.

It took me a long time to figure out what skills I need to have as a UX/UI designer.

Once I had this list, I started to find relevant skills and knowledge. Every YouTube video or free course was specified for a concrete need.

I developed a roadmap for myself with the concrete skills I need.

By creating a career roadmap, I had an understanding of where I am currently, and what I need to do.

This is why I believe modern boot camp is a great paid alternative because you’ll get all the basic knowledge and save time on your personal research.

But not everyone has money to pay for a boot camp. You can use my strategy and boot camp strategy.

Find boot camp programs and specify concrete steps in your UX/UI self-education. Research specific sources to fulfill your learning steps and start your educational journey.

Design Challenges You Might Face

While self-education is absolutely free, it also has challenges.

When I started my self-transition from graphic design to UX/UI, I didn’t have any support. No tutor could answer my questions.

Instead, I researched the answers myself. The downside is that you spend enormous time finding a concrete answer.

As a result, you can’t be sure about how long it will take you to learn all the things you need to start your career.

Time is the most obvious problem, but there is also a mental issue with your self-education.

When you face a problem and can’t find a solution quickly, you might start thinking about giving up.

You can’t be brave that it takes so long to find an answer.

What’s even worse is when you didn’t find an answer at all.

This situation can make all your efforts invaluable. One time it’s OK, two times, probably fine. When you didn’t find an answer, again and again, there is a stopping point in your mental feeling.

You start thinking is it worth spending time on your self-education at all?

Maybe you could spend it on other things.

Yes, it’s a price you pay for free learning. So you should be ready for such a challenge and be prepared to feel like you’re ready to give up.

When designers work at companies, they work with other team members, including other designers.

Staying in touch with other designers is important to grow your own skills.

When you start your design self-education you’re alone in this journey. You might feel that there is no support and no one can handle your problems.

Luckily, there are online and offline communities.

You can find local UX places or join online groups. For example, I run a design community on Facebook for all UX/UI designers.

In my group designers ask questions, share their work, and network.

It gives a chance to save precious time while connecting to professionals worldwide.

By staying in touch with other designers, you can find out about new trends, learn about recent technology changes, and even more.

Find your own community on Facebook, Slack, LinkedIn, or any other platform you love using every day.

If you have a question, don’t hesitate to ask the community.

We are all human beings and make mistakes.

The important thing from mistakes is to find a solution and continue your design career.

Self-Taught Pros & Cons

When you learn everything on your own, you save a lot of money.

Instead of paying for courses or boot camps, you learn UX/UI design with free resources.

While it sounds like a perfect solution to save money, you need to understand the difference between paid and free learning.

Let me start with the pros of learning design with free resources.

As I mentioned before, the major benefit is saving money. You don’t need to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars to get knowledge.

You just open free resources on YouTube, read blogs and practice your skills immediately.

Another benefit of self-education for free is that you’ll need to really understand solutions to your questions.

When you have a question, you start to search for a solution.

As long as there are no mentors or tutors, the only way to resolve your design question is to understand the solution you found.

Until you can’t explain the solution with simple words to yourself, you can’t move on.

This makes your learning process valuable because you get a deep understanding of the problem and how to handle it.

Now let’s talk about the downsides of self-education for free and what you need to know before moving on with it.

Your self-learning process will require way bigger time to become a UX/UI designer.

This is the major aspect you need to be aware of.

In a boot camp or course, you get structured knowledge and ongoing support from mentors.

By learning design by yourself you find all information on your own, and structure it into your learning path.

It may take a long time for a newbie.

Another problem you’ll face is no support for ongoing learning. In case of any questions, you have no one who will immediately answer.

This is why you’ll need to search for information on your own. It might be hard sometimes because this process requires hours and hours.

This is something that can motivate you on your learning path.

There are forums and other free places to get support from professionals you can use to find answers. This is not an immediate response to your question.

Sometimes you need to wait the whole day to receive a response.

Sometimes no one will answer at all.

To sum up, you need to be prepared for both sides of self-education. There are pros and cons, and you need to decide whether it’s a good fit for you or not.

Final Thoughts

Starting the learning process is very exciting.

When you decide that you’ll be learning UX/UI design by self-education for free, you need to be prepared for challenges.

There is a huge basis for free materials online, but it might take time to figure out how to structure them.

You’ll need to find communities that can support you. Further other steps will be required from you.

But once you plan your learning path and prepare for it, your educational process will go smoother. In the end, you get a career you were always excited about — UX/UI designer.