How I Became a UX Designer: My Personal Story

Earlier Years

Growing up in a family of creatives, I was engulfed in the world of design at a very young age. My parents owned a mom and pop sign business and was in charge of designing, creating and installing the signs for each job. They taught me how to use the basic Adobe tools (Illustrator and Photoshop) and eventually had me help them with some of their projects. This led me to experiment with some ideas for various school projects, including science fair boards, brochures, and other random creative projects teachers were assigning. Since my parents owned a print shop in the backyard, I was able to translate my designs onto physical mediums. Let’s just say, school projects were my favorite thing to do in high school. I even had some students paying me to create science fair boards for them (don’t tell anyone I told you *wink*).

Although I frequently designed for my parents and explored my creativity through school projects, my original passion was anything animal related. So, I decided to pursue a degree in Animal Science at UC Davis. Now I know what you are thinking “A designer with an Animal Science degree?” Trust me, I have gotten a lot of weird looks at my resume, but once I explain my creative background and my passion as a designer, the employers usually see it more as a fun fact rather than assuming I am under-qualified. Besides, most designers I talked to either have a degree in an unrelated field or no degree at all, which is also what makes the design field so unique and inclusive.

During my undergrad, I happened to land a part-time graphic design job at UC Davis’ Vet School, which taught me new programs (Adobe Premiere and Adobe InDesign) and ultimately helped fine-tune my design skills. Since I was a self taught designer, there was still a lot of foundational knowledge I needed to learn. Luckily, the senior designer took me under her wing and taught me a lot of these basic skills and helped guide me in the right direction. This job not only gave me valuable experience in the field, but also opened my eyes to the different avenues of design and eventually led me to further graphic design jobs. I always refer to this job as the catalyst that led me down my career as a designer. If it weren’t for this job, who knows where I would have ended up, maybe a zookeeper? A vet tech? A research assistant? All I know is that I am very grateful I was able to explore different passions so that I could decide which path fit me best.

Post Under-Grad Years

After receiving my BS in Animal Science from UC Davis, I moved back home to So-Cal and started searching for a full-time graphic design position. I quickly realized that this was a lot more challenging than I had anticipated. The reality is that graphic design is an oversaturated field, and many young designers have a hard time getting their foot in the door. I found myself in this exact situation, and it took me quite some time to find my next job; however, I ended up getting hired as a in-house graphic designer for a manufacturing company.

I was now thrown into the world of packaging design, branding, presentation materials and really anything else the company needed in terms of design. This rapidly built my portfolio in a short amount of time, and showed me a completely different side of design. Although I learned a lot from this experience, I wanted to explore different routes and learn more about the behind the scenes of designs. Why do we design the way we do? Why do users tend to trust one design over another? This ultimately led me to take my career one step further by completing my UX Design certification from UCSD.

UX Program Experience

So I know you are probably thinking to yourself “finally, this is what I wanted to know more about”, but if you’ve talked to any UX designers, they will probably tell you that they also started off as some type of graphic designer. This is common since UX Design is relatively new and more people are starting to explore this career. Anyway, back to my UX design experience.

As I contemplated furthering my graphic design career, I happened upon UCSD’s UX program. I read the description of the program and instantly knew this was the right fit for me. I quit my job as a graphic designer, found an easy part-time job and enrolled in this program. I could go on and on about how influential this program was, but I will spare you the details and refer you to my other blog specifically talking about my experience with the UCSD UX program.

The program took me approximately a year to finish (I did an accelerated path, usually it takes about 2 years to complete) and found myself ready to start applying to UX jobs. Also, during this time I was recruited by a marketing agency, so I started working full-time again. Not only did this job teach me the ins and outs of marketing, I was also able to apply what I was learning from the program to many of my marketing projects. Once I completed the program, I started to apply to UX positions in San Diego, CA. It had always been a dream of mine to live in San Diego, and since SD is a growing tech city, I figured it would be a perfect place to start. This brings us to my first “UX” job (I will explain the use of quotes soon).

Start of my UX Career

Alright, so about the quotes. I have learned from my experience in applying to UX positions that UX is a very broad term, and companies like to use it to encompass all sorts of roles and responsibilities. Some companies will say UX, but really mean UI, where others will use the term UX and mean front-end development. That is where I found myself at my new UX job.

I was expecting to apply what I had learned in my classes (i.e. user testing, user research, wire-framing, prototyping etc); however, I would consider this job more of a front-end heavy unicorn UX role. I quickly had to learn front-end coding languages (HTML, CSS, JS) to be able to build out my designs, analyze massive amounts of data gathered from the designs I built, and then optimize my design based on that data. There were parts of my job that incorporated UX practices, but it was mostly because I fought to include these in my role. With that being said, I learned so many things that I otherwise wouldn’t have, which actually ended up being very valuable in future UX roles.

Fine-tuning my UI Skills

After the tech job, I found myself yearning to learn more about UI, and focus more on developing my UI skills (which I had felt was lacking a bit). This led me to land a job as a UI/Web designer for a design agency. I went into this job with a lot of confidence, since by now I have had years of experience; however, I learned that web design is a completely different artform that required much more creativity and practice. Looking back at some of my first designs compared to my later designs, I could visually see a massive improvement in my design technique and overall creativity. I learned to push the boundaries on my designs and create something unique while still adhering to latest UX/UI industry standards. This job took my portfolio to the next level and was also a major contributing factor in my decision to start a side business for web design and branding.

My Role today as a UX Designer

Finally, we have come to my present role as a UX designer. I know I rambled on a bit about my experience, but I truly believe that each of my previous roles directly influenced where I am today. With the knowledge gained from these various experiences, and my newly found confidence in UI design, I decided to look for a UX role that incorporated true UX design practices. This brings me to my current role, which pushes me to find solutions to create a better experience for the user. This includes, user research, user personas, wireframing, prototyping, and user testing. Basically the standard UX process that made me fall in love with UX in the first place.

My Takeaway and Advice for Anyone Interested in UX Designer

It was a long journey for me to get to this point and I strongly believe I needed to go through all of my previous roles to understand the type of UX job that best fit me. Since there are so many different routes to go down in the world of design, it is important to understand what makes you feel the most fulfilled. Does the job push you to become a better designer? Does your employer foster your growth as a designer? Are you passionate about what you are designing? These are all questions I had to ask myself in every one of my jobs. My advice to anyone interested in UX design is to find what truly excites you (whether it be UI, user research, coding etc.) and find a role that allows you to explore that passion. Remember, it takes time and experience to find your perfect role, but if you are driven and understand your value as an employee, the opportunities are endless.

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