What it’s really like to do a career switch into UX without any design experience

When the pandemic hit, a good percentage of people either lost their jobs, took a pay cut or were forced to resign. Many around the world had a tough time re-adjusting to the situation, myself included. I struggled with adapting to my company’s restructuring and it got so stressful that I decided to quit my sales job altogether. Though it was depressing at first (and definitely anxiety-inducing), I gradually saw this as an opportunity for a career switch. This was when I came across UX and enrolled in the UX Design and Product Management course that was offered by the Nanyang Technological University.

At that time, I had no one to consult since the programme was new — I was part of its first-ever cohort. I also did not know what to expect after the course, since I had very limited knowledge of what UX design actually is and the decision to enrol was made just in a few days. It was a risky move since I had zero experience in design. The closest ‘designing’ I’ve ever done was perhaps creating a poster using a Canva template (please don’t judge, I actually really like Canva. Yay to free designs for noobs!). This is also why I wanted to share my experience of doing a career switch into UX without any prior design background. If you’re like me, I hope this helps to manage your expectations a little and also provide you with some comfort that you’re not alone in this. I will like to stress that this is not a guide nor whatever I do is the right thing. I am just sharing my UX journey thus far.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows

In recent years, the UX industry has gained quite a lot of spotlight as a go-to for career switchers. More and more bootcamps have started to pop up as well, promising candidates a bright future ahead with high paychecks. Well, they weren't lying about this, since most senior UX positions do pay fairly well. However, for junior UX design positions, the salary varies quite a lot, depending on the company. With that said, don’t expect to have a high-paying job straight after graduating from your UX bootcamp or course (but don’t let that bring you down. We just lack experience at the moment).

Be ready to face rejections (or no news at all)

After graduating from my course, I set a goal to get a UX role within a month. Obviously, that did not work, since I did not have any relevant experience. My portfolio also only consisted of my self-initiated conceptual projects. At that time, I was in the midst of working with a client on a real project but it took some time so I had no “real work” to present to potential employers.

Job searching can be like this sometimes.

I applied for several roles but my applications were either rejected because I did not have experience or did not receive any news at all. As depressing as it is, this is something that any career switcher needs to accept — especially if you had a rich experience in your previous role. By choosing to go into a whole new industry, we need to come to terms that we need to start over from entry-level and gain the relevant experience.

One thing that really helped me was to tweak my resume to highlight the relevant soft skills that I acquired from my previous job, that could help me (and the company) as a UX designer. Another thing that I did was get feedback on my work and improve on my portfolio. I eventually managed to get shortlisted for job interviews and land a UX internship at a company.

There will be times when you’ll feel incompetent

Shifting from a non-design to a design field will definitely mean a change in skill-set. Though certain soft skills like communication skills are transferrable, the technical skills will take time to develop. When I started my internship, I struggled with a lot of things, like visual design, understanding the existing design system, etc. the list goes on. I slowly lost confidence in myself and felt incompetent as a result. I started to question if I was good enough to be making the switch into UX design. I felt this way for a while and finally decided that it wasn’t doing me any good at all.

I sat down and listed out what I liked about UX design, my strengths and weaknesses so that I could work on them. I started to look out for UX references that I could fall back on, whenever I had trouble — Google’s Material Design and Nielsen Norman Group’s UX research articles were very helpful. I also picked up a habit to read an article a day or read a chapter a day of a UX related book, to gain more knowledge. Whenever I doubted myself, I will remind myself that I’m still learning and this was the point of the internship — it’s normal to be making mistakes and what matters is that I learn from them. I’ll also look back on what attracted me to go into UX and my strengths, to keep me going.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Expect to put in more effort than others

There are no shortcuts to improve and become successful, other than hard work. As someone that hailed from a non-design background (I studied Science through university and proceeded to do sales), I knew I had to put in much more effort than my peers. Since my course did not put much emphasis on UI, I went on to take online courses on visual design and also tried my hand on the Daily UI Challenge to improve my skills. What I found really helpful was posting my work online and getting feedback from the community. This gave me a little boost of confidence and spurred me on my UX journey.

Just keep goin’ 💪

Switching careers is definitely not an easy feat. The journey can get daunting sometimes and can make us second guess ourselves — are we good enough? Is this what we want? It’s normal to have such thoughts since we’re human after all but let’s not give up and keep going. Remember why you started and trust the process — you will get there.

🔍 Related: Why I’m making the transition from copywriter to UX design

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