menu
User Experience Design, or UX Design, is a collaborative and empathetic design discipline that aims to improve the usability of digital products. The end goal is to ensure that these digital products and the overall experience of the users of these products is accessible and inclusive.
UX designers are often tasked to observe the entire user journey on a given product. Through this observation process, UX designers then identify pain points or sections in the journey that cause users to stop interacting with the product, as well as find ways to resolve those pain points.
UX design is an incredible and fulfilling career option, especially in today’s tech-driven world. From smartphone apps to e-commerce websites, our lives are intricately intertwined with digital products, platforms, and services. As such, there is a huge demand for UX designers in the Philippines and the rest of the world, and this is expected to grow exponentially in the next five years.
This is where graphic designers come in. The roles and responsibilities of graphic designers are fairly similar to some of the roles and responsibilities of UX designers. Furthermore, many UX designers actually have graphic design backgrounds, further illustrating the natural career transition from graphic design to UX design.
If you are interested in progressing your career as a graphic designer, taking a UX design course in the Philippines is a logical step. With that in mind, here are a few tips to help make the career transition easier.
Build on your existing graphic design skills
The skills you’ve built up as a graphic designer transition well into UX design. However, UX design is a very multi-disciplinary role.
If you’re designing mobile app layouts that are visually appealing to users with ease, then that serves as a great foundation for your new career. As a UX designer, though, you’ll also want to integrate other approaches, such as human psychology and interaction design, into the design process to create a pleasant user experience.
Fortunately, these skills are all taught extensively in online UX design classes. These classes are often taught by experienced UX designers, so you can immediately pick up best practices that actually work. This is why registering for a class before pursuing a UX career is highly recommended.
Do work to build your portfolio
As a graphic designer, you know that most hiring managers request to see designs you’ve worked on previously. The same is true when you begin looking for jobs in UX design.
While you can easily show what you’ve done as a graphic designer, it’s a good idea to diversify your portfolio with projects that are more user experience-driven. The best way to do this is to take on projects from small businesses or even non-profit organizations. Other ways to accomplish this would be to join UX design contests or even work on personal passion projects!
Join a local online UX Design community!
It’s a good idea to build your network of UX design professionals well before you actually start your career transition. Fortunately, there are many online communities where UX designers are able to meet and share knowledge with one another. These communities can often be found on social media. In the Philippines, pages like UX Philippines are open to welcoming designers who are interested in making the jump to UX design.
Aside from establishing connections in the industry, joining these communities also helps expose you to different schools of thought when it comes to UX design. These communities will also often offer opportunities to join webinars and forums that can help refine your skillset further.