Switch Careers: Transition to a Job In UX Design

1. Switch Careers: Transition to a Job In UX: Hi, everybody. My name is Carl Cannon. I'm a senior user experience designer currently working at Amazon and Embrun in the United Kingdom. I transitioned into a U X career from being a dancer, so I ended up starting my own dance company. I taught a lot of movement classes. I I ended up getting to do a lot of really cool things from that. I did a lot of movement therapy for kids with special needs, and I got to work with a lot of different people of different kids. I got to perform a lot, got to world all around the world. It was great, but there came a point. When I was tired of doing that. I realized I wanted to do something else. I wanted to use my skills in a different way, and so I started looking at user experience design. There's a lot of things that I wish I knew what I was trying to transition a lot of steps to make the career transition, but I think I have done it faster If someone had kind of given me tips about how to switch . Switching into UX design isn't quite like deciding to become a doctor or a lawyer, you don't necessarily have to go to a specific type of school and follow a plan that's been set out for you. UX design is potentially equally is rewarding in those careers, but there's not clear track that everyone has to go to get a job when you're trying to make the transition feel really tricky and it can feel overwhelming because you don't know where to start. So in this class I hope to give you a framework for thinking about a career change, to user experience design and also talking a little bit about why it might be a good fit for you. Uh, we'll also talk about the skills that you need to master to really be that really have that basic understanding of UX to start looking for junior level positions. So things that will cover in the class also tips for career changers. So if you're switching careers completely, what kind of things you might need to think about things to do to create that action plan to actually make the switch thinking about building a portfolio of projects. People have probably heard that to get into your ex design. You build me to portfolio and you need projects to go in there. So we do go into how you might go about doing that, thinking about growing your network and some practical tips for how to grow your network. Specifically a US design network. How to get work if you don't have a portfolio yet how you might find those first client projects and then how you would get a full time job interviewing So some practical advice and tips for if you get the U X Interview, what to expect and then how to prepare for an interview and then what to do after you land a job. So after you land a job in New X, what what do you need to be thinking about then? And how can you make sure that you're prepared? What is really helpful for me, I found, is by giving myself deadlines and specific goals to work towards. So that's what I try to give you in this class. You'll leave with an outline for a class project is gonna be you filling out your kind of career change outlining plans. You can put specific dates to it, so working backwards from when you I want to start applying for jobs will set the milestones together through the class. And then you'll be able to really make concrete steps towards those goals and so that that's the outcome that you're you'll walk away with. This is a really good class for people who are have already decided that they're ready to transition into UX design, and they're looking for a little bit more direction and how they might actually go about doing that. Or for people who are already in a design career and are looking to switch into user experience more specifically. So maybe graphic designers or visual designers who are wanting to figure out how they can add additional skill set of UX and transition into UX, or for people who aren't connected to tech it all and are looking to make a really big transition into UX design. This us hopefully provides a framework for a swell. I'm hoping that, um, by taking this class will really leave feeling more confident in your ability to go out and say that you're a designer and make that transition 2. What is UX?: so no, everybody is probably coming to this course with a different level of understanding. Some of you probably have a portfolio already, and you're ready to start looking for jobs. And that's why you decided to take the class. Other people might just be thinking like maybe you X is right for me. I don't know. I heard about it. I think I might kind of be good at it. So there might be lessons in here that to most of you are totally old hat. You've already done them, feel free to skip them. It won't hurt my feelings. I won't even know. But for those of you who maybe are just starting to think about us and really wondering what it is kind of at its core, that's what this lesson is. For user experience design, at its very core, is the practice of designing products, processes, services, events or environments with the focus on the quality of the customer experience and culturally relevant solutions. So at its core, that's what user experience design is. That could look like a lot of different jobs. People specialize in user interface design, so that specifically human computer interaction so the way things appear on a screen, the way customer goes through the flow of the way those things interact with the customers the way things transitions away in input into that system. That's all called user interface design. So some designers specialize in that those people are probably greater prototyping their strong visual designers. They spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen. They spend a lot of time in products like sketch or photo shop for illustrator. They also might know how to code. They might do some friend encoding because they're able to prototype. Or they use other prototyping, uh, software, things like Quinto or framer. Depending on where you work, those prototyping tools might be different. Researchers spend a lot of time talking to users. We also spend a lot of time writing documents. They spend a lot of time analyzing data. It's been a lot of time telling stories, so you're creating a lot of artifacts. Good user researchers are trying to create artifacts that people are interested in so engaging storytelling to help people make good product decisions. It's something that he was a researcher is doing. They're also doing things that are maybe a bit more technical. So they're doing usability research. They're setting metrics there. I'm trying to make sure the whole team has access to the data that they need. So that's that's a totally different way that you could do UX design. I think the other thing that we hear about a lot is being a UX generalist. So, um, generalists is is basically someone who could do a little bit of everything. I kind of went over the to, like big buckets of UX design. Your researcher or your designer. A us generalised kind of combines a little bit of both of those things. So you're comfortable talking to users. You're comfortable kind of running informal research, usability studies. You're comfortable going and talking to people, but you're also comfortable using like prototyping software. You're comfortable creating wire frames, making flows, designing what things are gonna look like. Eso. A lot of small companies especially look for you ex generalists. Fixed diners have a broad range of places that they might work and different types of jobs they might have. So, for example, you might work from home a zero designer. That means that you might work from home. For a big company that has remote jobs, you might work from home for a small company that has remote jobs, you might also be a freelancer. So there's lots of US freelancers, especially if you're more of if you lean more towards the visual design side. In the UAE side, there's a big demand for people who can come in and consult on projects or take a project from beginning to end. So it is. It is a good job for freelancers. There also are a lot of room boat you exposition. So if you're interested in a position that gives you that flexibility, UX indefinitely be one. Another area you might work in as a UX designer is what they call in house, So that means that you will work at a company on a specific product. So, for example, I work at Amazon. I work in house because I work for Amazon designing products for Amazon, or you could work in a much smaller company. You could obviously work in places like Microsoft or Apple or Google. Those are the big ones. But smaller companies also have in house design teams, so that means that you'll get to really get to know one product. You really get to know the users of that product. You'll be hopefully embedded with the business. You really understand what the key performance indicators of that product are. You kind of get to really build that. It's over time. You're really giving to build this kind of robust experience. If you're on an in house design team and some people really, really like that, so you're probably working really closely with product managers. You're working with Design team. Most likely you're working with a group of engineers, so you really kind of are a product team. Thea Other alternative is you might be working at a creative agency, So a lot of people, especially when they start, are definitely drawn to working in a creative agency. So in an agency you will probably be on a team, and it means that as a team you go and consult somewhere or you take on projects from a big company and deliver kind of end to end on that project and then pass it back to the big company. So that could be really exciting because you changed work a lot so you're not necessarily working on just one product for kind of the rest of time, the foreseeable future, you're changing things up. A lot of agencies can vary a lot in their work life balance. So sometimes there's just a ton of work to do on, and you're working on an exciting project, and then other times kind of be a dry spell. So you're waiting for a project to commit your waiting to be put on a project? Uh, so, like I said, people are excited by creative agencies because they get to work on a lot of different products. I guess downside of working on creative agencies is you might not get to know your customers that well. Or you might end up delivering a product that doesn't get put into production because you didn't necessarily think about strength or you don't know the businesses well, a somebody who works in house. So I think there's pros cons to both, But it's kind of nice to know those those different places on what what they might like. We just talked about all of these different ways that you could working user experience, design and all these different kinds of jobs and job titles you could have. But really, at the end of the day, what's important to remember is, if you're not basing design decisions on customer research, you're not practicing experience design. So you're a user experience designer. If you're basing your decisions on the customer, if you're kind of fighting for the customer and your voice of the customer and you're advocating for what they need to have a better experience, that that's at the heart of user experience design. 3. UX As A Career: So, according to CNN, money, a UX designer ranks as number 14 for best jobs in America in 2017. The median pay for your ex designer is $89,000 $89,000. That's a lot of money on the top. Pay is $138,000 so that is a six figure salary. People coming from a dance job that's a whole lot of money. Um, the 10 year job growth is 18% and UX designers break as bees for personal satisfaction and benefit to society and a for telecommuting and low stress. So that's pretty good. But why else might good into user experience design. So I tell you what, I wanted to get into it, Uh, and why I still like it. I get to help people. I feel like I get to help people on a pretty large scale every day on depending on the industry you work in that can be less or more. I actually really passionate about designed for social, for social change. And I'm really excited about the idea of creating accessible ux so you can help people in in different ways. And I like that you can apply UX to a lot of different problems. There's a ton of opportunity for growth, uh, the air. The tech is growing in general, so it's unlikely that you'll be out of a job for long. If you're a user experience designer but also just is a career trajectory, there's it feels like there's a lot of places to go and it's really creative. So it is creative problem solving, and I really enjoy that. I love that. Some days I feel like I'm pushing paper pushing pixels around, But most the time I feel like I'm giving to really use my creative energy. It's challenging like I talked about before. It's it's intellectually hard and I really was looking for that and I really appreciate it on, but also overall, there's a fairly low barrier to entry, so I don't want to be misleading because I don't think that You X is really easy to get into. I think that it takes quite a bit of work and it does take training, and I think it would be doing the professional disservice to say that it's easy to get into , but when you compare it to something like becoming a doctor becoming a lawyer. The barrier to entry is low on the kind of social stigma of education that exists. Maybe around other jobs doesn't really exist in you. X. So if you could do the work in tech, you're going to be able to get a job. So there's not necessarily this requirement that you have a master's degree. You have a PhD, or even that you have a college degree. If you could do the work and you can prove that you could do the work and you're a person that other people want to work with. Uh, there's not a huge barrier to you being able to get a job. And that's something that I really like about the field. So some things to consider before you make the leap into UX design. Some things I didn't necessarily think about. Um, I don't know if they would have changed my mind, but I think they would have been nice to know, Um, so you ex, especially coming from a job in dance where I was literally moving for more than eight hours a day. UX is pretty sedentary, even for me, who's who's doing a lot more research. I don't necessarily stare at the screen all day, but I still attend a lot of meetings. Um, maybe stand a little bit longer some days because I have my standing desk, my standing desk. But you are working in a in an office. You are sitting a lot or standing a lot, so that's something to think about if you're someone who's in a more movement or into job now, um, UX designers need a pretty thick skin, so your work is constantly on display and people are always going to critique it. You're always gonna get feedback. It doesn't always. It's not always delivered in the kind ist of waste. Eso being able to grow that thick skin really can help the designer. And if you're someone who is quite sensitive about their work, that's something to think about really developing more. Uh, it's very communication heavy, so part of being a good designer is being able to defend your work and clearly communicated what and clearly communicate why you made the choices you made. It's really hard to be a good designer if that's something that you struggle with. So if you're not a clear communicator. That might be a skill that you won a level up on before getting into the field. Uh, it's a lot of negotiations. So your job is a UX designer is to really be the customer advocate in the room. So you're balancing business needs and customer needs and trying to find that perfect balance and, ah, lot of time. It's a negotiation between you and the business. Um So how far can we push what's good for the user without impacting the business too much ? So goes back to communication. But being being able to, um, negotiate and earn trust and communicate clearly, all those things kind of go together. So if you don't like that, that type of interaction on a day to day basis, that might be something to think about. Um, UX design is not art. I think a lot of people get into u X because they feel like I'm just gonna you know, I'm going to get Teoh, make beautiful things all day and then just presented to the world, and it's I want to be really clear that my strong belief is UX is not art. I don't think designers are, I think, design this communication. I think design is problem solving. I think it's different than art. I think art is a lot of wonderful things. I used to make art. I think it's really important that when those lines get blurred, that's where it gets tricky. Because when you create art, you can say I made this because I made this and it's art For the sake of creating art, you don't get to do that. And design design is meant to communicate something. It's meant to make people's lives easier, data driven. So Maurin morals. We're seeing that your ex is data driven, so we have to back up our choices with data. Sometimes that can be hard for people it can feel like, especially people who lean more towards that visual design side. Um, you know, they just feel like something is right. Andi, I totally get that because sometimes you know that this looks right. But you can't back it up with any data. So then they're asked to go back and find that data on. That could be really hard. Andi, like I've talked about, it's hard, it's very challenging, and that's something I like about it, but it is also something to consider. Like it's it's challenging intellectually every day. Uh, and you could be presented with Big Harry problems that you're asked to solve, and that could be quite intimidating. So it's it's a hard job. Um, the other thing, that's kind of something to think about when you're going. Tiu X is that no one really knows what it is that you do. So, um, you go to a party in the first thing, people ask us, what do you do? And you say I'm a user experience designer and immediately people say cool like I don't know what that is, and then you tell them and they're usually like Oh, somebody does That is a job. So you're constantly trying to explain why what you do is important. That can also go for employers. So especially with smaller companies or maybe smaller teams that really big companies who I haven't figured out what your ex is Yet a lot of your job is just evangelizing the job to other people and making a case for bites important. So again, I don't think any of these things would have steered me away from UX design, and I hope they don't steer you away from it. But I think it's important to think about those things that are out there, so, you know. 4. Class Project: Draw Your Dream Job: project for this part of the class is too dry your dream job. So I have actually created a framework for you to use to dry your dream job. So your dream job. So feel free to print that out on scribble over it. Use it to really start getting your thought process going. Some things to think about when you're considering how to dry your dream job. Think about how do you want to spend your work days what your day to day work environment looks like type of industry. You might want to work in the size of your team the size of the company. Whether you want toe be working in consulting, you're working and house. Ah, lot of these things you might not know the answer to. You might not know what they necessarily mean or you might not. You might have a first reaction to something, and it might not be the reality of what that thing is, and that's totally okay. The point of this exercise is for you to really start thinking about what makes you excited about a potential career in UX design, because when you think about what makes you excited that can help you make decisions that bring you closer to that dream career. Onda kind of in that vein, you're probably not gonna end up with your dream job right away, or at least the dream job that you thought you wanted. But like I said, is it? It's exciting to think about why you want to do this and what really makes you passionate about the career switch, because it does help you make choices that might get you closer to your goal, even if what your goal actually is isn't. But it looks like on paper now. 5. What Makes A Good Designer? : so, aside from the the hard skills that you need to the technical skills that you need to be to transition into a UX design career, there's a lot of other skills that kind of makes someone a great UX designer that are nice to think about things that you already have or things that maybe you would want to level up on before really embarking on this career or things to think about. Like maybe we have the skills, so kind of give you some encouragement that, yeah, you're gonna be great at this. Um, one of those things is being curious. So great UX designers ask a lot of questions, and they're genuinely interested in the but in why things are happening. So if that sounds like something that you already do, you're curious about the world around. You want to know why things go wrong and you're looking for the root cause of a problem. That's probably a really good sign if you want to go into UX, because that's a lot of what the what the job is about from your ex is also great for people who are empathetic and who have high emotional intelligence so your whole job revolves around trying to make things better for the customer who's using your product or using your service on. People with a lot of empathy tend to do that really well, so they're able to step into someone else's shoes on and start to understand why they behave the way they do or why they do the things that they do or why they make the mistakes that they do on. Then you're able to communicate that back to stakeholders and two engineers and product managers s. That's a really good skill. It's also that emotional intelligence, his really key, so being able to kind of instantly understand, like why someone might feel a certain way on B. Being able to connect with people on emotional level is a great skill not only for running research, because you're able to connect with people and hear what they actually have to say, said. You build trust easily, but it also means you could just communicate user problems and needs better to your stakeholders. Good UX designers a really tenacious The job isn't easy, and I think I said that a lot during this. Classes think there's a misconception about UX that it's, um it's a career that you can truth. Transition into the buried to entry isn't super high in terms of how much schooling you need, but that doesn't mean it's an easy job. And US designers, really they're people who really enjoy problem solving, so they're not afraid of problems that seem quite large and unattainable to solve. So people who like really messy problems tend to do well in UX there. Also, people who enjoy ambiguity or at least they don't run away from ambiguity. Are you able Teoh kind of dig into a problem and take some time to figure it out? And are you able to switch gears when you need to? Because things are constantly changing, that's that's a good skill. The have is a UX designer, and these are also people who can influence and communicate their their design design decisions. So people who are good communicators, that's pretty much designers air. Doing that all day, every day is there, they're making decisions and then they're talking about why they made those decisions and they're backing those decisions up with data and they're they're people who are great at leading from behind, and they're great at managing up because they're they're constantly advocating for that user who's not in the room. So if you're able Teoh win that influence and earn the trust of the people around you and then then drive decision making that way, that's that's gonna help you in your career. Uh, UX designers are also skilled at their craft. So, as I said, it's a hard job, and it does require skill. So it's kind of this ability to constantly be learning and to constantly be growing their skill set and to just be getting better and better at what they dio. Great UX designers are also collaborative, so people who are able to work work well with others. Even if you're working as a freelancer all on your own, you're still collaborating with people, so you still have to work with engineers and product managers and business stakeholders. So if you're someone who really doesn't like working with other people, this might not be a great career for you. Um, people are good listeners so constantly listening to the world around you and really hearing what people are saying and being able to understand that kind of the root cause of that problem. So that goes for customers. But also listening to what stakeholders air saying listeningto, engineers are saying, and product managers are saying that makes a really good designer. 6. Skills You Need: So a lot of what could be challenging about trying to learn ux is that you're not sure what you need to know. So you're ready to make the switch and you're ready to start learned, but you're not sure where to start. So what I've done is kind of listed out what I think is really important to to build the basics of a UX designer. So the things that you really need to have a great handle on before you can say OK, I'm ready to start building a portfolio and then start getting ready to take on some real work. So what I've done for this part of the class is create a A long list of resource is that are either available already on skill share or our books or other resource is that you can use that. Don't involve going Teoh specific UX class. Uh, so you don't, but you don't need to do all of them by any means, But there a good place to get you started. Uh, there are some pretty, pretty thick books on the list. I would say Don't shy away from those too much. UX is a It is a pretty meaty subject, so don't shy away from the books they are. They are interesting if you're passionate about the subject, so here I've kind of listed what I think are important skills for you to master. So something that I guess the foundational skill is to understand the process of human centered design. So really have an understanding of where user experience design as a career comes from, and why it's a problem solving technique and all of the different ways you can apply design thinking. That's really the basis for what UX designers do. So it's important to understand that the next thing is is the basics of UX research, and this is specifically thinking about formative research. So thinking about how to talk to customers to understand what we should build, what kind of products we should be building, what their problems are. So I do. It's shout outs for the class that I teach I t J U X research Fundamentals course, and that goes pretty in depth into the difference between evaluative evaluative, informative research. It is a pretty meaty class. It talks about it. It's a lot of definitions and a lot of terminology. But I do think understanding the basic differences between the types of UX research you'll need to do to be a solid UX designer is really important. So it's worth it. It's worth kind of digging into, if you help the time annexing uh, to really master is facilitation and storytelling. There's some great classes out there, especially on the sculpture of Platform about facilitation of storytelling it This is really important because one as a UX designer, you're gonna facilitate a lot of different meetings. You're working with stakeholders, your working customers you're working with your team on facilitation is a huge skill, and it really consent you apart from the competition, if you could do it well. And storytelling is huge because most of what you're doing as a UX designer is making decisions and then backing them up and trying to explain why you made them and bringing the user into all of those conversations. Being able to tell an engaging story about a user is so important is also really relates to the U X research. You do so as you do research. How do you tell what you learned in a compelling way so people don't just brush off your research, so it's a huge skill there, and I wouldn't pass over that one. So why're framing and sketching again? This is a class I teach. I teach a basic wire framing class. It's a fun way to just start sketching and start really thinking about product design. There's some other great classes out there for sketching and wire framing, too. So, uh, I think why are framing is a good way to start putting your pencil to the paper and really taking what you learned from users into building some real products. The next one is information architecture. Er, I know that's kind of a scary term that's really just organizing information, its content strategy. There's some great resource is here to, but being able to think about how do we lay out a navigation and how do we test for that? How do we learn the best way to lay out information? Uh, and being able to organize information is huge again. This is a skill that potentially transcends interface design, so being able to organize information is always gonna be important. It always has been important, and it's really foundational to a designer the way that you understand how information should be displayed. Really, it really matters later when you start working on the visual design because it all plays a part in the hierarchy and the way that a site visually feels and what's important and what could be left out of an interface. So again, this is it. It's not when you said should switch, even though you should skip even though maybe feels like, uh, it's not important or it's kind of a scary topic. I would I would dig into the information architecture portion that exit interaction design . So taking our wire frame and sketching, taking your information, design your information architecture and then being able toe. We've those into something that that a customer could look at and interact with. That's interaction design. So the way that person interacts with an interface, that's what interaction designers do. And this is kind of where you really start what people traditionally think about. That's what you I designers do. So interaction design. You really start thinking about flows and thinking about journeys and tasks and how people are going to get from point A to point B, so This is when you really start. I think feeling like you're an interface designer is when you dig into that interaction design, um, on and then after that. So once you've kind of got you've got your wire frames, you've got your flows. Now you're really looking at you. I designed. So how do you How do you make your interfaces look nice and feel okay and feel like people want to use that? Them eso you I design is it's definitely starts to get more technically challenging because now you'll start to Teoh. Need to use programs like sketch or photo shop to start to bring your designs that you put on paper toe life. So again, there's some really great classes on skill share already specifically about you I designed , and these Air Costin's. I intentionally don't teach because there's great classes on the platform already for the So do dig into those, and I think their classes that will take longer as well. So there's a couple like eight hour classes on using Photoshopped and sketch, but do you take the time to go through them on then visual design. So after interface designed, there's kind of an entire world of visual design all to itself, so that things like branding and color theory and visual hierarchy and all of these things that you buy designers. Probably no. And they're using all of the time. But it's not as explicit as when you really start to study a visual design or graphic design, Um, and then prototyping. So being able to prototype your work, Ellie said a basic level for most designers is pretty important. I I think the classes that I listed here talk both about a paper prototyping, which is a method of like rapidly understanding if your ideas work and also being able to build prototypes in software like Quinto or Framer. There's a ton of different software that you can use. So kind of, ah broad list of classes there and then kind of what I've listed as the final step brings us back to research and being able to usability test and then iterating on your designs. So a basic understanding of how to do a usability test or a set of tests with customers to understand what you should change in your design so so so that's a huge list I realized jokes. Design is definitely not a simple subject that there's a lot to do to master it, but But as you're going through these, you'll probably find places that are that are really interesting to you when they're calling out to to learn more. So I would still encourage you to try to get a handle, at least at a basic level on all of these things, so that you can speak to the entire process. But do you take note of the places that you're really excited about because those air potentially areas that you know you might want to specialize in or you want to dig into more. So as we're thinking about what skills you need to know, most designers are t shaped, so when you hear the expression a T shaped designer, it means that they have his broad span. So that's the top of the T. It means they understand the process from the very beginning to the end. So if you could put an end on the process, it would be usability testing and then iterating on your test. The being the beginning of the process would be some formative research, so that means that most designers at least have an understanding of all of those things at a basic level. And then they have, and somewhere where they go really deep. So they have a specialization. So that's the kind of long part of the T bond that could be a lot of different things that could be research. It could be visual design. It could be interaction. Design could be information, architecture, and and often designers have more than one long place that they go deep in so kind of a different shape, I guess. But, uh, that's something to think about as you kind of continue on your career that having a broad understanding is super important. But you will probably tend to specialize, especially if you get going for a while. There will be a place burger like I'm really into this part, and I'm really good at this part of the process. So when people talk about T shaped designers, that's what that's what they're talking about. 7. Getting The Skills: So maybe you've decided that Yes, you X is absolutely the job for you. You're totally ready to commit to the career switch. I'm so excited for you because I think it's a great job. I really love it. And I think more great people should be UX designers. So you made the decision. But now you need to figure out how you're actually going to get the skills that you need to make the career transition. There's a ton of options out there. I understand this is a really overwhelming part of making this choice to switch, because all the options kind of come with different pros and cons. Kind of overall, I think there's three different paths you could take to getting the skills you need. So on the path that I took was a self driven, like online schooling and an in person boot camp. So that's two. There's a boot camp, Uh, and then there's online kind of self directed learning on the third way is to go through traditional schooling, so I'm getting a master's degree or getting a certificate at a university s. So I think those air kind of the three major players boot camp, Traditional schooling or online? Um, so there's pros and cons to each thinking just about a boot camp. Some pros are that you're oftentimes supported in your career search. So a lot of ways that boot camps continue to get students is that they can guarantee that a certain percentage of their students ends up with end up with jobs afterwards on the way they do that is by providing support, and they support you through building a portfolio. They support you through that whole interview job finding process. Oftentimes, they have really great contacts with the community, so that's something that camp can really help you with. They will also often have you leave with a portfolio full of projects. That's also really key because building a portfolio could be time consuming and hard. It can be hard to figure out where the projects that you need our so that could be a great thing about a boot camp, some college boot camp are that it's not self directed, so you have to be able to find the time to take. However many weeks, the boot camp is off of whatever you're doing in your life taking care of your family going to your regular job. Whatever it is, you have to stop and go to your boot camp, so that could be quite scary. And it can also just be unattainable for some people, Uh, it's not a boot camps or not particularly cheap. It's generally quite a bit of money up front to enroll in a boot camp. So that's another thing to consider when you're thinking about, uh, how you're gonna get the skills you need on boot camp does not have a flexible timeline. Your your in there for 10 weeks or however long it is two weeks or six months. And and there's not a lot of flexibility, it's probably pretty hard to drop out in the middle and come back to it. Eso again? It's really that flexibility that a boot camp doesn't offer traditional schooling on some, I guess cons not. You're not necessarily going to get career support if you get a master's degree or a certificate from university again. A traditional schooling isn't self directed, so you probably need to show up at a certain time over a certain number of weeks. Budget for a traditional school is definitely not there. It's probably the most expensive option, depending on what you're looking at, a certificate or a masters. The timeline of the master's program. It may be a bit more achievable for some people because it's often times you confined master's programs or certificates that maybe happened a couple nights a week, Um, after work, like 5 to 7 or 6 to 8, or maybe classes on the weekends so the timeline can be a bit more spread out, which is a pro for a lot of people that can also be a con for a lot of people. So I know that is something I consider it is. I was ready to just, like, drop everything, spend three months and be a US designer. So that's what you're looking for. A traditional schooling might not provide you that option. Uh, you might also be getting a bachelor's degree over four years and end up graduating with a bachelor's in degree that could get you into UX. So that's obviously a really long time, like so it really just depends on you and your needs. On the third option is to kind of self direct your way through an online course. You can take an online course and user experience design, but it probably won't look quite like a boot camp. I guess the kind of benefits of an online system would be that it's totally self directed, so you decide when and where you're gonna take the classes. It's usually much less expensive, which is a great option for a lot of people and use at the time line. So, um, I think that could be a really good thing about online classes is that they're so flexible . I think the self directed part could be a pro or con so kind of the point of this classes to help give you the structure that maybe you don't have. If you're trying to pursue you X through an online avenue on, not something I really need. So without structure, it's really hard for me to kind of motivate myself to keep checking the boxes that I need to get to. At the end of the day, it may matter a little bit for a junior designer if you have a degree from university or if you have a degree or a certificate from a boot camp, so that may matter a little bit, but if you're looking at two resumes and one person went to a boot camp in, one person went to a university. But the person who went to the boot camp has three riel clients that they've actually worked with that is going to be more important to an employer than having, I guess, a fancy degree. Time to talk a little bit about some different options that I know about kind of four. Making the career transition and learning the skills that you need. Um, the 1st 1 is pretty obviously skill share because you're already on here s O for our clocks project for this section. What I've done is provided a resource of, ah, huge list of classes of where you can start if you really want to build that solid foundation of us design. So I think so sure is great. Obviously, I teach on it. I really like getting to connect with students on skill share. I think it's great because you can. You can have that self directed learning models so you can learn when you want to. You can kind of do these bite size chunks. I think it provides a way for people to really start getting into a new field or really expand the crew that they have. I think it can also act as a platform for you to completely learn all the skills that you need. But what can be hard about it is one keeping yourself on track, keeping yourself motivated because there's no teacher telling you they have. You have to do something. There's no assignments that air necessarily do. But if you can kind of have that, if you can give yourself that structure, I think it could be a really a cost effective and flexible way to learn the skills you need . Another example of an online learning platform is skilled crush, so similar to skill share. It's called Skill Crush. And Still Crush offers online classes that are a bit more structured, so they'll take you through a hole like end to end. When you come out of this whole program, that's quite long, Then you'll end up with a specific skill, so it's quite a structured way of learning, which could be really helpful for some people. School pressure is also pretty low expense for the for What you get from what they offer and that seems to be one of their driving tenants is that it's quite affordable, so it could be a really good option to look into it. It's also specifically targeted towards women who want to get into tech. Um, for us, it's it's US program. From what I've seen isn't superstrong yet. They might be growing in that area, but it is a really good program for people who maybe want to go into more of the development site. If you want to be doing your own websites or freelancing, they are quite geared towards women getting into technology on and they're not afraid to teach to code eso. If you're thinking that coding is maybe something you would do, I think it's definitely worth checking out. The other online resource is called Rookie Up. It's quite a new resource on brookie. Out focuses on mentorship eso instead of kind of curating classes and giving you class content. What Ricky Up does is pairs you with a mentor. So, for example, I'm aux mentor on Rookie Up on. I'll get paired with student and there may be finishing their portfolio or they're already working as a junior designer or they're thinking about surging. Uh, and I worked with that student on whatever it is they're working on. So, Ricky, it could be a really good way to kind of supplement on online program because it does put you in touch with industry professional, and they can kind of give you some guidance and structure where maybe you don't have it. So that's another one to kind of think about. Other program that I've had direct experience with is General Assembly eso I was part of General Assembly quite a while ago when they focused more on in person classes. Like I said, I did a 10 week boot camp. Um, the classes at the time that I took out were quite intense, and it was quite expensive, kind of not super flexible. So you you give up those 10 weeks of your life and you come out the other end and you're like, kind of ready to go again. People often asked like Is general Assembly worth the expense? I think that it goes for any boot camp. It depends on where you're starting, so it really depends on I think, what your experience level is, and it depends on how the boot camp is kind of faring in the area that you are looking to get a job in. So we will talk a bit later about growing your network on and connecting with people in the area that you want to work in. But markets are so different place to place. So Seattle The Seattle Tech scene is totally different than the texting and Ediborah. It's probably totally different than the texting in Dallas or Austin or New York or San Francisco. It's really important that you talk to people there. So if you're thinking about doing a boot camp, talk to people there about that boot camp talked to employers about what they would think if you came out of a boot camp what they would be looking for. 8. Class Project : Plan Getting The Skills: Okay, So for your class project for this kind of long section of the class is for you to start planning how you're gonna get the skills that you need to transition into UX. So a lot of you by already have them. You might be taking this class because you're ready to build a portfolio when you're looking for a job. If so, you don't need to do this part of the project. But if you haven't figured out quite yet how you're gonna get these skills, now is the time to sit down and think about what you're gonna dio. So if you're thinking you're gonna do self directed learning on a platform like school Scher, please use the resource provided it's it's down below. There's a long list of kind of all of the things that I think are really important to know . To start. Teoh kind of develop a solid foundation in you X on. Those are all followed by at least one class from the sculpture platform and maybe a book or another resource from off the platform. That can really help you start to build that foundation. If you if you learn of other resource is feel free to add those put them into the class discussion board. I'm sure other people would be really grateful. And as more classes come out or if I come across other classes on the platform that I think or be really useful and kind of building that foundation, I'll definitely keep sharing them. If you're not gonna do self directed learning, which is totally fine if you're gonna take a blue cap or you think that a master's program is right for you also plan that. So when you start it, when is it gonna end? And how is that gonna get you closer to your goal? So, basically, by the end of the whole class, you'll be able to kind of section this part in into your timeline. So you'll you kind of have an idea of how long that might take. When you kind of thought about that, please share it with us. So there is not necessarily a template for this part of the class. But I love to hear your thoughts on whether you're gonna do a self directed learning or different boot camps that people are taking, or they're thinking about taking your they're applying for or different programs at universities. I think the more information, the better for people who are just trying to navigate this space. And those things are changing all the time. So you all who are in it are really gonna be the experts at it. So So please share what you learn in the cops. 9. Finding Guidance: We're gonna talk about a networking, and I understand that networking sucks. I hate doing it, too. Depending on how you operate, you might look for different types of opportunities because networking can be pretty rough . Umm, I think my idea of like the worst time ever is walking into a networking event or a design event, and it's obvious that everybody else knows each other. Um, except for me, and I kind of have to breakthrough and talk to people. I find that that really, really hard, and it's it's not necessarily great experience. Um, I think when we say the word networking, that's what we all imagine, because it's nobody's ideal experience. But there are other ways that you can build and grow your network, and we'll talk about some of those. Just some. Some thoughts about connecting with others kind of in general, uh, were often told, especially on social media, that we've just got to be reaching out all the time on bits. It's quite normal now, on linked in to get a lot of messages from people that you've never met. And so I think, as people trying to transition into a new career, we think like, Oh, it's okay to just send ah bunch of messages two people that we don't know and that is OK in some situations, there's definitely some rules that I think are important to think about. So when you're connecting with people with other people on that, you don't know, or maybe you're just acquainted with and you know them in a kind of professional setting. Um, I think there's some ground rules that help to think about so set expectations for them. Tell them why you're contacting them. Tell them what you're hoping to get out of the relationship or out of the connection. Make things easy for them. So if you're reaching out to have coffee with someone on linked in and make it easy for them, give them a time that you're willing to meet. Give them a place. Don't make them do all the work. If you have questions that you want to ask them, just send the questions. Don't make it so that they have to go back and forth of you multiple times or so that they have to go to their calendar and find a time that they could potentially meet and then go back and forth with you. Make it easy on when you meet them by their coffee. So you invited them out. They're doing you a favour. Probably if they're coming to meet with you about a career transition. So by the coffee for them on come prepared. So my expectation if if I go to meet someone who I don't know and they've reached up to me and they said they wanted something, I really expect them to drive the conversation. So this is part of making it easy for them. But, um, don't get there and just sit and not talk. So be prepared with questions. Steer the conversation. Help help things go smoothly. That's really part of that's your end of the bargain when you when you're, uh, networking with someone and and you've asked them to come out and meet you, Um, Or if you've reached out to them and you're having a conversation on the phone or you having a conversation over email, Really, you're kind of in charge of driving it, so consider that. So we talked a bit about this, but there are lots of ways that you can grow your network and lots of opportunities to meet people. So some different things that you may or may not have heard of. Meat up has a lot of great on different events. So in your city or your town dark finding meet up events that are related to prop design that it relieved UX design Graphic design UX research service designed whatever you confined that is related. Um, start going to Meetups. There really kind of great, reliable way to meet people in the less formal situation. Totally okay to start going ux meet ups before you are officially a UX designer. So go when you're a student. Go before you have a portfolio. You should go with the end of this class and find meetups. You can go to and start networking Now, start talking to people in the industry. The earlier you go, the easier it's gonna be for you to build a network when you really need one. When you're ready to start job searching, talk to recruiters. So recruiters are generally pretty eager to talk to people because you never know when they're gonna have a need for someone with your exact skill set. Eso recruiters are good people toe have on your side. They also really know what companies are looking for. So sometimes it can feel like recruiters aren't on your side. But most of the time they really are. They want you to get a job there. They're people, too. They see your pain. They see when you don't get the job that they put you up for and you worked really hard for it. They feel bad to, um So recruiters are on your side for the most part, and I always would try to make good relationships with, um, alumni associations are great. Even if you didn't graduate with a degree in computer science, you'd regret you graduated with a degree in someone else a degree in something else. Do get in touch with alumni associations. So events, big UX design events or design events in general. Those air great things to go to that are kind of one offs and meet people conferences. We talked a bit about this. See if you can get a discount for being a student for being unemployed, see if you can volunteer at a conference, and that's often a way to get yourself there. Conferences are a great way to meet people because companies often send delegates because they're looking for jobs or they're looking for interns or they're there and they want to talk about work. So conferences can be great on something that I liked to do. When I was looking for a job and looking to grow my network, it was to join clubs. So, uh, clubs that are related to design specifically, they always need volunteers. They always need people on the board. They often need design work done. So join those groups and see how involved you can get on a volunteer basis. Just a couple thoughts about building report, either. When you're talking to someone at a conference, you've met someone out for coffee, maybe at a networking event. How can you kind of build report? Just in general? Uh, listen to people. That means actually, listen to people. This is especially true for recruiters. It feels like often times people go to recruiters and ask their advice. The recruiter tells them something that they don't want to hear so they don't listen to it . It's really important that you listen to those people because they probably know more than you, uh, about getting a job in UX because that is literally their job to get people jobs. So listen, I have a plan. We talked about this a bit before. Um, make sure that your guiding the conversation going with a game plan if that's gonna help you if you're not great at just keeping a conversation going, maybe have some ideas of what you can talk about, be transparent. So be clear about where you are in your career transition and make sure that if you're asking for something, your clearly asking for it so they know what to expect, ask about other people. So this is also good advice for going on dates, I think. But people like to talk about themselves, so if you run out of things to talk about asking them questions, you should be good at this because you're a UX designer. So be genuinely curious and keep asking questions. It's also important to remember to be professional so some conferences can get a little wild. Meetups could be a little crazy there at happy hours there after work. Definitely have a drink. Have a good time, but remember that you're there to potentially talk to future employers. So be professional at all times. Uh, you never know who's gonna be a good connection for your future. So, uh, be professional is is always a good rule. Something that people often forget about is the waste of network online on blinked in is one of those ways to really think about growing your network, and people use it all the time. And I think what tends to happen on LinkedIn is we forget that you're you're communicating with a real person and we kind of go into social media, bowed and forget a lot of the rules or kind of cultural norms of talking to people. And Lincoln could be a really good resource is probably the best resource for you as someone who's looking to get into a new career of finding people who are really relevant to connect with. So it's really important that that first impression that you make is a good one. So what I've done is kind of collected some real examples of linked in messages that I've got to go over to show kind of good and bad examples. So this the 1st 1 is not so great. It says hi. And I'm a new in Seattle and I'm looking for a new position as a U x Y designer. Could you be my referral? If you're interested, I'd be glad to meet with you at near future for a cup of coffee to describe more about my experience. Here's a link to my portfolio and dribble begins account. So, um, this is not so great because I don't know this person at all. I've never met them. I have never seen their work. Of course, I can't be the referral. Uh, so I think the ask is a tough one to get behind. Um, but also I don't know anything about them. I don't know why they picked me. I don't know why they're interested in me being there referral. So I don't know if we have something in common or we went to the same school. Or maybe I know them through a friend. I really have no idea. Um, and also it's hard to meet for a cup of coffee in the near future. I don't know what that means, and that's kind of leaving it up to me toe to set a date. so this whistling didn't message. Didn't get a response from me. So a couple more examples, I think this one's is pretty good. Um, hello, Carly. Thanks so much for connecting. I also liked have a casual meeting your coffee date with my new connection so we can explore how we might be able to help each other now or in the future. You're interested? I would be very happy to hear more of your insights that could benefit my starting New York's career. If you're open, I invite you to a quick meeting on pick a time and location that is most convenient for you . I'm looking forward to speaking with U S. Oh, this is okay. It gets a little bit more context for me. Um, but the reason I think it's just a case because it doesn't quite give me enough context to understand why this person picked me. So why did they want to connect with me? Why do they want to have a coffee date with me? What? What could I do for them? What could they do for me? So I don't really know what I would be walking into. Is it a sales meeting or are they brand new UX designer and what are they going to kind of do for me? So there's this weird promise of exploration of how we could help each other, but it's not very specific. So again and no specific time or date. So I would have to go to work. Probably not going to get a response from me. Um, another Okay, example. I think this one is is better. Eso Hi, Carly. I saw that you're also an art student who transitioned into product design, and I would love to learn more about how you approached your career. Please let me know if you would be free to chat at a time of your convenience. So also this one, this was definitely getting better. I see why this person connected with me and why they're specifically interested in talking to me. So they I thought I was an art student who transition in the crowd designs. That's that's almost true. Not quite, but they specifically want to learn more about how I approached my career on. So that's good. That gives me a specific reason why might reach out to them. But what I don't know if they want to talk on the phone or do they want to get together in person? Do they have questions? They won't ask me over email. So again, I'm just not quite sure what exactly they want Eso All I can write back is like, Sure, let me know what you need, and it doesn't give me a lot of I guess it doesn't lead me into giving them the response that they want. And then here is a really good example. Um, but did get a response so high, Carly, My name is blank, and I've been a student years on skill show for almost five months. Now they want to address myself because your videos and your career transition story has been a huge source of inspiration. So immediately, I'm like, Okay, cool. I understand why they're writing to me, and I've been an inspiration to them So cool. Of course I'm gonna keep reading because it's really flattering on my understands that used to live in Seattle and work for Amazon there. Before you transferred Ediborah. I'm open, hoping you can share some of your experience transitioning into tech in the city of Seattle , specifically and I was wondering if you had the time to answer a few questions. Let me know if it's all right for me to send them your way. So super specific. That's why this is really helpful. So, um, this person knows, uh, they understand what? What it done? They're telling me why it's relevant to them. They're asking me for a specific thing that I could definitely give them. Like, Yes, I can answer a few questions. Yes, you can send them my way on guy Know what they're gonna be about. Could you give me some context and then thank you. Oh, my gosh. So this person said, thank you and of a very nice way and like, will recognize that I was taking some time to do this. Uh, that really goes a long way. So I they understand that I'm dizzy, and they appreciate me taking time to read the email, and they also appreciate my videos. So that's awesome, because they're super flattering. And they told me exactly what I need it. So I think this really goes a long way, and it it's definitely not. It's may sound a bit like egotistical, like every person who has a LinkedIn is going through all of these messages and they just don't have time for anything. And it does kind of sound that way. But it's really not meant Teoh. I think you'll notice a soon as you put UX designer on your linked in, you're gonna start to get a lot of emails on. A lot of them feel like spam, and a lot of them are just so random that you can't possibly be of use to the person writing to you. So if you're reaching out to someone on LinkedIn and you want to get an answer, please help them give you an answer. Because if they're like me, I want to help. I just don't. I don't necessarily have the time to help when I kind of have to lead what I have to leave the conversation and steer people in the right way. I wanted to talk a little bit about Mentor ship because I think mentors air so important, especially for people who are transitioning careers. Being a mentor and having a mentor is is a continuous process, so hopefully as you grow your career, you are going to be a mentor to someone in the future to Hopefully it'll be to A lot of people and mentors can really they could be an advocate for you. They can give you genuine feedback that is invaluable because no one else is going to give it to you. They can help you navigate situations that you're just not sure how to navigate because they may have done it before. They may just have a fresh perspective, and they're just an invaluable resource. And hopefully you'll have lots of mentors kind of throughout your career, and you may have mentors already in other parts of your life. I think what's hard about mentorship is a really good mentor. Is someone who has a genuine interest in you also someone that you have report with and there's some kind of chemistry there, so they have a genuine interest in helping you grow on, got kind of a really important part of it. It should feel right when you found a mentor on it should feel like organic, and it should feel like that person is going to be genuine with you. You should brace yourself for honesty, so I know when I've meant toward people in the past because I've been really invested in their career and I really want what is best for them. I am brutally honest, and it could be awful for then and for the mentor. But at the end, it is always so much better because hearing that brutal honesty from someone who really cares about you versus someone who doesn't really care about you, it is so different. So that's really the value in having a mentor and the value and finding a mentor who and genuinely cares about you. So finding a mentor isn't necessarily different than making other connections and other networking, but it Z probably someone that you really respect. Maybe it's someone with a job that you want in 10 years or five years or next year. Or it's someone who you already worked with over it, someone who you meet at a networking event, and you just really hit it off with, uh, how to really get the most out of a mentoring relationship is for you to personally set outcomes. So what do you want from this mentorship? Is it that person has the job you want, or that person carries himself in a way that you really respect and you want to learn how to do that better. So, set outcomes for what you want to get from them Or is it that you want them to help you fix your portfolio? Um, or you want them to help you through this really tricky project, or you want them toe navigate a promotion or you want them to help you navigate, starting to do more. You exit your current job, so set an outcome and then track your progress. So how can you track your progress? Is then, uh, kind of throughout your mentorship relationship on and you're setting clear? Uh, you set clear goals, but you're also seeing how it's going week to week or month, the month or however often your meeting. Um, it's really important that you're the person maintaining that so again make it easy for the for the mentor because they're they're probably mentoring a lot of other people, and presumably they have a full time UX job that is quite taxing. And so they're giving up a lot of their time toe Teoh, help mentor you, so make sure you're the person kind of in charge of like, Okay, this is what I need out of this person this week. And clearly tell them what it is that you need S O. That's what I mean by maintained the relationship. So you're the person setting up the coffee time, and you're checking it over the phone or whatever it ISS. 10. Class Project : Start Networking: the final thing to Dio when you're out networking. Going crazy with your networking skills is to make sure that you're tracking what you're doing. A really important part of networking is the follow up, so the initial meetings really important? But then the follow up is equally, if not more important. So what I've done is created a template, and it has a couple of different tabs, so you can use it hard you want to on. I did get a ton of feedback from a great product manager at skill share who really helped with the second part of the template. So there's two options for you. But both of the options are letting you track people jobs that you've applied for events andan the contact information so you can use whichever one makes sense to you. So the 1st 1 I did lets you just kind of track as you go. So who the contact is? Why you why you connected with them? And then you can just write all the details and track on kind of on a month by month. Baseless like did you contact in this month? What you talk about? Did they get back to you. When did you follow up on? The second template allows you to kind of search and filter by why you're contacting or networking with that individual so lets you track from a different way. Um, use the template, however, makes sense for you. You can use both templates. You can use one of the other. You can combine them into something that works. It's really just a jumping off point to get you started on how you might start keeping track of this network that you're building and growing class project for this section, probably as you guessed, is to start networking. So, like I said, I want to have committed and you've said like Okay, I'm searching to UX design. That's the time to start networking, So don't feel like you need your portfolio done. Don't feel like you need to have started getting any of the skills yet. If you're interested in you X, it's time to join a club, sign up for an event, register for a conference, do something that is going to force you to get outside of your house and go meet people who do you X So your job is to share in the project section what you plan to go to and then, more importantly, tell us how it went. So we're all watching. We want to know how it went. We want to know how the networking events go. We want to hear what didn't go well. There's a lot of people who are probably willing to give advice on. So your job out of this class project is to go, go sign up for something, so let us know how it goes, enjoying networking, and we will see you in the next class. 11. The Portfolio: this next section of the class, we're gonna talk about building the portfolio, so we're not gonna go super in depth about how you should build your portfolio in exactly what should be in it. But we are going to talk about ways that you could get client work to put into your portfolio. Andi. Things to think about as you're building your portfolio. If you get to a point in your portfolio building process and you're feeling really stuck and you're not sure what to do, I do have another class in school share that's specifically focused on building your portfolio. It's pretty sure into the point on, but could be a really good again. It's quite a good structure for how to build something so that class doesn't look at all about where you would get the client work. It's specifically focused on After you already have work, how do you organize it and put it into a portfolio? I'd love to see some of you in that class as well, and I loved here if it was helpful for you. So let's dive in into building the portfolio. A good portfolio is going to stick with you throughout most of your career in you. X. So what I've tried to do with my portfolio is ah really built a pretty simple foundation for and then I can switch out case studies as I go. Or most recently I added my classes that I teach on skill share to my portfolio so people can, if they visit my portfolio, they could see that I'm also teaching classes. So that's something that I've done with with my portfolio. And though my portfolio isn't where I wanted to be, its it's fine to just kind of hang out online. I'm I'm gainfully employed right now, so I'm not looking for a job. If I were in the job search mood, I would definitely have spent a little more time making my portfolio look really awesome. But do you think about it like that? So does feel like a huge amount of work when you're first starting to build it. But after you put in that huge amount of work, it just kind of hangs out for the rest of your career, and you just do little incremental bits to keep it going. So I do assure yourself that if you put in the work. Now it will pay off and you'll keep it for years and years, hopefully. And so so things that people always want to know is is how do we get quiet work without a job and when I have talked a lot about how did how How are you going to get a job in you? X and the The key answer is you have to have some real client work under your belt. That's really that's really what employers are looking for, especially if you don't have a degree or you're not looking for a junior level position or you're not a great fit for a junior level position because maybe you've already been working for several years. What what we're looking for is is really work. And so some ways to do that. If you don't have aux job yet, the first thing is delivered. Your current job on this could be probably really straightforward or maybe not so straightforward. So if you work in tech now, there are probably a lot of opportunities to start getting UX work under your belt. So if your product manager, if you're an engineer, if you work in marketing. If you're someone who already works in tech, you're probably exposed to UX designers and two UX design, and there's probably work that you can help with. It might not be that you could do it during your 40 hour work week. You might have to go above and beyond. Um, but transitioning careers kind of means a bit of a side hustle for a while. Eso That may be the way that it goes. It also might be that you can talk to your boss about your career transition and see if there's opportunities for you to take on more within your current role. I you don't work in tech, and it's not as obvious how you would get some UX experience. Look for opportunities to do it. So look for places where you're using software at work that isn't awesome. That might be employees facing experiences. That's fine. It might be presentation templates, or it might be the way that you track meetings were the way they organized things. All of those things are opportunities to make a customer experience better, So look for look for opportunities like that. If you can start to demonstrate how that's helpful. Your employer might be much more open to you doing something at a larger scale. Um, and then the final thing is, if there is software at your work that you think could use a redesign, could you just redesign it on your own and then pitch it, or just and then see if it goes anywhere, like maybe it won't. Maybe there's no budget to pitch it or to build it, But at least you've proposed something and you've still done that work. And the next idea is to find a nonprofit that you care about that is local to you. Of nonprofits don't have a lot of budget to hire Web designers. They don't have a lot of budget toe hire people to design the APS that they need. So go and talk to them and tell them what you're up to that you're building your ex portfolio. This is a career transition that you're doing. Um, do you care about what they're doing? Could you do X, Y and Z for them at no cost? And use whatever you create in your portfolio? Eso That's a pretty good deal for them and for you because you end up getting something in your portfolio that is, you were working for real clients. I would also make sure to ask them. Will you be a reference? Can I put this on my resume? That I was a ux designer for you at that point? Your freelance UX designer doing a pro bono project. You don't need to put on your portfolio that it was a proto project. By the way, you could just put that you're a freelancer and you delivered something for this client. Same thing with a small business. Eso probably friends, family, small businesses that you go to all the time. Like your coffee shop or dog walker Dog rumor, local grocery store, whoever it is against small businesses don't have a huge budget for Web design and development. Eso see what you can do for them? Find where there's problems and then propose solutions for them with the same idea like this is where I am that could I, um, do this work for you pro bono. If I can use it on my portfolio and put it on my resume and and then the final idea is to find small scale projects online. So there's a lot of kind of freelancing job boards, Um, where you can see people that need that need work done. That's maybe not full and end UX work. But that's OK. So a lot of the early work that I was getting experience and we're we're small building small websites or making you know, tiny design changes to blog's. Or, like I said, doing content strategy and that all can really help in your UX job search because then you've been working in tech for a bit longer than if you just kind of switch from dance, for example, completely cold. Teoh. Applying to you exposition at a company is it's kind of that buffer that can be really important. So those and those are some ideas of where you might start to look for real client work without having your ex job yet. So, um, as you're thinking about what worked to put in your portfolio and your looking back on pass work that you've done, even if it may not seem like it was ux work, um, it's important to think about is that any time you can show that you translated customer business needs into a design is working. Come leverage when you're talking about your past experience so that might be fashion design might be marketing might be human. Resource is, it could be a lot of things. So there are a lot of things where you've probably used the UX design process without knowing that it was the process. So those kind of creative endeavors and that past work can all be leveraged in your resume . Oh, are present in your portfolio. There were artifacts that went along with it, so there's no reason to throw all that away. Um, I've worked with a couple students, one who had designed a clothing line and wasn't gonna put that in his portfolio, and we talked a lot about it, and I was like, That's got to go in there because it it shows your story of how you got from whatever you were doing into UX design. Similarly, another student who's a fashion designer who wasn't gonna put that work in her portfolio, and it's the same process. So she was doing the same thing. She was translating customer needs of business needs into a product she was doing ux design . It just wasn't called that. So it's really important that you leverage those kind of things and put them into your portfolio. So when you're thinking about building your portfolio, think about what's therefore so it's job is to land you in interview. So once you've gotten in your door, once you've gotten in the door, you're gonna bring more to the table. So that's what we're going to show off, how great you're communicating. So where you gonna go in depth in your case studies and show all the ways that you solve problems? Your portfolio doesn't have to say every single thing you've ever done. That's what the interview is for. That's when you could pull up all those stories. The portfolio is to show a smattering of things that you've done. So recruiter or hiring manager is like, I want to talk to this person more. I want to learn more about so you're thinking about building it? Um, think about what his job is, So there's a couple options. When you think about building your portfolio, you can keep it on a website hosted on the website, which you can either hand code code yourself, uhm or ability on something like squarespace or wicks. You can create a pdf, so a nice looking Pdf that you can attach to your resume and send off to, ah, recruiter, a hiring manager. When you apply for a job, or, if you're more visually inclined, you can have a big chance or a dribble site where you have some of your visual work on Ben . Your in person interview might show a lot more of the artifacts that you created. Keep in mind as you're building your portfolio that it's all about the story, so your portfolio needs to clearly paint the picture of who you are, what you're gonna doing and what you would bring to a potential team. Your portfolio should educate a potential employer about what specific skills beyond you I design. You're contribute to their team, so it should reflect your personality. It should also be specific. If you don't specialize in everything, which you probably don't, it should tell us what you do specialize in, so focus on what you do and tell us how you got where you are. I personally and thus the first thing I go to when I'm looking over a resume or or a portfolio to hire someone. I go straight to the about section. I want to know what they thought was important. Remember that people want to hire someone that they can connect with, that they can have a good time at work with on your portfolio was their first kind of window into what you're like. So let your portfolio really reflect that. I think that's really important. It should also tell us how you got there. So I think people who have transitioned their careers are really interesting. And I want to know how you ended up there. It also gives me something to talk to you about. So I don't think you should hide the fact that you've transitioned Cruise. I think you should lean into it and tell me why what you were doing was relevant and why you decided that you x was something you should move into. Um, I think that also shows that you're more passionate about it, which is always really exciting. So let that passion kind of come through when you're when you're telling your story. So when you're thinking about building your portfolio more, I think about what to include, So do consider that quality over quantity. So you don't need 10 projects that aren't awesome. You need three projects that you did and to end. And you have great artifacts for, um, you should have real client working there. So even if you've done a boot camp or you've gotten your master to your bachelor's in design, at least one rial client project is going to serve you really well. So that's when you go back to that list of how do you get real quiet work without a job? I'm having something like that in your portfolio is really key. Um, think about work that uses the human centered design process without being labelled UX specifically. So this goes back to what we were talking about leveraging work that you've done in the past. So that fashion design or that graphic design that you've done or choreography that you've created, or whatever it is that kind of started you on this journey to you X, make sure you include that. Think about other creative work that you've done. So maybe you do photography or industrial design or sculpture. I want to know that if you're applying for a UX design job. I want to see other ways that your creative, if you are, please include them. I think it cuts that can only help. You do include personal projects. If you've created AP, sir, you thought about startups or you thought about ways on things you could build that would positively impact the world. I think there is definitely a place for those things in your portfolio. I don't think your portfolio could be made up only of your personal projects that never had a client, because that that shows that maybe you haven't worked with someone before and you haven't worked with real business needs. But if you have them in addition to real client work, do include them. Andi, it should include your specific skill set. So that's again what we went over. Be specific. You don't specialize in everything. Tell me what you do. Specialize and tell me the story of why I should hire you and what you could bring to mind teams specifically. So when you're thinking about building it, use pictures, illustrations and not too many words to tell your story. So we talked about good storytelling being a really key element of being a good UX designer . Eso use those storytelling skills. When you're building your portfolio, tell me why. So is a hiring manager. I want to know why you're doing something. I want to know why you did what you did and what it helped. You weren't so I don't want to just see a picture of a wire frame I want to see. I want to hear you tell me why you made that wire frame. Why? You thought it was good idea Tow wire frame. Then what you've learned from it. I want to know how you apply the process to solve a problem. People asked us a lot if they're specializing in research, What do they put in their portfolio? What you need to prove to someone, if you're a researcher, is that you can share your research in an engaging way. So most places probably don't want a researcher who's like, really good at writing documents on that. That's all they're good at doing. Ah, what is really valuable in a research of someone who could translate the research into actionable things for the design team to do so I want to see pictures I want to see your personas. I want to see customer journeys. I want to see the way you facilitated research meetings. And that's what I want to see on in a research portfolio and if especially, is in visual design, your portfolio should include visuals that are large enough to see. So this is something I see all the time. People are you, I designers, and they send me their portfolio, and all of the pictures are so small and blurry that I can't see them on. That means I can't I can't bring them in for an interview because I have no idea if their visual designer or not. So if you're putting visuals and your portfolio, make sure they're crisp and clear and that I can I'm gonna be able to see them so some other things to think about when you're building your portfolio visual crispiness matters visual design on, especially if you're a researcher or you're more of kind of, ah, and and general designer. Your visual design doesn't have to be amazing, but it does need to be me and tidy, and it needs to show that you paid attention to detail so that means things should be aligned. Think should be spelled correctly. When in doubt, use fewer colors and fewer funds and just make it simple and clean spelling and grammar matter on. So if I see big spelling mistakes in a portfolio, especially if there's multiple spelling mistakes, it's usually a no for me because it means you didn't look over it. And I would be worried that you would send things like that, too. Uh, my stick holders Air Senior leadership, so I probably wouldn't continue. So in that in that vein, check and recheck your work, have other people review it over and over. Make sure that you call your spelling mistakes again. My portfolio may have spelling mistakes in it right now, and that's because I'm not looking for a job right now, so I haven't necessarily cared if I were to start to look for a job. I go over everything again with a fine tooth comb on and make sure it was okay on about your personality show. So, like I said, people want to know who you are because they're potentially gonna work with you so they want to work with someone that they want to work with. So show us who you are. The last thing to think about when you're considering building your portfolio is to think about your user. So you are a user experience designer. Essentially, what you're doing is building a website. You're building the experience of looking at your portfolio, build it for your user, consider their use case. So consider who's gonna be looking at it. Recruiter Hiring manager. They're probably looking at a ton of these a day. Think about how they're gonna access it, what they're gonna look for, design it for their use case. Don't design it for you on one of my favorite things to ask people as they come in for an interview is Why did you design the portfolio the way you did? I get a huge range of answers. But when people say things like, Well, this was all I was able to code myself. Uh, that gives me a pretty good indication that there may be not someone who really thinks about their user or when they say things like, I thought this looked cool. That doesn't give me a good indication that they're good fit for UX design role eso I want to know if you thought about me when you when you built your portfolio, Are you thinking like a designer? Most of the time, your portfolio is essentially aux project. If you're feeling stuff with the portfolio, maybe you haven't started it yet. You haven't even thought about it on your feeling like you need more guidance. I do teach a whole class on building your portfolio so it goes over in depth. A lot of things I just went through in this lesson. Eso this lesson felt like a fast and furious overview with blood. Not a lot of detail on the portfolio class goes into a lot of detail in the class. Project at the end is having a portfolio built, So do check out that class if you're wanting more detail and guidance on building your portfolio. 12. Class Project : Plan Your Portfolio: Theo class project for this part of the class. It's really about planning your portfolio. So really thinking about how you're gonna get your portfolio of projects If you don't have them already and thinking about how long that might take, how many portfolio projects do you need? How many do you want? This is all in the template for the kind of end of class, but it's good to start thinking about what that might entail Now, uh, and then think about how how you're actually gonna build. Are you gonna put it? Um, I'm gonna pan quota site. Are you gonna put it on? Bootstrap. Are you gonna make a squarespace site and make a pdf? Think about how you're gonna build it and think realistically about how long that's going to take. Eso are gonna just devote a week of time to it and not do anything else that week. Or are you gonna build it after work? You're gonna build it in between. I'm taking care of your kids, So think about how long that will realistically take you and write that down. If you get stuck, please write and write in and let us know I think there's a lot of people who are willing to help, and I'm definitely keen to help eso super excited to see what you will come up with in the class project section or the discussion section. 13. Resume: thing to think about when you're trying to get yourself job ready on. Once you've got the portfolio is creating your UX resume. So the same rules apply to your UX resume as they would for any other resume that you're sending out. So keeping it to one page is great on spelling. And grammar definitely matter. You can't lie on your resume, so so don't be transparent about it. Um, with thing that happens for you ex resumes, that can be a bit more fun is that there's a little born leniency to be creative. So and the tech field in general, the the rules are a little less less stringent. So designers get to be a little more creative and fun when they're thinking about resumes. So you could definitely think about ways you can get creative on your resume as long as you're not taking it too far, not going totally overboard. So we're gonna look at some examples of, uh, good and not so great resumes, so you can start to think about how you might lay yours out and what to do and what not to do. So things that it should. You should definitely include on your resume, your education so that's informal or formal. So if you took a class online, that could definitely go on there. But your formal education should go on your resume to, even if it's not related to you. X Um, I was usually a skills and proficiency section, so that's where people list out the things that they're really good at related to UX design . So skills might be it might be tools, or it might be skills, so tools would be things like Sketch photo shop, the Creative suite framer html CSS. If you can use those tools, that's awesome skills, things that I put our facilitation communication, education, research Why you're framing prototyping. Those are the kind of skills and proficiency easier with list there. So those are the key words that you're really wanting to call out. A good best practice is to look at those jobs that you think you want that you think you are qualified for or will be qualified for. First. Finish your kind of UX education and you're ready to start job searching. Look for the skills they're looking for. Make sure you learned those skills and then list those skills on your resume. Listening skills is a really good way to kind of make sure that you're ticking those boxes that jobs are looking for languages. If, if applicability you speak multiple languages, I think they definitely belong on your resume of any awards design awards that you've won. Design awards you wanted School design awards. You've won as you've got along. Definitely include those freelancing work for sure. So if you've been doing that real client work by doing freelancing, it should certainly be on there. Depending on how what makes the most sense for you. You might list it as a working for yourself as a freelancer, or he might list as the company that you freelance four and then clarify it that way on then also include your your previous non UX work. If it was related to you, XO, tie it back to how it was related to you. X If it's not, if it's not evidence, so your job again and your resume should help paint the picture of how you got from what you were doing into UX and and how what you were doing is relevant. So as we kind of alluded to You can't get creative azi long as you're not going overboard. So think of interesting ways that you might lay out your resume. I always like when a resume looks like the portfolio. It kind of helps to build that brand and tie things altogether. So think about ways you can get creative or keep it clean and simple. So if creativity isn't necessarily working for you, that's fine. If it's going overboard. If it's getting to me colors and to many typefaces, keep it clean and simple. That is absolutely fine. Your alignment matters just like your spelling and grammar matter. So even if you're not a visual designer, everything should be aligned. Everything should be spaced correctly. Make sure you're paying attention to detail in that regard, even a fear. A researcher. You're still titled a designer, so those things I'll do matter and your visual design matters So the same way. Don't go overboard If you're not a visual designer, Stick to the basics. Keep things clean and simple on your design. Will look clean and simple. Intentionally use your white space. Don't go overboard, so I wanted to take a moment to look at a couple of good and bad example. So this is my very first you X resume. I believe that I sent out and this is the bad example. So I think that it's not awesome, and I'm using my own work so that I can tear it apart and not feel bad about someone's tearing apart someone's work on. So some things that immediately jump out is the visual design is about great. So and like the line in the center is much too big. The spacings not right. The color kind of feel that a place. There's a white line on the side. So there's definitely some places where it's clear that I didn't pay attention to detail in my visual design. So it it basically shows that I'm not, at this point a very strong visual designer, and that's really important. So those things definitely jump out. It's like, Oh, shouldn't really pay attention to these things. Is she really a designer? So other things that really stick out to me. Like I said, the spacing is off, so that needs some work. The other things that I noticed was there's huge blocks of text, so I looks like I was spending a lot of experience in there, but I don't even have time to read it right now. There's so much texting, there is just a big wall, a big block of paragraph on, So that's also not awesome. And same with over on the site. I did do. What I Rick recommended to do is kind of pull out skills and tools and show my education, which is great. But it's not spaced out very well, and it just looks a little juvenile. So those there, I think, some problems with this resume, it's it's really hard to pull out the keywords I did put what I what I waas. So I think that is one thing that you should think about doing is being able to label kind of in one sentence what it is. You are UX designer, researcher and a content strategist. I actually got really great advice from a recruiter. That content strategy was really gonna help me to land that first job because that was a unique skill, that I had a lot of experience and that would help. So things not to do by looking at my own resume so Now let's look at a couple that are really awesome. Here is a resume that I think nails that I think it looks really clean, just looking at it. Visually, it looks clean. And Chris, the visual design isn't like over the top, but it it looks clean and crisp, and I can decipher the information. So I like that she's added on the top exactly what she does. So she is a product designer. That means she does you aux in interaction design, so she's clearly spelling out like this is exactly what I do. It's easy for me to access her contact information if I wanna get in touch. I like how she's listed applied skills. So she hospital out the skills. Um, and she's pretty specific about what she'd done. So mobile design, Web and Dashboard designed. That's really specific. I really like that because if I was looking for someone to design dashboards, I would know that she's already done something like that on activities and awards. So she's listed some of the things that she's volunteered to do, so she's just a hackathon. She's wanna hack a phone. That's pretty cool. Um, and she's also a Google developer groups instructor, so that's also cool. So I'm learning things about what she does outside of her day to day UX work, and that's giving me a hint of what kind of person she might be in that she gets involved outside her education. It's listed down here. It's not necessarily related to UX design, and I still think that's interesting. Um, that she has the experience was lifted. It listed over on the right. So she did do the big paragraph format, which I don't love. But her paragraphs are short enough that it's OK. It's it's working on. I still think you could bullet it, but I think the way that she's laid on her portfolio, it works on. But I like this part, don't hear where she lists her interests and hobbies and what she's currently doing. I think that again it gives me kind of a hint into what she's into, so I immediately love that she's in defence ing and musical theater. I think that's like, so quirky and I just want to know more about it, also that she told me exactly what she's doing now. So she's watching stranger things which I also really like. She tells me what she's listening to and when she's reading. So I think that just gives you kind of a hint that she has personality on bits enough that I'm like, I'm interested and I want to know more about this person, but not so over the top that I'm like, why she's sharing this. It's totally irrelevant s so I think she found a really good felt. So this is another one. Um, so she's a product designer and she tells him where she is. She sent she San Francisco. She's a product designer and she's interested in education, social gaming. So did necessarily tell me exactly what she did, but she gave me a little hint at something that she's interested in. Um, so I think that's interesting. It makes me want to learn more. I really like how she's laid off her experience in bullet points, so it makes me feel like I could decipher it a lot easier. It also looks like she's been taken the time to pull out the key things, the key elements of what she did on. Then down the right, she's listed and pulled out her achievements, the tools, languages. She speaks on bits, not just languages, that she speaks. In fact, it's not languages. She peeks at all. It's languages she can code in, which I think is pretty interesting. So I think it would be really interesting for her to do both in that section. If she did speak another language, I think they would just be kind of, ah, a quirky way to lay that out. And that's initially what I thought it was. So that's kind of cool on. And she lists out what skills she has even beyond UX design. So campaign branding project management in motion graphics That's pretty cool. Things she could do that kind of are above and beyond. Other than her education listed out of the bottom again, it's easy to contact her cause. Their contacts is listed down at the bottom on her resume uses a lot of white space. I from a visual design perspective, it might be too many broken up lines. I'm not sure that's something that people could think about, but I think it works because it's so clean. The alignment is great and she's obviously taking a lot of care on guy like the very simple dash of color at the very top, and I think that would be cool. I don't know if it matches her portfolio were not, but I would love to see if it did. And so this is just another example. Hopefully, it gives you some inspiration and ideas of what you can do. There's a ton of great resumes out there to just browse through. So if you're feeling Stucker need inspiration, do go browses the portfolios. 14. Personal Brand: so all of this building that you're doing of your portfolio and your resume and we're about to talk about building your lengthen is really talking about building your personal brand as a user experience designer. And this is something that you might hear a lot about what's really important to have your personal brand. And I know people talk about that a lot in the leadership. When you're thinking about leadership, what's your personal brand? And sometimes it can feel a little bit overwhelming, like everything that you do and everything that you post has to be branded and really match your style and personality. And now suddenly you're you're trying to be a UX designer, so everything has to be focused on this design brand. And I don't think that that's necessarily true. I think if you're looking to be a freelancer, your brand might be really, really important. Then it might be that you have a separate UX or freelancing brand than where you keep your personal instagram. Is that something that's important to you? If having that personal riel instagram is important, but for for those of us who aren't looking to freelance and who are looking to have a full time job. The really important parts of your brand are linked in and and on your portfolio. Eso there are There are important parts of your brand, but it may be, doesn't have to be your whole focus. I think cleaning up your LinkedIn is gonna be really important, and we'll talk about that here in a second on then making sure that other social media is, um, is professional and tactful and that you said the right privacy controls is probably enough that you need to dio and let's talk a little bit about some of these important platforms. So linked in is probably the most important one that you'll find whether you're a freelancer or not, Lincoln is gonna be really, really key. So as you're preparing to make this career switch on, something that you can do for your lengthen is to change your job title. So even if you don't have aux job title, get change your job title in lengthen like your your profile title Teoh to a UX designer. So, um, do exactly what you want to do. So it's a UX designer than change it to that on If it's a UX designer, change it to that. Make sure you're using a professional photo on linked in so you don't want a photo of you and your dog has wonderful is that would be You don't want a photo of you drinking a beer you don't want, like a funny photo where you can't really see your face or a photo where you're outside in the wild. You want a picture of your face that looks professional, so that could be artistic. If you're again, you have a little freedom to be creative. It could be an artistic photo, but we do want to be able to see who you are, so make sure it's professional well, then go through and tag skills so linked in lets you tag skills and then get endorsed for skills. So make sure that you have skills listed. UX design you by design visual design, interaction, design prototyping. Why're framing all those things that you can do? Facilitation. Make sure that those that those air listed um Lincoln is great. Once you start going, it'll give you suggestions, so make sure if you tag yourself is being able to do it that you actually can do it the way she you'll start to show up that you're an expert in visual design when maybe you're not on again linked in the same as your resume. So go through your linked in jobs and relate your most recent jobs to UX design in any way that you can eso that you're making sure that as people are looking at your linked in profile, the right things are coming up. Once you change that job title to design, you will start to see a lot more people visit your profile, so it's important to make sure that you're ready to go with that on. Newington should have a week to your portfolio if it's listed online. So if you let if you list your portfolio, make sure it's ready for people to visit it. If your portfolio is not ready to be visited, don't don't put it on LinkedIn yet. That's that's totally okay, Andan. The thing to make sure you're doing is remaining active, so you are checking it. I'm notoriously bad at checking my linked and messages. I don't get notifications for that. So if I was job searching, that would be really bad because people are reaching out to you on. Their recruiters. Do use LinkedIn a lot, so it's always worth it to make sure that you're staying active on that platform. Do connect with people, connect with people you know. It's a pretty, uh it seems to be different than other social media and that you can connect to people here . You don't know what you haven't met before. Let's make sure they're relevant in some way. So ux designers who connect with May I normally connect back with but people that I can't understand why they would connect with me. I usually don't, but it is OK to connect with people you don't necessarily know. And that's a good opportunity to send a nice, well worded introduction email with why you connected and thank them for accepting a connection invitation as well. So another thing that people talk about when you're building your personal UX brand is starting to establish expertise in the field. So this is kind of up to you. It's your choice how much time you have. It does definitely help us if you're able Teoh to do more than the job search. This could be things that add to your portfolio. They can add to your resume, and it just shows potential employers that you're engaged in active in the area. So some things you can do You can write block posts so you can write things on medium. You can also contribute blocks toe you X. You can contribute post to you. X Blog's on. That can be a good way to get your ideas out there. Share relevant articles on lengthen So a zoo you're reading you X plugs share things that you think are interesting. Share your passions about us. So be specifics will start to establish what you're really passionate about your ex and and share those things and share articles that are relevant. So, for example, I'm really passionate about accessibility in UX design. So I should be sharing things that really show that I'm interested in that. And it helps to establish that I'm an expert in that specific thing on so stay active and related groups. A lot of social media has great groups for people getting started in UX designers who are in your ex design or any specifications in UX design. You confined, find a group and and stay active in it. So see what people are talking about and respond and join the conversation. That's really important. And then this one is obvious, but big still warrants a shout, set your privacy settings and post things appropriately. So when you're searching for a job, everything is fair game. So just think about what you post before you post it and make sure you're okay with potential employers seeing what you write. Um, so So your brand We talked a little bit about this. Like how important is it really gonna be again? It depends what you're looking for. If you're a freelancer, probably really important. If not, um, a brand is just your personality on your portfolio and your resume and consider the job you're looking for. So if you're looking to work at a bank, your portfolio and resume should probably be a bit more buttoned up than if you're applying toe work at a really cool, creative, funky agency. So the agency is gonna want to see your personality. The bank maybe wants to see your professionalism a little more, but so think that the types of jobs you're applying for and and Taylor your brand, which, unless you're gonna be a freelancer, is really just your portfolio. When your resume and your Lincoln Taylor that accordingly Andi, keep it simple. So don't go overboard. It could be just a nice touch. It doesn't have to be totally over the top. A friend of mine, I think, has a great brand, and he really nails it in terms of on. He doesn't go over the top. It's pretty settled, but I think he really stays true to his brand in on a kind of across social media platforms . So let's take a look at that s So this is an example of someone who's brand. I think he's done a really good job of This is my friend J. C. I did not ask if I could put him on here, so I'll have to ask him to see if he'll get really mad at me. Um, but we work together and Amazon. Andi, I just think he does a really good job of kind of suddenly having his brand throughout what he does so honestly. 10 he has a professional photo. I can see his face, but I can also see He's quite artistic, like he's off the frame a little bit. Andi has just like a simple splash of color at the top, and plus, he's curated what he's putting on his Lincoln on and telling me exactly what he does. Plus has a little bit of personality here. I think that he does this really well. He's probably getting a lot of people reaching out to him. Uh, then he's telling me exactly what he does. He's a UX designer and a visual experience designer. If he's sitting in his own right now on, then if you go over to his instagram, he again. He's uses this. He's used the same idea, but not the same picture. So the same, like backsplash to the same black and white. But it's a different picture, still professional those, but just like a a little different and more creative, Um, and again kind of a creative header and then he has a really distinct style. It's clear that he is focusing on design, but he's still able to put in the elements that he really likes. So he's really into cars and I see that coming out and all of his posts but still his post have a very unified look on day. Also are showing me if I was an employer like Oh, this personally cares about what they're presenting out to the world. He's obviously put some thought and curating this Instagram, even though it still shows him in his personality. So I think he's done a great job on building his personal brand again. Like he said, he's probably gonna write in the comments that I wasn't supposed to show all that. Or maybe he'll get a bunch more followers, I don't know, but I think he does a good job. 15. Class Project : Prep For Job Search: Aziz your venturing off to start kind of releasing, releasing your new UX design personality to the world. Just think about what kind of brand your building and putting out there remember that less is probably more so you don't need to go over the top. So when you hear about what you're you X brand is, that's really what people are talking about is what do you presenting to the world? Harding Presenting yourself as a UX designer How are you establishing where you kind of fall into that space on line? So that's all bustle of Brand is in this class. I did include a portfolio template so you can go down to the class. Resource is section. There is a sketch file with a portfolio template in there. It is pretty basic. It's something to get you started, so feel free to move it around, work with its start there. If you're feeling totally stuck and you can't look at a blank page anymore cause it's freaking you out, the portfolio temple that created might be a good place place to start and get the creative juices flowing. Eso class product for this class, think about what that will mean for you. So if you're ready to start rebuilding here late didn't go for it. If not, just think about what your brand might start to look like. And how you might want to tie all those elements together. So your portfolio and your resume do you want to use Instagram? Do you want to tie that to your brand? How? What you gonna do on linked in how you present yourself as a designer? Overall, it could be a pretty fun project. So do brainstorm that and enjoy. And once you've done some brainstorming, please share with us. We would love to see it. 16. Job Search: back. I am wanted to start this section of the class, which is about finding a job, Um, with a little bit of a disclaimer, because I think finding a job basically wherever you're at in your life in your career, is something that's really stressful. It doesn't matter if you're you've had a ton of experience and you're a senior designer and you get laid off when you quit your job and you go travel when you come back for the job search. It's not necessarily gonna be easy. It's not necessarily, uh, it doesn't make it any easier when you're transitioning careers in your trying to find the right position for you after you haven't necessarily had a solid U. S. Stop before. According to business insider job searchers in the UK, which is where I live now apply to 27 jobs on average before they get an interview. Eso that's a lot, and I imagine that the odds are similar in the U. S. Um, so again, this isn't to scare you, but it's It's to let you know that even though you may be, if in a career transition, that's not necessarily the reason that finding a job is hard. Searching for a job is a lot of work. You spend a lot of time doing it and and do you just keep in mind that it can take a long time that there are jobs out there for you and that there are other people experiencing the same pain that you are? I think it's time to start your job search when you've got a portfolio that's ready to be shared. So that means 2 to 3 solid projects. You're feeling good about what the portfolio looks like. Also, your resume is ready to go. You're ready to kind of send it out at a moment's notice, Um, and also your LinkedIn's ready to be looked at. So when you're connecting with recruiters or potential co workers on LinkedIn, you're you're not embarrassed by what you're linked and says, So you've done that curation already so kind of at the end of this class, when you're going through the class project, you can think about how long you think it will realistically take you to have those things done. So really create resume to get your linked in ready and to create your portfolio which can take a significant amount of time. That's all the time that you can factor into when you'll be really ready to start the job search. It's really important to keep your job search targeted. So what we're trying to do when we're job searching is to be efficient like we talked about . Job searching takes a long time, but it will take a lot more time if you're just blanketing every single UX job you confined with no discretion, so that'll take up a lot of time. It will be really frustrating, and it will take a lot of energy. So when someone hires you, they want you to stay at their job. It's really expensive to hire someone else, so when they hire you, they really want this to be a success. So it's up to you to help them understand what you're really good at and what you could bring to their team. It also is super efficient for you, so if you can really narrow down like here's what I'm really good at, even if you're a designer, who is who is more t shaped like If you can do kind of end to end help me understand what that means for my team. Help me understand what soft skills you're gonna bring to me. Help me understand what end and actually means and where you can really add to my process and help me with my business. Um, that's what you're trying to do in your job search. So hopefully I've already done that and your portfolio and your resume and your Lincoln. And hopefully that's all part of your story telling. But as your job searching, make sure that your story matches the jobs that you're applying for. Oh, the next thing I want to talk a bit about as you're out there in the wild looking for a job is, um, how do you interpret a job hosting and try to understand what it's actually looking for? And should you apply, are you qualified to apply? So there is this idea of the unicorn designer that you probably heard about on. You'll see job postings like this they This is in jest, but there are things that are like this so required skills for UX design position, a junior U X position, interaction design, information architecture, visual design, content, strategy, research, prototyping usability testing project management. Html CSS JavaScript Good at making coffee facilitation. Ruby on rails. Branding on the list goes on. So again, like I said, this is ingest. Hopefully, you won't see something exactly like this, but there are some some quite crazy job descriptions out there that are asking for everything. So they're hoping that a designer can dabble in all of these parts of the product development process and beyond, and that's just not realistic. So it's important to be able to look at job postings and try toe pull out what's actually really important there. And when in doubt, it's OK to ask. So it's okay to email the recruiter and say, Hey, this is what I saw from the job posting. Can you help me understand what you're really looking for? This is what I can dio on the other thing to think about, the it will say how many years of service they expect, or how how many years experience they expect, or unless have a degree in human computer interaction or equivalent experience. And the question is always a What does that mean? Something like that when it says a degree in you know a bachelor's degree in h, C, D or equivalent experience. That probably means that they're looking for a junior level designer and equivalent experience could be equivalent client experience. So that's your freelancing work or your work with nonprofits or your work at your current job, or you transitioned into UX design those air great jobs to look for for junior design positions. When a job description gets really bloated, it's probably in an indication that they don't really know what they're looking for. Eso, that's kind of your cue to reach out and see what it is they are looking for. Try to look at what's in the beginning of the job description. Often times, especially in big companies on the hiring manager, will maybe just edit the beginning toe. What they need and then the rest of the job description is kind of a standard that they just put in there for, like every UX designer should should kind of have an idea of this, so it's okay to apply for those jobs that seem like they're totally off the wall. And if you get something that's really tripping you up, please share it like we love to see it in the comments and help us help us get an understanding of what's out there so people can learn from what you're seeing. I can learn from what you're seeing Aiken trying to help you interpret it, or someone else in the class might have seen something and they can help you interpret it. So to recap some of the stuff that we talked about when it's time to start the career search. We talked about keeping the search targeted, So don't blanket a planet. Everything. Target those companies that you you made a list of the beginning of this class. You have a targeted search. So are you looking for big companies? Are you looking for? And agencies? Are you looking to freelance? Are you looking toe work in a specific area, start narrowing down there and then start narrowing gun based on the skills that you actually have. Don't apply to every junior your exposition that you find a be targeted about it. That's much more efficient. And it means you can devote a lot more time to each of those applications to making them really tailored and giving you a better chance of getting a call back. Um, so we talked about Do you need to meet all of the criteria? So when you see those long bloated you expositions, how do you know? Like, if you should apply or not? Look at the experience they're looking for. So junior positions are usually a bachelor's degree or equivalent experience. That's usually kind of a good indication that they're looking for a more junior level position. Anything that says like 4 to 5 years of experience, you can probably get away with that. That's still a junior level position, especially if you've had other work experience, even if it's not you. Expert experience. If you have that experience that you can tailor to talking about user experience, design principles, that that's really important and being able to find a job, uh, so think about contracting. We didn't talk about this one yet, but contracting could be such a powerful way to really start building experience if you don't have a lot of experience yet, and I really enjoyed contracting, so that means working with a creative agency. I personally worked with the creative group, and I know that they have offices in a lot of big metropolitan areas. But contracting like I said, it could just be a powerful way to get your foot in the door. It's a lot of different companies on Dino that it feels like a contract can be scary because maybe you take a job for three months and then you don't have it. But that's three months of work experience that you wouldn't get anyway. And it's invaluable when you have that on your resume and you can. If you do a good job, then you have a bunch of connections, even if they're not able hurry. You have connections with the recruiting agency. You have connections with those hiring managers. All the people that you're working with, it's it's really invaluable. So I know that some sometimes people look down on contracting rules, But I think they could be really great, especially at the beginning of your career. Um, so leveraging your current role again. This isn't something we talked about a whole lot, maybe in the portfolio section. But leverage in your current role is is another really powerful way to start getting that UX experience that's so vital to being able to build a portfolio that will get you your first US job. So most jobs can find some element of user experience design in them. And it may not be in the role that you're in right now. It might be that you see an opportunity outside of your role and you can talk to your manager and say, Hey, I see this opportunity. Can I do this? You know, outside of my working hours, uh, or Hey, see this opportunity within my role? Can I devote 20 hours a week to it? Or, um, tell them what you're doing that you're expanding into this kind of new field and see where you can take it? Internships are something that people often ask a lot about if you're not in school, they can sometimes be tricky to find most of the time, because companies, if they don't have a clear pipeline to employ you after an internship, it can get they feel bad and you feel bad, and it's just kind of a weird experience, but you can you can certainly find them. And they're they're a really powerful way to kind of get your foot in the door. So if you have the ability to take an internship that's not paid. I would definitely never pass up that kind of experience. But a lot of people don't have that ability that kind of taken unpaid, a full time position, a someone who didn't have that ability. I couldn't have taken an unpaid internship for my career switch. I think it's probably just a helpful to find side jobs that you could do that still give you that experience and then the last one working for free. So I know that this it does seem tempting to kind of, you know, come in to a big company as a volunteer and do 40 hours a week of work for free. Um, I would advise against it as a general rule, different than taking on a project that's kind of has a clear end date. So a project with clear deliverables that you're doing is a volunteer. I think that's OK, and I also think it's it's potentially necessary when you're trying to switch careers and you don't have a portfolio yet. Uh, doing some work for free is is okay, especially if you're doing it for a non profit or for a friend, or when you're trying to build up a portfolio. The really clear distinction is, doesn't have an end date. So is there Ah, brief that you were able to complete and say, OK, I'm done in this This work goes in my portfolio where it I think it crosses a line into being exploiting you is when it doesn't have an end date. So when you're working in this employee as an employee for free, potentially in an internship type situation where there isn't a clear, there's no clear end a and there's not a clear like what happens afterwards and what's the benefit for you? Um, so it's important to make sure that you're just thinking about those decisions and not getting taken advantage off. 17. Apply for Jobs!: welcome back, as you might have known or known was coming it It is the time of the class where you get to start applying for jobs. So depending on how you're going through this class, you might be ready to apply for jobs Right now are Maybe you're not ready. So you might have kind of taking all this content and you're planning at the end to go back and make your action plan, which will be your class project. And that's really great. So you've kind of taken this, uh, framework, You taking it all at once, and you're going to create your plan. If that's the case, you can come back into this project later and update us and tell us that you applied for some jobs if you took a different traffic and you're kind of deciphering this class in chunks that are further apart, Right, So maybe you finished the portfolio section of the class and then you went and built your portfolio, and then you started looking at the find a job section. If you did it that way, Now it's time for you to apply for a job. So remember, like I said, you're ready to start applying for a job when you have a portfolio that you're ready to share on. That's probably 2 to 3 really awesome projects that kind of show your end to end process. It also means you have your resume ready. Your Lincoln is ready to go. That means you're ready to start a playing. So find three jobs hit. Apply. Let us know how it goes if you're not ready to apply it. Another really good use of your time at this stage is to find three jobs right now that you think you could apply for when you've completed your action plan. So start doing a little bit of like pre research for your job search. Just look at what's out there and see what the job's kind of look like and what they're asking for. And that means you can really start to think about as you do, build your portfolio and your resume. What do we need tohave again? Sure, those jobs. We want to see them. Put the job postings up on the discussion board, write them down. If you have questions after them, I think we have a really strong community that probably all had similar questions. So the more we can discuss them, the better. And I'm excited to see what you find. 18. The Interview: Tiu, the interview infection of the class and that either means that you got an A in interview. And if you did, congratulations. That's so exciting, especially if you're transitioning careers. Getting an interview is like gold so exciting because it means that you can probably do it again. Even if this interview doesn't work out, it means something is working. Someone thought about hiring you. It's really exciting. Um, if you're using this class as kind of, ah Anak Shin Plan builder, keep in mind that eventually you will get to the interview stage and you'll have to prepare for a U X interview. So that's what this portion of the class is about. So what should we expect from a U X interview? You'll hear about a couple different things. Every company does it differently. The recruiter of the hiring manager should prepare you for what's to come in an interview, but sometimes they won't on. So it's good to have an idea of what what might come out of it. So you can usually expect some kind of design exercise, so the design exercise is usually something that's gonna happen on the spot, so you'll be with either a team of designers or you'll be with a single designer and they're going to give you some kind of design problem that they'll want you to solve on the spot. Eso I think where most people's downfall is here is they immediately run to the white board and they start drawing interfaces because they want to show off that they can like wire frame like crazy. And most of the time I would say 100% of the time. That's not what the interviews interviewers are looking for. What they want to understand is, how does your brain work and how do you use the design process? So what kind of questions do you ask? Uh, do you ask about the customer? Do you ask about the business? Do you ask? How are we gonna measure success? Do you ask about the technical limitations thing to expect is being able to defend your design? So probably, but at this point, the interviewers have already looked at your portfolio or they looked at it in the portfolio presentation. But we'll get to in just a second on, and they're gonna ask you questions about it, and they're gonna ask you to defend the decisions that you made in your portfolio. So be prepared for that. They're gonna ask challenging questions. Why did you put this button here? Why did you decide that? That was a good idea. What did your users say about that or what user needs? Did you notice that made you decide to design this way? Those are the types of questions that you're going to get again. Hard to prepare for it cause you don't know what they're gonna ask on. The key is to know your projects. So no, your portfolio projects. If their decisions that you made that weren't based on user data, that's OK as long as it wasn't every single decision. So if they ask something, why did you decide to put this year? And it was for no other reason. Except that was where it went. And when we usability tested, it wasn't a problem. That's an okay. Answer would be ableto communicate that clearly and without getting defensive. So take home assignments. These will often happen. You have a phone screen and they'll say, Great. We want to bring you in for an in person interview. Here is a take home assignment we want you to dio means I'll give you an assignment and they'll ask you to return it to them, and they'll usually say how long they want you to spend on it. It's usually between, like, 1 to 5 hours, actually, spend the amount of time on it that you're supposed to spend on it. People often will spend 10 hours on it, and that's that's really obvious when you spent too much time on it, um, it also it that doesn't get to the point. So they want to see what what you do with something in the amount of time they gave to you . So again, this is the same as the white board exercise. Think about what they're looking for. So they're looking for the way that you think they want to see your process. They want to see if you went straight to the user. If you If you went straight, tow wire framing, then be ready to defend what you created. So probably what will happen is you'll return it back to the recruiter and then you'll see your port, your presentation of your take home assignment. You'll see it back at you when you're in the in person interview and you'll discuss it. Last thing to think about further, what to expect from an interview is that they'll probably be a phone screen. So if they like the looks of your portfolio, that's great. And then someone recruiters, probably in the college say, OK, we've got on our phone screen. Uh, that's when you'll have a chat with the hiring manager or another designer on the team. On day, we're probably gonna want to walk through your portfolio. They're going to do a lot of those questions for you, like questions about your portfolio work. So this is where you're gonna get to defend your design without necessarily being there. They're also gonna probably ask you questions about your process. They're gonna ask you some technical questions. So again, the key thing is to, uh, express that you're a clear, calm communicator. So if they have a question that throws you off, don't freak out. Take a deep breath, take a moment to figure out what you're gonna say and say it. Um, what I like to do before I have a phone screen is to look at my portfolio and have notes what I'm gonna talk about, so probably they're gonna ask you to walk through one of your projects. It's really important that you've practiced presenting that project again. Another really important thing to think about when you're in the interview is working for free. This doesn't happen very often, and, um, I've heard of it very rarely. But sometimes a company will give you a problem that they are working on to take home. Um, that's bad news. So if they if they give you something like, Hey, we're working on this, how would you solve it? I would ask some more questions about that. So if you're if you're designing a product for the company, they've asked you to work on it for a long time, like more than five hours. I think that would raise some questions for me. So definitely consider bringing that up with the recruiter, because it it is poor form for a company to ask you to work on something in freelancing opportunities. Oftentimes, business will ask for pitches from multiple freelancers. That's okay. I've always been paid for pitches that take a long time. So, uh, a company will say we're pitching from. We're getting pitches from this many people and were paying X amount of dollars per pitch on then. If we pick you thistles, how much? Basically you're pitching how much you would do it for us? Well, so when you're pitching to a company, make sure you're getting paid for your time. It's reasonable to ask to be paid for the time you're putting into your pitch, because it it takes a lot of work. Knowing what we know about US interviews, how can we prepare for them? Um so really important thing is to practice the presentation. So almost every UX interview I've ever heard of they're going to ask for a presentation. 30 minutes to an hour is pretty standard, so that means you have to be able to talk about the work you've done for an hour. The way that you present your presentation does really matter. The same is under portfolio. Even if you're not selling yourself as a visual designer, attention to detail matters because it matters. They want to see if when you present to senior leadership at their business, if you're going to take the time to make sure things are aligned and spell properly and there laid out in a meaningful way that makes sense. So as much as the presentation is about the work you've already done, it's also about the work you put into your portfolio presentation, folks. Aer looking for Can you go to a room of stakeholders and present? Clearly? Can you tell the story of what you did? Can you defend your design decisions? Can you, uh, tell us a good reason for why you did what you did? Because that's so much of your job Is a designer uh so as much as you, you as you have prepared for it, you also need to practice it. So you need to be able to talk for an hour on Make sure you know what's coming and talk intelligently about your decisions and tell the story. So practice it. Practice and practice it more than one time. Practice it in front of people, practice it by yourself, then practice to your dog or to your cat. Practice to your significant other practice to your friends. Practice to your mom. Practice to your siblings, whoever it is, make them sit through it. You have to practice, even if they don't give you feedback. It would be great if you did, even if they didn't, you just have to get used to doing it. The next thing to do is to gather notes about your work in your past experience. So gather notes and related stories about your work experience because most often the next part of the interview is is going to be them asking questions, one about your work and also about experiences that you've had. And they want to hear real examples. So people want to hire someone that they can have a coffee with or that they could have a beer with or that they can pal around the office with, like, at the end of the day, we we want to work with people that we like. So as much as they're looking for your skills as a designer there, they're also looking to see that you're a person that they can hang out with. So keep that in mind. And don't let the idea that you're going to interview for the scary job kind of let your personality hide because people want to see that and they want to understand that you're a good person. I worked with a more practical advice. Don't rely on WiFi so often. You won't be able to get onto the company's WiFi. So if your whole portfolio presentation is is just hosted on a website and you can't get it cause you can't get the WiFi than that sucks and you won't be able to do your presentation . So don't just rely on WiFi. Um, practice the design on the spot. So we talked about the design exercise. Here is a great website where you can go. It's listed in the Class Notes website that has a lot of these design exercises. So that's something you can practice now again. Don't work for free, so people give you take home exercise. That seems like a lot of hours, and it seems like it's something that the team is currently working on. That's when I would ask questions and push back 19. Got The Job!: back. So this whole section of class is focused on once you've got a job on diffuse successfully transitioned into UX design. I'm so proud of you. That is awesome. Everybody's cheering for you. That's so great. You must feel amazing. So huge. Congratulations. Please, Please, please share your success stories dumb down in the comments, even if they're not from this class. If you're already a UX designer and you transition from something else, I think it's so important to hear about people who have done this is really important for us to see other people who have done the thing that we want to do. It gives us hope that we can also achieve it. So please share if you have. And if you've if you've gotten your first job in your ex huge congratulations, that is Bassam. So I do want to hear about it if you have, and I have no doubt that you can, Andi, I just I'm so excited for you. Genuinely, Um So if you've got a job and now you're like, Hey, what do I do next? That that's kind of what this section of the classes for you may be really worried once you're kind of going to that first day that there's these hard skills that are now. But if you put to the test, I know that's what I was terrified about this I know what I was really terrified about is that I would get to my first day on the job, and for some reason they would be like, OK, design and photo shop and to end experience that you know nothing about. And I would suddenly be faced with the idea that I had no idea what I was doing. Definitely, Imposter syndrome was a huge player in that. I just didn't didn't think I was ready. So take a deep breath. I think that the totaling natural way to feel you are going to learn things on the job. That's okay on your going to ease into your job slowly, and you're gonna know what to do. Because user experience designers have a problem solving process is. Once I got the job offer, the offer came with and we work exclusively in photo shop and I was like, I have been used photo shop. I've only ever you sketch and I remember saying OK, cool I'm cool with that. And I immediately went home and took a kind of shop class so that I would learn it. So it was at the moment that I knew I would actually need it. That's when I did my best learning. So that's okay if that happens, because you have the job on. Like I said, it's about a problem solving process, so you're gonna be fine. The other thing to remember is to rely on your soft skills so your soft skills are just as important measure hard skills. You absolutely need them. So remember those things that we talked about that were really important for a UX designer ? Remember your grated asking questions? You're curious. You're good at communicating. You're gonna defending the user. Your good earning trust you're gonna facilitating. You're good at influencing those things are really important. And they're Justus, important as you being able to build a prototype in Flint O or conduct user research so so lean on those and continue to develop them. Another bit of practical advice. Save your work for your future portfolio, so this job is probably gonna work out. It's your first UX job, and it's so exciting. But eventually you're gonna want to move on, and your portfolio is going to need to grow with you, so save your work the whole time. I know it can feel a little silly. Did continuously be saving your working like shuffling it away into a different file? Well, you'll be thankful that you did it in a couple of years. When you're ready to move on and you have to refresh your portfolio, you could just go to a file of saved artifacts and put them in your portfolio was a new case study, and after that, just enjoy how such a great time. You now have a stable job. I have 1/14 most awesome job in America, so enjoy that. Enjoy the stability, sit back and like, congratulate yourself that you made this huge career leap on and let us know how it's going . So if you again, like I said, a few transition careers tell us that you landed your first job. Will be so glad to know that goes for anything. That's a contract position. It's a job at a little agency. It's a great internship. Tell us how it went because it's all a huge accomplishment. So I really hope you enjoy this class. Um, I was really excited to work on it. I know that I did a survey of my students and learned that most of you who are already taking some of my classes are looking to transition careers either from another design career or from a totally different career. Most of you are looking to transition career. So that's what really inspired me. To build this class specifically is to give people that framework Teoh to move careers. And also just to share my personal experience that it did happen for me, I was able to do it. I'm excited to share my story, but I'm also really excited to hear your stories. So I do hope you share them on the class discussion board. I hope that this could be a great community for people who are looking to transition careers and are not quite sure how to go about it. So thank you so much for joining on. Do let me know how it can help. I'm always available for discussion, so please write on the board. If you have a question for me, I'm happy to answer it. Andi, keep telling me what you need. So I build these classes for the people that take that. So if there's something you want to see and you don't see it, let me know. Thank you. 20. Final Project : Create Your Action Plan: So final class project. I know I've been alluding to it throughout the class, So depending on how you structured your own learning in the class, this might be helpful for you or not. So what I've done is created a template that kind of takes into account all of the different pieces of what we learned. What we talked about in the class is a framework for switching. So I've laid out here is kind of going down the left are those dates and milestones. But going down the right is your networking plan. So as essential networking is essential enough that really week by week as you're doing everything else, you should also be thinking about networking and growing your relationships with people who will eventually help you make this career switch. And even after you switch will help you grow in your career. Um, so kind of going through it. The first thing to do is to commit to the career switch. So decide is this gonna be something that you pursue? Is yours design a career you want to move towards and when do you want to start applying for jobs? So I think realistically about all the things we went over the in this class and all of the things that you need to do before you're gonna be ready to apply for jobs and set the date based on that. So set that major date and then you could work backwards from there. So the first thing to do is yourself study. It's really to just dig into you ex. You may have already done this if you took this class and you've already committed. But if you're still unsure if you X is right for you, here's some some great books to kind of get you started on deciding, like doing what am I passionate about? UX design. I listed the design of everyday things and don't make me think. And you can add your own edition, another book or resource that you want to look at to help you decide. Is this a good job for me? So, um, now that you're going through it, you have applied kind of set this this launch date of when you're going to apply for jobs. You could look work backwards from that. So the first thing to complete basically tells you how long it's going to take you to get to your apply for jobs state. So if you're going to take a year than the end date for self study should be a I hear from the time you wanna start applying for jobs. If you're going to take a month, it should be a month beforehand. Obviously, you need to decide what's gonna work for you. And timeline is and your budget is and how you're gonna go about making this switch. So Taylor, to your own needs, The next thing to do is getting the skills eso coursework herself. Study. I also put in here sign up for a UX design blawg. So you should be signing up to things that will send you content weekly so you could stay up to date and keep learning as you go. Next thing to do is start to focus your efforts. So you get the skills you have this big kind of you have the top of the tea on Dow. You need to focus your efforts. So where you gonna build in that depth of knowledge? So mind map what your dream job looks like and define your ideal first job on bright here. You can write your elevator pitch. So in a sentence, what is it that you do? And what do you bring to a team? And so just talking about the right side of this plan A little bit Azure going here is a list to kind of keep track of how your networking. So, uh, one thing that I hated doing, but that really served me well is that, uh, I made myself go to at least one networking event a week while I was transitioning into a new career. So that's a lot because I'm actually quite introverted, so I don't It takes a lot of energy for me to go out once a week on made a bunch of people . I don't know, but I did it and it did help me. So that's a good goal. If that works for you, who are you reaching out out for coffee with? Is that somebody only did? Is it a former employer? Is it is somebody that you work with now who has a job that you want? Is it a friend who has aux job? So who are you taking out for coffee and what networking event. Are you going to that's related to your job? So write them down and commit to going and try to get yourself out of the house and into those networking events. Uh, so moving on to the next page of this plan? Uh huh. So, OK, Page two of the plan starting to get a little bit harder. It's finding those portfolio products that you've gotten the skills you've decided what you're really gonna focus on. You've written your elevator pitch. Uh, now what projects are you gonna put in your portfolio? Are they real client projects Where they coming from? List out the three of them here and give yourself a date that you're going to finish Those remember This will take a while if you don't have any projects that so be realistic about it. So doing three really great UX projects, especially if you're not working on them full time. I would expected to take at least two months, and I think that that would be a pretty ambitious. So if you're not working on this full time, make sure you give yourself enough time to do really great projects. Also, remember when you're working with a real client, there's gonna be more back and forth. So you you're not completely in control of how much time you can spend on it, because you might have to wait for them to get back to you. So keep that in mind. And once you've got those project, then it's time to build the portfolio. So there's three things in your portfolio. Absolutely need. The case studies. Those come directly from the portfolio projects, the about section and the contact section. Let us know when you're gonna get that done, and then it's time to prepare for your job search. So that's the whole branding section. We talked about Illington ready, Build your resume, launch a portfolio and when's it gonna happen? And then let's three jobs that you think you can apply for on and then again, when you gonna get that done. So that can be kind of a quick overview of everything that we did in this class. Obviously, it's not as detailed as we went through in the class, but you can take this away with you and build yourself a game plan for switching careers. What I'd love to see is as people are filling this out. If you could share them in the class section, that that would be great. I think other people would benefit a lot from seeing different peoples, timelines, the different people's plans. And it's always great to bounce ideas off of each other on. I'm happy to provide feedback if there's questions, um, so enjoy building this out, and I hope it it inspires and encourages you to make that career switch if you've been thinking about it. I hope this helps you kind of make the jump and and I look forward to seeing your projects go up in the project section of the class.