How to Get Experience Without Experience — A New Designer’s Paradox
An alternative to the standard boot camp route — self-driven projects
A lot of people have e-mailed me asking how they should get started in design.
“I majored in rock communication (or insert unrelated major here) and minored in medieval pottery. Can I still be a designer? Where do I begin?”
The best way to “get started” in design is to dive headfirst into your first project. Bootcamps, books, courses, tutorials, and online classes are too overwhelming to sift through. A lot of people end up wasting months researching the “best” design resource.
Step One — Generating an Idea
Your passion project starts with an idea. Here are the most common types of ideas as described in Udacity’s (Free) Product Design Course.
- Simplify — i.e. Instagram takes Facebook’s photo-sharing feature and simplifies it
- Me Too — i.e. Alibaba took Amazon’s idea and applied it to a different market
- Virtualize — i.e. Uber takes the taxi booking experience and makes it accessible online
- Remix — i.e. Slack combines e-mail, chat, and private group messaging
- Mission (Almost) Impossible — try to avoid this for your first project
One thing people tend to forget is that there are many ways to solve a problem. Take an existing product and try to improve the user experience for a specific user segment or scenario. Or in hip terms — there are industries ripe for disruption.
Create a list of ideas and try pitching them to your friends. Gauge their interest to determine feasibility (product-market fit). Don’t worry about people “stealing your idea”; ideas are worthless, and you don’t need to get people to pinky swear. Nobody is going to steal your idea for a condom & lube delivery service.
The best ideas aren’t ambitious “billion-dollar apps”. The best ideas start by solving personal pain points. Newer designers tend to think they understand their users.
Unless you’re solving a personal pain point this is not true. Trust me, solving a problem you’re passionate about will keep you much more motivated. It’ll likely be the one thing that keeps you going through the highs and the lows.
Some quick notes if you want a plan to turn your passion project into a viable startup in the future
- Avoid apps with a “critical mass problem”. Anything requiring a large number of users to work i.e. social networking, user-generated content.
- Make sure the market is big enough. Make sure you’re solving a problem many people have.
- Aim to solve an excruciating pain point, not a minor inconvenience.
Step Two — The Tools of the Trade
There are tons of new designer tools popping out every week. Important note: don’t get caught up learning one specific tool, be flexible — tools come and go all the time.
Here is a list of common tools I found useful (in order of personal preference).
Design
- Sketch (highly recommended, unfortunately, Mac only)
- Webflow (one of the best tools for web design, learn about HTML and CSS)
- Axure RP (a little complicated, but it’s an all-in-one tool)
- Figma (web-based and free!)
- Adobe Illustrator (avoid this if possible)
- Adobe Photoshop (avoid this if possible)
Prototyping
- Invision (the most basic — good starting point, limited custom interactions)
- Flinto (great for all levels)
- Webflow (design AND launch a functional website without code — ideal for freelance work i.e. landing pages)
- Principle (more for screen transitions and micro-interactions)
- Framer.js (basic coding required)
Wireframing
Task Management
Specs
Step Three — Design Out of Necessity
There’s no better way to learn than by doing.
If you’re planning to learn design (or any skill) like this…please stop:
- Complete course A
- Complete course B
- Read book C
- Attend boot camp D
- Read book E
- Complete course F
- ???
- Magically become industry employable
Whatever course module is up next is most likely irrelevant to your current design goals. The further along you get in your passion project, the more things you will want to learn out of necessity. I’ve spent over four hours reading boring technical documentation — to fix a single icon.
If you get to a chapter or a module that doesn’t interest you or feels irrelevant — skip it. You can always go back to it later if it becomes relevant. The most draining thing you can do is force yourself to “study”.
If it feels like work, you’re doing it wrong
I didn’t start learning design with a list of the top design books. In fact, the first time I tried reading the “Design of Everyday Things” I fell asleep in an instant.
When you learn a piece of new information, there should be an inner urge to redesign your entire project. This is good, this is the fuel that’ll keep you going.
Keep making incremental improvements in each new iteration. Your project is a canvas you should repeatedly paint over.
There it’s impossible to tell you “what the best design resources are”. The best design resource helps improve the weakest link in your project at that given time.
Step Four — Build
If you’re as excited about your project as I was, you should be pitching this to every developer you see. At some point, you’ll impress a developer enough to form a project team. If you’re having trouble there’s a helpful Facebook group to trade design for code.
Communicating with developers will uncover things you’ve never considered before. New designers tend to ignore all the little things that deviate from the ideal user flow. These edge cases are a huge aspect of interaction design that is often ignored. Coming up with comprehensive user flows will elevate your design.
Avoid these common mistakes
Take the time to examine every design decision you make. You should never design a UI element a certain way because “it looks cool”. Learn the common UI patterns from UI-patterns and goodUI to avoid common mistakes.
Take your project as far as you can while the passion is still there. But don’t keep beating a dead horse if you discover some critical flaw in your initial idea.
The purpose of the project isn’t to become the next Bill Gates, it’s to learn. Don’t be afraid of restarting with a new idea, things get much easier the second time around.
Step Five — Now What…
Don’t be afraid to spend a few months on your project. Focus on the lessons you learn with each iteration. If you manage to ship your project, congratulations!
You now have “real experience”. Write a comprehensive “case study” for your portfolio! Don’t forget to highlight the valuable experience you have working with developers.
If you’re not comfortable applying for internships at this point — there are a few ways to get more “real experience”. Seek out nearby hackathons with the intention to find a project team.
Your goal should be to find a team you have good chemistry with. After the hackathon try proposing a continuation for your project (or starting a new one).
You can also try approaching early-stage startups to try and get hired. Universities with startup incubators (i.e. Velocity Company Directory) are an excellent place to start. Don’t be shy, most startups need designers!
Offer your services (for free if you have to). Whatever work you do for them is much more valuable than any personal project you can take on.
If you’re having a hard time getting “hired”, try drafting a design proposal. Go through their product or website and point out design problems you can help solve.
Now what? Keep grinding. Focus on case studies. Hard work pays off.
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