How to start UI/UX Design?

Step 1: Learn the fundamentals of UX design

The experience of a user on a website is arguably the most important part of any successful design—which means it’s important that you understand the UX design process and the main principles of UX design.

UX design focuses on creating a delightful experience through meeting user needs and wants, as well as through user psychology.

Understanding why users perform certain actions and what makes them continue using a site (or abandoning that site) is key to creating a digital product that meets user needs as well as business goals.

Luckily, there are plenty of affordable (and free) UX tutorials, courses, and resources all at your disposal as well as tons of books on UX. A good place to start is with Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think. Krug is widely regarded as the godfather of UX design.

Step 2: Develop your eye for good UI/UX design

Learning the basic principles of design will only take you so far. To really take your skills to the next level, practice studying the designs of websites and mobile apps you love with a critical eye.

Next time you see a website you love, for example, take a few minutes to analyze what about it works so well for you. Is it the color palette? The interaction design? The typography?

Look at every part of the design: the spacing between elements, the grid the site is designed on, the visual hierarchy of the site, and even the specific images and icons used. Ask yourself what’s working and what’s not? This is key to developing a strong visual eye for design.

Just as important as what you love about a site is what you don’t love. Study the site with a critical eye. Try to figure out why you don’t like certain parts of the site, not just that you don’t like them.

Step 3: Invest in the right design tools

Next, you’re going to want to invest in UI/UX software to start bringing your designs to life and start applying what you’ve learned so far.

There are plenty of great tools available on the market, but we suggest trying out a few industry stalwarts such as Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD to get a feel for which you prefer.

Here’s a quick rundown of what each software has to offer:

• Figma: Figma is a collaborative design and prototyping tool for digital projects. It’s the newest UI/UX design software on the market and has quickly become many designers’ tool of choice.
• Sketch: Sketch is a digital design app for macOS. Designers who use Sketch love it for its plugin capabilities and its intuitive interface.
• Adobe XD: Adobe XD was specifically built with user interface designers in mind. The best part is, Adobe XD is completely free and allows you to design and prototype with ease.

Bottom line is, there’s no one right tool for UI/UX designers. It’s really up to you to decide which software feels most intuitive and user-friendly to you.

Step 4: Start building a portfolio of work

Reading books and articles or watching design tutorials will only get you so far. What you really need to do to become proficient at UI/UX is actually design digital products and start accumulating a solid body of work

At this point you might be asking yourself—how do I build a portfolio of work without any real-world experience?

If you’re starting from scratch, we highly recommend downloading some free UI kits (or user interface kit) to help get your designs started. A UI kit is a set of pre-made design components containing essential visual elements for a specific UI design (think buttons, icons, fonts, menus, etc.).

Use UI kits to design your own website or mobile app for starters. But also consider doing redesigns of existing sites. Pick some of your favorite websites and explore how you could redesign them to look and function even better

Then, learn how to create mockups for your designs, and consider posting them online for feedback to further improve.

Step 5: Ask for feedback (and learn from it)

Contrary to popular belief, negative feedback can actually be much more useful than positive feedback. It can help you grow as a designer, level-up your skills, and create better products.

Learn to seek and embrace negative design feedback and use it as fuel to improve your designs. Post your work on Dribbble and ask for constructive criticism—the community is here to help.

In the end, negative feedback can be one of the most positive things that can happen in your design career. Just remember, you don’t need to overhaul all of your skills overnight. Trying to become one percent better every day will bring steady progress to success.

Pro tip: To accelerate your design skills, find a design mentor. You’d be surprised how many established UI/UX designers are more than willing to give you advice and help you build your career.

Step 6: Get real-world work experience

Once you’ve developed enough work that you’re proud of and you feel confident in your skills, it’s time to put yourself out there and get some real-world work experience.

In order to get hired in UI/UX design, you’ll need to create an online design portfolio that showcases your best work and the design process behind it.

Start applying to entry-level UI/UX design jobs. Even if you don’t land a job right away, the job hunt is a great opportunity to practice your soft skills such as communication and explaining the decisions behind your designs—two very important qualities that hiring managers are looking for in design candidates.

Deciding to work as a freelancer? Then Bonsai can help you in many more ways than just project management. From proposals and contracts to invoices and taxes, you’ll be able to manage your whole business from one user-friendly platform.

Become a self-taught UI/UX designer

No matter your current skill level, know that you’re more than capable of teaching yourself UI/UX design if you’re willing to put in the time, effort, and dedication. Keep learning and growing your skills and remember that nothing happens overnight. You’ve got this!

Why you read UI design blog?

I used to read blog posts when I initially started teaching myself UI/UX design to expand my knowledge about the design field.

Since I was new to the industry, designing was a marvel to me.

Every day I would read about three to four design articles to learn new skills, approaches, or fundamentals, how to acquire a job, what kinds of projects to design, and which online courses to enrol in.

Writing or blogging has evolved from a doubtful hobby to a well-liked and successful career.

How to improve design quality?

Design quality and customer satisfaction are crucial factors for the success of any automotive project. But how can you achieve them in a competitive and complex industry? In this article, we will explore some strategies and tools that can help you improve your design process and deliver value to your customers.

1 Understand your customers' needs and preferences

The first step to improve your design quality and customer satisfaction is to understand what your customers want and need from your products. You can use various methods to gather and analyze customer data, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, personas, scenarios, and feedback loops. By doing so, you can identify the problems, goals, expectations, and emotions of your customers, and use them as a guide for your design decisions.

2 Apply design thinking principles and methods

Design thinking is a creative and collaborative approach to problem-solving that focuses on the human aspects of design. It involves five stages: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. By applying design thinking principles and methods, you can generate innovative and feasible solutions that meet your customers' needs and desires. You can also iterate and refine your solutions based on user feedback and testing, ensuring that your design is validated and optimized.

3 Use design tools and software

Design tools and software can help you improve your design quality and customer satisfaction by enhancing your productivity, efficiency, accuracy, and creativity. You can use various design tools and software for different purposes, such as sketching, modeling, rendering, animation, simulation, testing, and documentation. Some examples of design tools and software are AutoCAD, SketchUp, Photoshop, Illustrator, SolidWorks, Maya, Blender, Unity, and Unreal Engine. By using design tools and software, you can create realistic and detailed designs that meet your technical and aesthetic requirements.

4 Follow design standards and best practices

Design standards and best practices are guidelines and recommendations that help you ensure the quality, safety, performance, and usability of your designs. They are based on research, experience, and industry norms. You can follow design standards and best practices for various aspects of your design, such as ergonomics, aesthetics, functionality, accessibility, sustainability, and compliance. By following design standards and best practices, you can avoid common errors and pitfalls, and create designs that meet your customers' expectations and satisfaction.

5 Collaborate and communicate with your team and stakeholders

Collaboration and communication are essential for improving your design quality and customer satisfaction. They allow you to share ideas, feedback, and information with your team and stakeholders, such as engineers, manufacturers, marketers, suppliers, and regulators. You can use various tools and methods to collaborate and communicate with your team and stakeholders, such as meetings, workshops, presentations, reports, emails, chats, and online platforms. By collaborating and communicating with your team and stakeholders, you can align your goals, objectives, and requirements, and ensure that your design is consistent and coherent.

6 Learn from your successes and failures

The final step to improve your design quality and customer satisfaction is to learn from your successes and failures. You can use various methods to evaluate and measure your design outcomes, such as surveys, reviews, ratings, testimonials, sales, and profits. You can also use various methods to identify and analyze your design strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, such as SWOT analysis, root cause analysis, and lessons learned. By learning from your successes and failures, you can improve your design skills, knowledge, and processes, and create better designs in the future.

How to easily start user testing?

First things first: even if we often read about “user testing”, I think we’d better talk about “usability testing” obviously we’re not testing the user, but our solution!

There are already a lot of resources about usability testing; this is why, today, I’ll be talking about it in a pragmatic way, giving feedback and advice to anyone willing to dive into this fascinating activity.

At which stage of the project should I plan usability testing?

Usability testing, which probably is the most common user research method, deals with projects of which a “solution” has already been given a tangible form, e.g. thanks to zonings, wireframes and, if the solution is not a draft anymore, even mockups, static or interactive prototypes, whether they be throwable or iterative ones. The main goal of usability testing afterall is to measure how well this material is easy-to-use.

So, to me, usability testing applies at a key-stage of the project: when one can start seeing or using a concrete material. If your project is not at this stage, there are many other user research methods that should be used before implementing a solution, for example: one-to-one interviews, focus groups, surveys, shadowing …

How many testers do I need in order to make my usability testing gets reliable?

It might seem that meeting as many people as possible then putting them in touch with our product would provide the best feedback about what works well and what does not …

In fact, it’s important to note that usability testing takes a lot of time to plan, run and analyze. So, conducting dozens of usability tests if you’re not able to spend time analyzing their results is a complete waste of time! If this is the case and if your goal is to get quantitative results about your product, other user research methods exist like the surveys mentioned above.

In addition, after several usability tests, you’ll notice that you’ll start getting the same feedback again and again. Basically, the more you conduct usability tests, the less new feedback you’ll get. It’s kind of logical, isn’t it? A 5-tester sample is said to be the optimal size: with this, you’ll gather 90% of the most important insights and you won’t waste time dissecting the results.