How to Keep Growing as a Designer
Whether you're just starting out in your career or have a few years under your belt, it's crucial to continually build your skills. We'll explore actionable tips to help you become an even stronger designer this year.
Identify your weak areas and skills you want to strengthen. Maybe you want to dive deeper into user research or learn a new design tool. Set specific, achievable goals to work on over the next 3-6 months.
Join Design Communities
Connecting with other designers is one of the best ways to get feedback, share knowledge, and find new inspiration. You’re welcome to join Design Buddies on Discord!
The community is friendly and helpful, focused on building each other up through thoughtful feedback and advice. You can also learn a lot just by seeing what other designers are working on and what kinds of discussions are happening. Staying up-to-date with trends in UX design is challenging, but communities make it easier.
Of course, the more you contribute to the community, the more you'll get out of it. Share your own experiences, offer feedback to others, and start discussions on topics you're interested in. Building relationships with fellow designers leads to opportunities for collaborating and supporting each other in your careers.
While online courses and video tutorials have their place, nothing is more valuable than connecting with real designers and exchanging knowledge.
Participate in Design Challenges
To improve your UX design skills, take on side projects and design challenges whenever you can. Look for opportunities at work or in your personal life to solve user experience problems, big or small.
Find a Cause You Care About
Do some research to find a nonprofit organization or community group you want to support. Reach out and ask if they have any UX needs you can help with, like improving their website or app. You can even add it to your portfolio.
Participate in Hackathons
Hackathons are events where designers and developers come together to build solutions to problems. Look for UX-focused hackathons in your area and team up to conceptualize and design an app or platform. The quick, intensive nature of hackathons helps you think on your feet and work under pressure.
Redesign an Existing Product
Pick an app, website, or product you use regularly that you find frustrating or unintuitive. Do a UX redesign of it in your spare time, documenting your process and rationale. This kind of redesign challenge lets you practice user research, information architecture, interaction design, and usability testing. You’ll end up with work samples to show future employers.
Learn a New UX Tool
There are many tools UX designers use, so commit to learning a new one, like Figma, Framer, and more. Follow online video tutorials to familiarize yourself with the tool's functionality. Then, pick a design challenge and complete the entire project using only that new tool. This forces you to problem solve and pushes you out of your comfort zone.
We’re hosting a design challenge with our Buddies at Framer! Join and come away with your own website hero section
The challenge? Design and publish the most captivating hero section for a website using Framer, for a chance to win $1,000 gift card to a store of your choice.
We’re on the lookout for the most creative hero sections, ones that truly showcase your design skills. Bonus points if you incorporate our latest features like 3D Transforms or Custom Cursors.
Need some inspiration? Check out our Gallery featuring some of the best websites created in Framer.
Already have a hero section design in Figma? No problem! We've got you covered with our plugin that seamlessly transfers your Figma layers into Framer.
Invest in Continued Education
To stay up-to-date in the ever-changing field of UX design, continuous learning is key.
Take Online Courses
Platforms like Udemy, Coursera, and Udacity offer UX design courses on specific topics to expand your skills. For example, take a course on information architecture, user research, or design thinking.
Typically, less structured learning (eg. YouTube tutorials) are free, and interactive more structured learning formats are paid. There’s no right or wrong way to learn! It all depends on your learning style and preference.
We’re excited to be partnering with UXGO to bring you an advanced course taught by UX industry professionals this summer!
Still need a good summer internship? Want big tech lvl case studies, and real UX work experience?
Come apply for the 2024 UXGO advanced course - The most competitive 10 week big tech internship style learning. Ship your product for a top tier start up, with big tech UX coaches, pm’s, and dev’s in a real cross functional team.
Build all the hard skills needed, boost your resume and portfolio, and land your big tech role Apply now—limited spots available.
We’re also partnering with Wix Studio to bring you a free workshop on animations and interactions for your website this Wed May 8, at 8 am PT (UTC-7)!
Join us for a hands-on, practical workshop where we'll create engaging website animations and effects, without code. We’ll cover: scroll animations, mouse parallax, advanced sizing, and more!
Conclusion
Try taking on projects that scare you a little or learn a new design skill outside your comfort zone. Make plans to stay inspired - go to events, follow designers you admire, expand your perspectives.
Don't forget to pass on what you learn. Mentor others, write blogs, speak at conferences. Keep slaying!!
🚀 Design The Future 2024 - our first conference!
Design The Future is a hybrid conference happening in-person in San Francisco and online on Mon May 20, 2024 hosted by Design Buddies, Bezi, and Learners. Make new friends, gain new skills, and come back with practical skills to take your career to the next level!
Learn about AI, spatial design, and practical skills to help you stay on top of emerging tech for your career and life. Make lifelong friendships at our pre and post conference social events.
Thank you to our sponsors Bezi, Learners, Spline, Dovetail, Adobe, and Studio for making this all possible!
Tickets are free to attend online and $89 to attend in-person in San Francisco
🐰 About Design Buddies
Design Buddies is a community where you level up your design career. Land jobs, improve your design skills, and make friends. We have resources, events, design challenges, job boards, fun perks, and more. Founded by Grace Ling
👋 Visit our website and hop into our community!
💖 Partner with us
🌟 Watch our past events and connect with us on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn for more fun!