Skills From Your Previous Career: How to Utilize Them in UX Design
Skills From Your Previous Career: How to Utilize Them in UX Design
You didn’t start your career as a UX designer. Like many in the field, you transitioned from another role or industry. While the skills required for UX design are quite specialized, don’t underestimate the value of your previous experience.
Whatever your former career, you have transferable skills that will make you a more well-rounded UX designer. The key is recognizing them and actively applying them to your new role. Your diverse experience gives you unique perspectives that others may lack. Leverage this to your advantage and use those skills from your previous life to take your UX work to the next level.
Identify Transferable Skills From Your Previous Career
Identifying skills from your previous career that translate well to UX design is key. Think about problems you've solved, processes you've improved, and ways you've helped users. These are valuable experiences that will serve you in this new role.
For example, if you were a teacher, you likely developed expertise explaining complex topics in a simple, engaging way. This is a skill UX designers rely on to communicate with stakeholders and users. Teachers are also adept at observing behavior and identifying needs, which translates well to user research.
Project managers are practiced in defining requirements, mapping user journeys, and ensuring a good experience. These methodical and organizational skills will be useful in your UX work. Creatives from fields like graphic design, marketing, and writing know how to craft compelling content and visually engaging designs, which are core UX abilities.
Tech-focused careers teach technical skills like wireframing, prototyping, and evaluating interfaces that directly apply to UX design. But soft skills like communicating with stakeholders, facilitating discussions, and resolving conflicts also translate.
Apply Analytical and Critical Thinking Skills to UX
If you've had a career before UX design, you likely developed useful skills that translate well. Analytical and critical thinking skills, for example, are crucial for UX work.
How to Apply Analytical and Critical Thinking Skills to UX
As a UX designer, you'll evaluate designs, interfaces, and user experiences. Look for ways to leverage your ability to thoroughly assess a problem or situation. Ask probing questions, examine issues from multiple angles, and consider all factors that could influence a solution.
For example, if you were previously an accountant, you're adept at attention to detail, logical reasoning, and data-driven decision making. Those talents will serve you well in UX when you need to analyze user research, evaluate design options, or optimize an interface.
Or if you were a scientist, you know how to observe, form hypotheses, test, analyze results, and draw conclusions. Apply similar methodology to UX projects. Observe how users interact with an interface, form ideas about improvements, create wireframes or prototypes to test with users, review feedback, and determine next steps.
The skills required for critical thinking - like logical reasoning, open-mindedness, and evaluating arguments objectively - are useful regardless of your background. Leverage them in your UX role to ask insightful questions, see beyond surface issues, and make strategic design choices backed by evidence.
Utilizing Your Communication and Writing Skills for UX
Your background in communication and writing translates well to UX design. These soft skills are invaluable in understanding users, facilitating collaboration, and producing user-friendly content.
Listening
Strong communication involves listening to understand different perspectives. Use your ability to listen actively and empathize to gain insight into user needs, pain points, and motivations. Conduct user interviews, analyze findings, and share key insights with your team.
Facilitate Collaboration
Facilitating constructive collaboration is key to UX design. Help teammates with different backgrounds and expertise work together efficiently. Suggest ways for designers, researchers, product managers and developers to share knowledge, align on priorities, and make decisions collectively.
Create Clear Content
Producing simple, straightforward content is important for good UX. Use your writing ability to create copy, microcopy, instructions, error messages, and other content that is concise yet helpful.
Building Upon Your Research Skills for User Research
As a UX designer, your research skills are invaluable for gathering insights into user needs, motivations and behaviors. The research techniques you developed in your previous career can provide a solid foundation to build upon.
User Interviews
Interviewing users is one of the most effective ways to gain firsthand information. The interviewing skills you’ve honed, like crafting thoughtful questions and putting people at ease, directly translate to user research. Prepare an interview guide with open-ended questions about a user’s experiences, perceptions and desires. Look for common themes across interviews to identify key issues.
Surveys
If you have experience conducting surveys, you understand how to phrase questions objectively and logically flow from one topic to the next. Online surveys are an easy way to gather input from a large number of people. Keep surveys concise, mobile-friendly and offer a progress bar. Consider including multiple choice, rating scale and open-ended questions. Survey data provides quantitative insights into trends and opinions.
Observing Users
Watching how people actually interact with a product or service in their own environment is enlightening. Your ability to objectively observe and document user behavior and record findings prepares you well for observational studies. Look for patterns in how users navigate, any difficulties they encounter and workarounds they devise. Discuss your observations with users to validate your interpretations.
Analyzing and Synthesizing Data
The skills to thoroughly analyze data, find connections, and synthesize key takeaways are useful when reviewing all the information gathered during research. Look for recurring patterns, themes, and significant outliers. Try affinity mapping to group similar data points and identify relationships. Share a summary of your analysis and conclusions with stakeholders so they understand how to apply the research findings to design solutions.
Turning Your Creativity Into UX Design Skills
As a UX designer, your creativity is one of your greatest assets. But how do you turn those creative skills into strong UX design work?
Find inspiration everywhere
Creative minds find inspiration in unexpected places. Consume content that sparks your creativity, like books on design, art, psychology and tech. Travel and experience new cultures. Step away from the screen and do something with your hands, like crafting, cooking or gardening.
Define the problem
Before diving into solutions, define the problem you're trying to solve. Talk to users and stakeholders. Observe behaviors and patterns.
Challenge assumptions
We all have unconscious biases and make assumptions. Try to identify yours and challenge them. For example, if you assume all users want the same thing, you'll limit your thinking. Creative UX designers question assumptions to uncover innovative solutions.
Brainstorm without judgment
Generate many wild ideas without judging them. Crazy thoughts can lead to inspired solutions. Use word association, mind mapping or sketching to spark new concepts. Build on others' ideas. The more ideas the better -- you can evaluate them later.
Evaluate and refine
Review your ideas critically but constructively. Get feedback from others with different perspectives. Combine ideas or take them in new directions. Refine rough concepts into polished designs that solve the problem. Creativity requires an open yet analytical mindset to produce innovative and user-friendly solutions.
Grace Ling, the founder of Design Buddies, also successfully transitioned her career from bioengineering, computer science engineering, and art to UX design in 2020. She creatively applied her transferable skills, built her personal brand, created content on LinkedIn, and networked with other professionals to land a job in 8 months.
Grace will share everything she did in her second cohort of her course - happening in Jan 2024. She’s also running a Cyber Monday sale for 50% off until Dec 4. Learn more and use code CYBER50 for the offer:
https://maven.com/dive/ux-design-content-creation?promoCode=CYBER50
Conclusion
Don't underestimate the value of your past experiences. Even if you're just getting started in UX design, you have a wealth of knowledge and skills that are directly applicable to this field. Take inventory of the soft and hard skills you've built up over the years, think about how they relate to UX, and make a plan to actively apply them in your new role. The diverse perspectives and unconventional thinking you can bring to the table will make you an invaluable member of any design team.
🎉 Design Buddies Events
Mon Nov 27, 4 pm PT (UTC-8): Résumé Writing for UX Job Seekers
Fri Dec 1, 11 am PT (UTC-8): AI + UX: Reflecting on 2023, Anticipating 2024 (Design Buddies X StratMinds Design Challenge Kick-off)
In-person - Sat Dec 2, 11 AM in SF Bay Area: Founders & Creatives Hike
Tue Dec 5, 9 am PT (UTC-8): Standing out as a designer through personal branding & content creation with Grace Ling
Wed Dec 6, 10 am PT (UTC-8): Getting hired: Personal branding, content creation & networking 101 with Grace Ling
Every Saturday, 10 am ET: UX Book Club by Haidita and Steven in #design-book-club
🐰 About Design Buddies
Design Buddies is a community where you level up your design career. Make lifelong friends, improve your design craft, and land jobs. We have free resources, events, design challenges, a job board, mentorship, fun perks, and more.
👋 Visit our website and hop into our community
💖 Partner with us
👀 Job hunting? Apply to join our talent collective (free)
🌟 Watch our past events and connect with us on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn for more fun!