How to transition from visual design to UX design

If I can do it, so can you.

UX Design prototyping

I have worked as a designer for 16 years now and started my journey studying art and design back in the year 2000 in the UK. Since then I have transitioned from a packaging design artworker to a newspaper art director, web designer, graphic designer, design lead and now head of UX with a team under me across multiple products globally. I have worked for large corporations, agencies, startups and small one-man businesses.

I realised early on that I needed validation on my design work to convince clients or stakeholders on why things should be a certain way. When I had no solid answers, that’s when my interests changed to studying UX design.

UX provides a solid framework of empathising, ideating, testing and executing a design. It also provides data on design patterns and allows you to understand research. Couple that with behavioral psychology and you have what I think is the best of the design practices.

You should think about where do you want your strengths to lie, on the spectrum of a researcher — experience designer — UI designer where do you sit? This is a question I ask candidates who interview for UX roles. My advice would be to start by knowing all those areas so you have a broad range of skills across the spectrum, once you start to progress in your career you can maybe then focus on one area to specialise in. I, for example, have become a UX manager and strategist, this is my core strength in the UX skillsets, but I can easily run research and execute detailed UI designs, they are just 2nd to my core skills set of UX strategy and design thinking.

Assess where you are at?

You may be very strong at visual design and pretty good at UI, but have no understanding of UX strategy and how to break down a project into the correct steps. This means you need to learn that area you do not know.

Learn

Do I need a UX degree? No is the answer. You need to have a solid portfolio that shows you understand the process and thinking, then the ability to execute your designs. Normally if you are transitioning you maybe have an art and design degree, that is perfectly fine (I have a BAHons in Art & Design). Even if you don’t have any degree, more and more companies are not needing a formal qualification if your portfolio does what it needs to.

Take some courses online, Udemy has a good one by David Travis https://www.udemy.com/course/ultimate-guide-to-ux/, that is the one I did when first starting my UX learning. Online courses are a great way to understand UX processes and practice. Other than Udemy, Lynda.com and Interaction-design.org also have some good content.

Read all the books and keep learning all the time. There are many to choose from, but I believe the following will give you a solid base.

Don’t Make Me Think & Rocket Surgery Made Easy — Steve Krug

Steve’s books are brilliant, they simplify usability principles in design. His second book Rocket Surgery Made Easy is all about how to implement regular user testing into your organisation. I successfully adopted it, bringing user testing into my design lead job at the time.

Usability Engineering — Jacob Neilson

This is an older book originally written in the 90s, but if you want to understand the founding of usability testing then this is the bible of its beginning. Jacob Neilson truly is the godfather of UX.

The Lean Start-Up - Eric Ries

This book does a great job of demonstrating the success of user testing and lean experiments in product design. It will help you understand how UX design can be used effectively to help identify pain points and solve problems.

Lean UX - Geoff Gothelf & Josh Seiden

Lean UX gives you a framework on how to use UX techniques in an agile workplace. It is widely noted as one of the best resources on UX and agile as a working method.

Sprint - Jake Knapp

Sprint is written by Jake Knapp who was at Google ventures. He shows you how they use design sprints to effectively understand problems, ideate and be ready to test. Today's workplace in terms of UX strategy is probably a combination of Lean UX and design sprints, so this book is quite vital to your UX career.

It is a good idea to have a handle on agile and design thinking as methodologies and ways of working. These are most common in product design and where most of my UX career has been spent.

Start testing UX design now

Even thou you focus purely on design, see if there is any part of a UX designers process that you can implement. User flows, for example, maybe user interviews or remote user test on designs to validate them. You could even create proto personas for certain projects. Start structuring your projects as if they are a UX project.

I did that when I was design lead, ending up creating personas for us. No one told me too, I just did it. I also started creating prototypes at low fidelity to better explain designs. There are lots of small techniques and processes you can try to adapt and fit into your current role to help you learn.

Another thing I adopted was user interviews with a regular cadence, getting these done for feedback on designs, products or websites is a core part of a UX role.

You should also look out for any startups or non-profit organisations you may be able to help for free, this means you can conduct UX design work you have learned and try to apply it. It’s ok that you won’t always get it perfect, you are working for free and I am sure it will still be a massive help.

Competitions

If you enter a competition then you may get a real-world brief you can breakdown and show UX process and design for. I hired a UX junior based on him having a strong portfolio piece from a competition that he won.

Be a part of the community

They say you are the product of the top 5 people you surround yourself with, this is true when it comes to professional circles more than ever. Look for local meetup groups in your area for UX design and get yourself there. Try reaching out to UX designers on linked in and ask advice, offer to buy them a coffee for 20–30 mins of their time. I often get people who ask me for a catchup and offer my experience and advice, I am always happy to.

Go to conferences and workshops, look for specific UX workshops and talks. You will learn so much in a workshop and see how things are practically applied.

Me at an IBM UX conference workshop

Apply

If you start applying UX techniques to your work you should be able to apply for junior UX/UI roles. If I had a designer with a portfolio and they understood the process and how to break down a UX project I would consider them. Even thou they have no real-world UX experience per se.

If you are a senior visual designer you may not be keen to jump down to a junior UX role, in that case, you must have a good portfolio with real clients, then you can apply for a mid-level position. I took that approach, went from Design lead to UX/UI contractor and then to UX/UI Senior and finally UX/UI Lead / Head of.

Fake it till you make it

I always offer to consult on the side, so this is paid work. Start a small side business with a website promoting your UX skills and see if you can get some real work. This may seem a little hard as you are a junior, but you can apply what you have learned to a real brief. Just be mindful that your pricing should reflect your level. You can also set up a profile as a freelancer on Upwork or similar websites.

Create a plan

Think about where you want to be and by when. I find setting a 4-year plan for yourself with high-level goals for each year will allow you to then work on what adds most value towards that outcome.

Key advantage

There is an influx of junior candidates due to extreme growth around the interest of UX. Transitioning from a visual/graphic designer to a UX role means you should be able to hurdle that junior position and be out of that huge pool of people fighting for a start in UX design.