Beginner’s Roadmap to UX/UI

Starting with the most common question people ask me nowadays- “What is UX and UI?” UX stands for User Experience and UI stands for User Interface. Taking an example of sauce which we use on daily basis. The below picture describes the difference in a proper way. The UI is how that bottle looks in shape, size, color, etc. But UX is the way it is being used by end-users. How easy is it for a person to take the sauce out of the bottle which is clearly proved that it is easy in the squeezable bottle than in a glass one.

Being a beginner in this field it is really important to know the difference between both terms. Now creating a simple roadmap to follow to learn this booming field-

1. Research- Start with researching a little about UX/UI on the internet. Doing this daily for about 30 mins will give you a better idea of how to move forward in this booming field. There are ample free resources nowadays through which you can start doing research. Say example- Google.
2. Follow- By following I mean, starting following people who are already in UX/UI field for ages. You can follow them on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter. Moreover, here is one secret site which is not known by many-(https://indianswhodesign.in/). On this, you can find every designer from the different fields across the globe. Isn’t that crazy? I know right. Start networking with people and follow their work to get more ideas about the field.
3. Read and Watch- As I mentioned before read and watch as much as you can but along with that implement also. Read the latest blogs on UX/UI and watch videos to implement things in the proper way. You can refer to Medium, UX Planet for amazing blogs, case studies, and videos I should refer you to youtube. On youtube, you can follow Saptarshi Prakash (Sr. Product design manager Swiggy) or Punit Chawla (Founder of @designwings) for informative content.

Apart from this, I suggest being a beginner in this field you should choose one tool to work on say Adobe XD, Sketch, or, Figma and go watch videos on their official channel which will help you a lot (I personally use Figma) due to its amazing community and blogs and even you can enjoy other amazing features as well.

4. Attend- During Lockdown there are so many free resources out there. On daily basis, there are so many sessions, webinars, workshops being conducted some paid some unpaid. It's you who want to grab that opportunity. Attend sessions, workshops under UX/UI as much as you can. The benefit of these sessions is you can ask your doubts from speakers in a live session. Are you wondering where to find such sessions? The few best webinars on designs are organized by Growthschool, Designly, Karaan Kapoor(Figma Wizard), Vasudha Shah(UX Researcher @OLAgroups) refer it for complete practical sessions.

5. Join- After following four steps, It's time to move forward with more learnings. Join design communities to learn on 2X speed. By joining design groups, communities firstly help you to create a network, secondly, it helps to open up with others and take part in challenges. Some of the design communities I know are- Design masters, Design hat, Designly, Design buddies, Human-centered designers, even 10k designers. I swear! you will learn a lot if you are consistent in any of these communities.

6. Upgrade- Here comes the end of the roadmap, which is an upgrade. After doing amazing progress in five steps now it's time to try hands-on freelancing, design challenge, mentoring, and many more. But hold on!

I guess for now it's enough knowledge to consume in one blog. Till then wait for part-2 of this blog.

Happy Reading. I hope so you enjoy this blog and leave valuable feedback.

Regards,

Srishti

~ Founder @Designly.