🛠️Month 1: Learn Tools & Process

During the first month of your UX Design journey, you need to learn the essential tools and processes used in the industry.

This includes familiarizing yourself with design software and learning how to use it effectively. I recommend starting with Figma since it's the most popular and the most powerful. You also need to learn about various UX design methodologies and research techniques.

I recommend learning those things simultaneously to provide some variety to your learning experience, so that you can spend a couple of hours every day learning theory and a couple of hours exploring Figma.

👩‍🏫 Learning UX Design methodologies

Articles and videos 🍿

If I were to start teaching myself UX from scratch, those are the resources I would start with.

• When, which … Design Thinking, Lean, Design Sprint, Agile - A good intro article that lists the methodologies that are often confused

• Design thinking and the Double diamond model - a deep dive into the double diamond model and its stages. This model is extremely important to understand. It's a base for every design project you'll execute in the future.

• Intro to UX design process - This article explains the design process in practice, step-by-step, activity-by-activity. Very useful as a practical guide for your first project, when you're asking yourself 'ok but where do I start exactly?'

• Google's UX series - Intro to ux, What is UX research, and the 'UX certificate' playlist - We're diving more into details and execution of some of the UX process steps. I really like the content of the Google videos. I wish they were more condensed. This is just my preference. Just a heads up that you might find yourself skipping some parts to get to the point. It's still worth it, though.

• Then, we move on to different methods and deliverables. This is 'A comprehensive list of UX design methods & deliverables'. It's great to explore, but it might be a little overwhelming at first. Treat it as a guide you can come back to later. Of course, you don't have to memorize everything or try to apply all the methods in your first project.

• I also recommend the series of videos I've recorded about usability testing. I walk you step-by-step through the process. You can also download a Notion 'Usability Testing Plan Template' and use it in your projects.

📚 Books

In addition to videos and articles, I encourage you to read two books during this first month. Many people recommend starting with beginner-friendly more general books like 'Design of everyday things', but since we need to be efficient in this 6-month's process, we will focus on titles that will move you forward the most.

• Lean UX - It's a deep dive into Lean methodology for user experience design. You'll learn about how to make the most of your time and resources, deliver high-quality outcomes, and iterate on your work. It's a classic title, next to the 'Lean Startup' book that started the whole lean methodology movement.

• Sprint - It's a book about Design Sprints - a method that helps teams go from idea to tested low-fidelity prototype in 5 days. You'll learn about different methods, workshops, and exercises that will help you shape your view on exploration and validation. It's a great resource; just keep in mind that design sprints are not the answer to every design problem. They should be used to go from the idea to a low-fidelity prototype. Then, we need to go through a proper design phase, testing, implementation, and iteration.

Learning Figma ✍️

Now, let's move on to learning a design tool, Figma. You need to be able to digitize your ideas for interfaces, collaborate with the team, and deliver high-fidelity mockups for your engineering team.

Basics

You should start with basics. How to use the controls you see on the screen, add elements, build simple prototypes, etc. Figma provides videos for beginners on their youtube channel - Intro to Figma playlist. You can also see their documentation and look for other youtube videos and courses available online.

Copying interfaces 🚨

To practice your Figma skills and better understand UI elements and proportions, I recommend you start copying the interfaces of your favorite apps.

You can take screenshots and place them in Figma. Then try to re-draw them, without using any pre-made libraries or components. I know it may sound boring, but please, trust the process. It will force you to analyze the elements, and understand spacing and composition.

You can also explore free icon libraries (like Phosphor icons, Material design icons, and Fontawesome) at this stage. Try to add them to your designs and learn about sizes and formats.

Design systems

The last step in learning Figma is understanding design systems. Figma created an 👀 80min course that will give you a great intro to design systems.

This step can be executed in parallel to learning UX Patterns in month 2. You can start now, and implement your knowledge next month.

Learning to read the documentation

As time goes on, there may be some changes made to Figma interface, and some videos you see online can be slightly different from what you see in your latest version of the application. Learning how to read the documentation and look for answers online (google search, articles, youtube) is also a part of becoming an independent UX Designer. If you have any questions, always try to google it first. Figma has such a big and engaged community, that in 99% of cases, you will find an answer in less than a minute.