Is a UX design career right for you?*

* at this current stage in your life?

Whenever someone asks me about how they can get into design, I usually ask them a few questions first:

1. What's your background?

Do you have any kind of creative, artistic, design, or tech background at all?

This could be anything — I really liked designing fake menus in Microsoft Publisher when I was younger for fun, for example. This led to me self-learning graphic design & Photoshop.

Those who come from less traditional fields are usually weaker in visual design, which can be the deciding factor in a recruiter's 20-second glance at your portfolio.

Fundamentals can be much harder / take longer to learn if you don't have any prior background, which is something you'll need to account for when trying to build yourself up as a competitive candidate.

However, you absolutely don't need a background that's correlated!

• Pull up your resume if you have one, and skim over what the last 4-5 years have looked like for you. Is there anything you're particularly proud of? Is there anything that you've omitted? Most importantly, is there anything that could be transferable when it comes to UX or design?

2. Why do you want to get into UX design?

If your answer is pretty much just "it pays pretty well" — which is certainly true compared to other types of design — then you need to come up with something else.

Recruiters and interviewers are going to be asking you this question a lot, so it's definitely worth taking some time to self-reflect.

• Write down at least three reasons why you're interested in UX design, or even just design in general.

3. How willing are you to die on this hill?

This is highly dependent on the amount of time you have and your capacity to work on more things in your previously free time, especially if you're already employed.

If you're not fully decided or committed, it's probably not worth it.

It's going to take a lot of time to build up your portfolio, projects, and resume, and that's not even mentioning the outreach, networking, and interview prep you're going to have to do if/once you start landing interviews.

Website hosting for your portfolio will likely cost a decent amount of money on top of that.

I really struggled with managing time and burnout in college doing this while taking classes; I can't imagine it'll be much easier for someone with a regular 9-to-5, since doing all of this is essentially another full-time job.

• How much time realistically do you have to spare every day and every week?