How to set yourself up for a career in Product Design when it's not offered as a major at your university.
I often get asked by students about how they can get started in product design. For students with Product Design or Industrial Design as a major at their university, the path to being a ux/product designer is clear. But what about folks who are already in school, but have now realized they want to pursue a career in UX? You might think you have to re-evaluate all your life choices and even change colleges right? Wrong! I went to a university that didn’t offer a traditional path to a career in Product Design but there were still opportunities that were key to me getting to where I am today and I wanted to share this knowledge with any current students who may be in this situation and share 4 tips on setting yourself up for a career in product design.
Prepare by taking any courses related to (any type of) design, research & psychology. Read design books and take an online intro course to UX design like the ones offered by Google or Coursera.
The fundamental basis of UX Design is rooted in visual design, psychology, and research methods. These are subjects every designer should know regardless of their major. But if you are to declare a new major, try to declare one that will allow you to study these courses (think CS, Psychology, Graphic Design, Digital Media). If you’re in the middle of switching majors, no matter what you’re actually studying, make sure you take these classes. Knowing the fundamentals of visual design helps you to understand what appeals to people on the most basic level. Recognizing what good design looks like is also fundamental to being a designer of any kind but especially a UX Designer. Psychology courses allow you to understand human behavior which is key to understanding which design decisions will be successful. Research Methods is pretty self-explanatory but knowing how to run user testing sessions in an academic way is paramount to being able to articulate your design decisions from a research study perspective.
Next, highlight these significant courses on your resume! This lets prospective employers know that even if your major isn’t directly related to UX, you still have the knowledge and ability to successfully do that work.
Research and understand the different focus areas of Product Design to see which ones pique your interest. Start positioning yourself as a specialist.
There are so many different focus areas in the field of product design. You don’t need to be fluent in all of them, but it will be important to know which areas of expertise speak to you and which ones you want to market yourself as an expert in. For me, I chose to be a product designer who is strong in research, strategy, and service design. The following are just a few of the different product design concentrations:
Motion Design
UI Design
Interaction Design
Design Systems
Prototyping
Service Design
Design Strategy
Branding
UX Architecture
Micro-interaction Design
Design Technology
Design Research
Visual Design
Voice UX
The list goes on! It’s all about how you position yourself. Are you interested in fin-tech or web3? Start learning as much as you can about the topic. Take on projects that reflect this. Want to work as a UX designer at an ad agency? Start working on UX projects with a focus on branding and unique, impactful experiences inside the platform. The goal is how can you position yourself as an asset to your future employer.
Get in touch with some professors/Post-docs in the Computer Science/Human-Computer Interaction Department.
Especially those who are working on projects that are outward-facing and that have visual components. Many times if a University has a Computer Science Program, they will have a department focused on Human-Computer Interaction. This could be really helpful in breaking into a product design career. Human-Computer Interaction is like a precursor to UX Design. HCI walked so that UX could run! Offer your services as a product designer/student research assistant. You’ll probably have better luck with Post-docs rather than professors who may have busy schedules and little time but I promise you they will be willing to try to help a student especially if it means they get free help with their digital projects. Even if they may not have a project that needs design support, they will likely have connections that do. The key here is to start building your network. Doing this work will also get you familiar with the design process and how you go from problem to solution to design.
Get familiar with the UX Design Process, use it to start some mini projects to put into your portfolio, then use that to offer freelance work to your university community.
Everyone has to start somewhere. And once you really get familiar with the UX design process, you can start applying it to projects. Think of an everyday problem and how you can use technology to solve it. Document your process and put it in your portfolio. A great design portfolio knows how to tell a good story. Look at the portfolios of designers you admire and take note of why they are strong. The work in your portfolio has to speak for you in the absence of a design degree. Once you have a couple of projects under your belt, offer your services as a freelance designer online or to members of your community. There are always university students working on startup ideas who need UX design support. Go to hackathons and make friends with the CS majors!
The path to landing a career from university is not easy no matter what you study. But the key is not to get discouraged. No matter what you’ll be learning and each experience will take you one step closer to being a product designer. You can do this!