Hey everyone I graduated with my

[kindred cradle]

Hey Kimxyy cool to hear you're interested in UI/UX, I was in the same boat as you a few months ago and I struggled a bit on what path to take in order to actually start, there's way too many places to start learning and they overwhelmed me at first, but since my goal was actually designing and building website myself I decided to go with one that helped me a loot.

But this may not be the case for you, maybe you're more interested in prototyping and designing the websites or web apps on figma but not building them yourself, what's your end goal with UI/UX or have you seen other people doing things that you would like to do?

[cold relic]

Hey, Alejandro! Appreciate you for reaching out. I am leaning more towards the designing and prototyping websites or apps. I've actually been messing around on Figma as well and I've been enjoying doing it. It's really overwhelming for sure and I'm not too sure where I can start either since I feel like there's so much resources but I am unable to have a starting pinpoint if that makes sense?

I thought about learning the fundamentals and start to challenge it in technical practices, maybe then in the future once I have a portfolio, I thoguht about reaching out to experienced UX Designers on LinkedIn and get feedback on future works so that I can further improve. I've recently reached out to a few UX Designers on LinkedIn and connected with them by asking how they got started in the industry, one responded to me and said that Google would be a great starting point.

What about you? How has your experience been?

[kindred cradle]

lmao the guy saying that google was a great starting point sounds rude to me hahha

But yeah my experience is different since I did have some experience in design before I decided to pursue product design, so figma was very very easy for me to get used too. I was the type of person that used photoshop for literally every design task I had to do, but now thinking about working on photoshop makes me wanna procrastinate while figma makes it so much more smooth for me now.

Although I only know the basic on figma because of it being very similar to use as photoshop, there's way too much things to do in figma (they even added a ton of things more recently which made people that use figma debate on wether they've made the app harder to learn than it used to be) but you shouldn't worry about that, if your goal is only designing the UI of websites and then handling them to the client for them to build them with a developer, you can learn figma pretty quickly, there's a few courses I can recommend you a lot

I did 2 courses recently, one which delved into figma in great detail, including how to animate prototypes so the client can see animations on a website as if they were a real website, how to do wireframes, some basics about design, how to create components and design things on figma quickly.

And the other delved into figma for much less time, and then the website we designed in figma we had to build it on a node code web builder like webflow, both were an amazing start since you have the chance to practice while you do the course at your own pace

[cold relic]

Yeah I'm a little bit hesitant to sign up for Coursera, I haven't met anyone that has experienced taking the course thoroughly for the Google one so I'm like a little lost on what I wanna do in that area. She had gone to a bootcamp but it costed like $14k, blessing and a curse because that bootcamp allowed her to work for a startup for an internship that allowed her to build her first portfolio/case study, said that she had to get half her money back.

Yeah that sounds exactly like what I want to do!

That sounds great, I know YouTube has great resources too, I watched a video on a guy doing a 101 type thing and was recommended for beginners to essentially copy another design available in Figma to get used to how things are edited.

I actually talked to my digital marketing professor from a few semesters ago yesterday and he had sent me some websites and conFIG videos that was recommended for me to watch. Recommended for me to redo a website and kind of write what I would change in the website and then wireframing and prototyping it for a part of my portfolio

[kindred cradle]

Dribbble just created a ui/ux academy cohort that goes for like 24 weeks and stuff that looks pretty great because all of the tutors are well known product designers in the industry but it's a bit expensive if you're not from the us, which I'm not so spending 4k on a design course while I'm working the rest of the time doesn't sound like the best option to me but it may be for you.

The copying designs on figma is actually a pretty cool idea but if you don't know much about how to use the tools on figma it would be better to start with that, this is the course that I would recommend you the most if you wanna start with figma, it isn't crazy updated since figma added tons of new features recently which most courses dont cover, but this is more than enough for you to get started (https://youtu.be/kbZejnPXyLM) if you actually like how he teaches figma and stuff you can sign up for his full udemy course, which is one of the 2 courses I took and he's pretty great at explaining stuff for anyone with or without experience (https://www.udemy.com/course/figma-ux-ui-design-user-experience-tutorial-course/) I think that whole video you see on youtube is like the first section of the full course, so it should give you more than an idea of the course

only thing you don't really put into practice with copying designs is using your creativity so maybe try designing a portfolio website as if it was your own and design it exactly like you would, for that you can get some crazy cool inspiration on https://land-book.com/gallery, or you can even make fake clients like a coffee shop and design a website for them with dummy content, I'm currently working on the portfolio thing and it's been a fun process

[cold relic]

Oh wow that is expensive, for the Dribble course. I'm in the U.S, says the total is $8k lol

Really great resources, thanks for sending them to me. I appreciate it a lot!
Did you sign up for the personal plan or did you only purchase that course specifically? Did the 2nd course you take from UDemy as well?

[kindred cradle]

that's weird it still says it costs 4k for me for some reason, maybe it has regional pricing or something, which would suck because that regional price is still expensive for an online course lol

[cold relic]

Yeah for an online course I think that's pretty expensive, and I know online courses can be a bit iffy too because you don't really know who's really curating all of this information you're paying huge amounts for, you know?

Oh I just checked out their actual website, it does say the same for me as well, I was looking at another thing and misread.

[kindred cradle]

I actually purchased those two courses on a flash sale they had a few months ago and they costed me like $10 each, which is a steal for the amount of things I learned from both, they're like 18 hours long each, I don't know if they're the same price right now, but I've heard udemy gives you a discount on the first course you purchase.

The other couse I took is this one: https://www.udemy.com/course/freelance-web-design-from-design-to-development-to-making-money/ (he barely focuses on figma, just the basics, he also goes a bit into design theory at the beginning and halfway through the course you start actually building the website you designed on website, directly on the builder, to then publish it live and other things)

This one was the most helpful one for me since I do want to take advantage of knowing how to build the website for clients than just designing them, since some times they hire you to design them and then find a developer to create it, so if it isn't an incredibly difficult website to build why not do it yourself and earn more (this applies for freelancing, if you're planning on working on an agency or similar that would be more work for the same pay so may not sound as appealing lol)

[kindred cradle]

If I had the money I would actually take the course since I know the teachers on the course and they're pretty great at it, also getting to talk with them rather than just seeing videos, and also meeting other people on the course sounds cool, but still they just launched that and the price is making it a big turn off for most

[cold relic]

Oh wow both of these courses are not more than $20/each, great price too. Have you done any freelancing at all with it? I know Websites like Fiverr allows individuals to cater to specific tasks like designing how a website looks. I feel like if one takes that route, it could be great for a portfolio too.

Yeah I'm sure it is to a lot of people lol, not anyone has that much amount lying around for a course. Yeah I think having that connection to talk to the instructors is much better too, more personalized.

[kindred cradle]

yeahh that made me thought a lot about what the target audience for the course is, but anyways

Haven't started freelancing for any web design projects just yet, I'm designing my own website portfolio before I do that, but it's taking me a bit longer than expected because you know but I think freelancing for web design may be a better idea for me since full-time product design roles require skills I didn't learn because of the self-taught path, so best to learn them through actual practice

I've been freelancing for 5 years on graphic design/presentation design, but I now decided to try out product design, so here I am

[kindred cradle]

20/each is still a great price for both tbh

[cold relic]

Ahhh I got you. Nice, I hope it all works out well for you.
I started the BYOL Video you had sent that, the first part of that lesson, great video, I'm 1 hr and 30 minutes into it, learning a lot about Figma basics! I'm probably going to purchase the rest of the lesson after I'm done with the video.

[kindred cradle]

pretty cool I would've actually procrastinated watching that video until a few days lol nice to see you're that eager to learn about product design, will you change your career or are you just trying out this as a hobby or side gig?

[cold relic]

I'm actually pretty interested in starting a career with it, I don't think I was set on what I wanted to do throughout University and have just started discovering how broad marketing really can be. I've always liked the artistic/design of things and it's the closest thing to a development that Marketing could get, if that makes sense. A lot of the jobs I've been looking at seems to cater more towards sales marketing which I really am not comfortable with, and I just didn't see the appeal in it. I've heard of UX/UI before but just recently took a pretty big interest in it. Eventually I am looking to own my beauty business in the future and do design on the side or just freelance eventually. Really at an age where I can try anything out, the recession has made it hard for new grads to find any job.

What about you? Do you go to school or did you finish already?

[kindred cradle]

to be honest marketing to design is one of the best career switches you could've made, marketing is something I've struggled with so much by being a freelancer, I suck at selling myself, explaining how do I actually help clients, and many other things you should have a better idea how to do than me,.

but I feel you, I've seen there's also a lot of layoffs in big companies for marketing and design departments, but since ui/ux is and will be a high demand job for a while, there's always opportunities

I was in uni for computer science but I didn't liked it that much so I ended up dropping out and started freelancing as a hobby and now it's my full time thing and something I really like doing

[cold relic]

I went into Marketing not even really knowing much honestly, yeah it's rough lol. But it's time to actually put all my effort into something and I'm really hopeful that this is thhe one

[kindred cradle]

yeah exactly that's the mentality, you will find use of your marketing knowledge in design i'm sure of it but anyway good luck with the course you can always send me a message on how the course is going for you or anything else!

[cold relic]

Yes absolutely, thank you so much!! Thanks for sending the video resources too, I'm buying the udemy one right now!!!!

[cold relic]

It's only $77 and I won't be paying the full price, I feel like this is a good foundation

[kindred cradle]

nicee that's more than worth it for the price, although I think there's one that may be a bit redundant unless you focus mostly on the strategy part, I don't know much about the 2nd course but if you already go through one of the others you may find it tedious to learn some of the same things again unless he has a different approach

but my advice would be to start with the figma essentials one and then decide if you want to learn more about prototyping on figma or more about the development like the webflow course or the 2nd course too

[cold relic]

Ahhh okay got it, good thing they have 30 money back guarantee so if I don't like that 2nd one I can always refund it by the end of the month.

Thank you!

[kindred cradle]

no worries good luck with the course, you do sound v motivated to do it so i'm sure you got it 💪

[cold relic]

I wonder if this is worth it