What are the steps to be a UX/UI designer?
This is a question lot of people ask me who wants to be a designer. There’s no default process; it can change according to your comfort. I’m writing this from my personal experience.
First, you should understand it is not just only about learning tools. That is secondary. A lot of people learn the tools, but they don’t know what problem they are going to solve. It is like mastering the cookware/appliances and don’t know how to cook.
Ok, here you go.
Now you are a designer, a creator; you’ve got power to change things around, you have a responsibility to give great experiences to the user. Your job is not just to operate the software. If any problem is given to you, you should be able to solve it. Listing down the necessary things which might help you to achieve it.
Observe & Learn
Start to observe all products you like and try to question it. Why did the designer did do it like this? What is the problem the designer is trying to solve? How did the designer solve this?
If any design problem is given to you, try to question it. Start observing things around the context of the problem. If you want to do a user research, do it. Prepare some set of fundamental questions, identify the users and understand them.
Keep learning from what you observe. While doing this, you might tend to know more about it. You could either keep notes or store it in your mind palace as Sherlock Holmes does :-)
Ideate
In this phase, you will get to know about Information Architecture.
Begin ideating. This is the essential step. It depends on the problem, where ideation can be in the form of personas, user flows, flow charts, mind mapping. It is up to you to decide what helps. For all these, you could do it in paper or use any software you like that feel, does the job. You can do it in MS Word too. But for mind mapping, there are specific tools which are very powerful. You can check those in the below link,
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/8-free-mind-map-tools-best-use/
Just do it
In this phase, you will get know about Interaction design.
Now you might’ve got some basic ideas to solve the problem. Start sketching out the designs. Do not worry is it good or bad, it will work or not. Just start scribbling. I don’t like wasting paper, so I use keynote or sketchapp to do it. Brainstorm your ideas with your colleagues, friends or users to get more ideas. Most important, follow your intuition here.
Wireframe
In this phase, you will complete interaction design & learn about basic prototyping. After sketching out many ideas, now start implementing those ideas in a proper wireframe format. There are a lot of tools to do it, such as Balsamiq, axure, sketchapp, Adobe XD, Adobe illustrator, etc., I use sketchapp now as it helps in Visual design & prototyping with invisionapp. After completing the wireframes, try to make a quick prototype and test it. For this, use Invisionapp. It helps you to solve the interaction flow problems which you might face; also it helps for demo sessions.
Visual Design
The most challenging and lovely part of the design phase. VD is a huge step, will try to summarise. Try to keep these properties consistent, Grid, Typography, Iconography, Spacing & Colors. Keep making options, a lot of choices will give more and more ideas. Select one key user flow and try to make a lot of visual options with combinations of properties mentioned above. I make minimum seven options. Show it to the people, see what they like. Again, follow your intuition. Once the design language is set, start applying those to all screens you have. I was using Adobe Photoshop CC, but now I moved to Sketchapp.
You can find inspirations from dribbble.com, behance.net. Check out this UI Kit, will help you a lot — https://www.invisionapp.com/do
Prototyping
Here is an optional step if you want to be a pro you can follow these. I’ve tried a lot of prototyping tools; one is invisionapp — which is very handy and fast. It does the job. But not powerful. I started to use Framer. You can check more in the following link, https://framer.com. You need some basic HTML CSS skills to do it. But with latest updates, you can work on this without any coding skills. You will get an end product feel. This will help a lot when you show it to the clients and developers. A lot of big shots like Uber, Apple, Google, etc., use this tool.
Delivery to developers
Sync your visual design screens to Zeplinapp. It will provide all assets needed for developers.
Launch & Learn
After launching the product, try to get the analytics. This will help you a lot to enhance the product also it adds value when you start your next project.
Hope this helps. You can message me if you need any further support.
