Fellow UI / UX Designers, assemble!

Jokes aside, I'm interested in this field (but have no experience at all) and was wondering if any sifus who's currently in this field can share his / her working experience? (how is it like, is the demand > supply or vice versa, is this a good field, etc) Please share!!!

First thing first ..you are born with this skill...you can't learn this without having natural born instinct of designing something for human.


Sekian terima kasih

wow... i mean i do like designing stuff (like logo / t shirts) for fun... but my designs are pretty shitty hahah

Demand I think is there as more companies are seeing the value of it. I used to run a UIUX team in my past company with about 7 UIUX designers in total. 3 on contract (2 Indians + 1 Filipino) and 4 local staff.
Prior to me leaving the company, I was looking for a UIUX lead and it was never easy getting one.

First of all, here are the usual break down of skills:
- I see in the market, a lot of people heavily strong on the UI side of things
- Not many have UX skills, whether it is from user research, conducting workshops with users and understanding the global nuances

The other I see is the lack of tooling knowledge, like understanding what is a design system or using design systems. Most folks tend to just stick very individually whether it is using Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD and others.

Another skill lacking in the market is actually on language, meaning writing the right kind of text for interaction to make UX easier.

Overall, those who excel in all of these skills above and more, tend to earn about RM25k in the market and more.

Here is a link I normally use as a reference in the past, from design system to job role and description as well as how processes are run.
https://dbsbank.design/

UI/UX really have good pay. Thats impressive

A lot of roles have good pay, it all depends on your skills/experience/knowledge

Good morning Sir, if you don’t mind me asking, given your experience in the field, do you think a self taught designer could land a job in this field, especially in Malaysia? And as far as I’ve understood, UX and UI designs are 2 separate things, however people tend to group them together, does this mean that it’s crucial for someone to have certain knowledge / skill in both UX & UI design in order to excel in it? What if I want to just do UI design? Is it possible?

Yes, you can be focused on just UI design as well within the roles. This means your focus would purely be on the graphical side of things which means you need to have a portfolio of designs.
You can design mobile apps, web pages, banners, promotional materials whether it may be digital or physical, internal newsletters, external newsletters, and many many more.

I was a Graphic Design student through Diploma and Degree.

I started off as a Visual Designer in a startup company on 2015. Learnt A LOT from there because the resources were scarce and we had to make do with what we have. Which in return made me even more creative in problem solving.

Visual Designer is basically full-stack of everything that a designer would do in a company I designed packaging, directed some photography, managed socmed posts, a bit of newsletter and last but not least, the website itself. I was quite happy with the exposure given. But my Head of Design saw my potential towards web design stuffs. Partly because it's a part of the company's interest la so I didn't mind venturing myself into UI/UX. So that happened, it's really just self-taught and I was glad I was given the autonomy for trial and error on the website itself.

Then I got promoted to UI/UX Designer where I was heavily exposed/given responsibility for analytics side of things and consideration behind end-to-end journey. But like for most designers coming from visual heavy, we tend to be more heavily interested in UI instead of UX. There's a LOT of things to brainstorm when it comes to UX. Now that I have been almost 7 years in the industry, I am trying to learn more the UX side of things. I am now a Product Designer (UI/UX) in a bank. I earn almost twofold from my initial salary off from my first job.

You can impress people with your badass visuals on a website but it has to work with customer's experience hand-in-hand. If a customer doesn't convert, your product doesn't work.

This post has been edited by xajimx: Feb 11 2022, 10:02 AM

Ahhh I see.. Do you think there's opportunity for self taught designers to join the field in the future? And you mentioned "Another skill lacking in the market is actually on language, meaning writing the right kind of text for interaction to make UX easier." I take the language here as in coding language (?) is coding a must to learn? and if so which is the one with the broadest usage throughout the field?

Thanks for the thorough sharing man! Was it a big switch when you venture into UI / UX design from Visual Design? Was the learning curve steep? I've seen google's certification on UI / UX design, is it a good tool / platform for self learning? (Sorry if I'm asking too many questions haha, really interested and wish to clear things up before i make up my mind)

no worries at all man
from Visual to UI/UX wasn't that shocking i think. the transition didn't happen overnight, probably because i've always been interested in how things work in the backend rather than just niceties of the look of things.
i used to compare an Apple's product page with government's website haha im always amazed how nice websites were made. but it's not easy since there are a lot of considerations especially keeping up with available technologies.

yea, those available courses out there will really help you in theories. if you come from design background it'll be much easier since you can grasp a lot of basics like layout/grids/image formats/design jargons etc.
but im a bit old school, i just take up any opportunity i can find, like a project at a workplace. i try to explore something that i havent done before and just youtube the tutorials haha.

to summarise, it's a way forward for graphic designers, we're moving towards digital age and quite sadly that print-based materials will soon be obsolete.
we're digitising things and kinda need to keep up with the demands!

Yup self taught are quite common as I have seen people with degrees in accounting and finance who decided to go the path of UIUX.

Language = Conversation UX design

For example, on a mobile app you have a text which says, "To confirm your order, please click on the confirm button below". This is bad UX conversation writing because at any point if the button is moved, the text would have to be changed as well (additional work).

Another one would be to have instructions in conversational and layman instead of overtly hypercomplex.

But when it comes to coding, there are those who focus on the field of web design that they have knowledge of HTML5 coding, mostly for the CSS design parts.

whats the pathway from compsci to ux/ui

Sorry man 1 more ques.. So if i were to design the UI / UX for a webpage today, it's best that I have knowledge in HTML 5 and CSS?

Whilst you don't have to know how to code, you need to know what might be the technical limitations. For example, some corporates may not necessarily use HTML5 CSS as they use publishing software for the web pages. So you need to know what are some of the limitations in technology before designing the overall website UIUX.
Then you need to also take into account if the company has a design system in place or a brandkit which you would need to follow accordingly as well.

Alright.. Thanks for the advice man!

Hi, while I see that some UI/UX jobs are high paid, these are usually for people who have several years experience under their belt.

How about for entry level designers that want to work in the UI/UX design role? Just want to get realistic expectations, as I do have interest in this field. I understand we all start from the bottom

This post has been edited by Raddus: Feb 14 2022, 07:50 PM

You just need to have the skills as well as two of my last graduate trainees were from comp science background.
They had 1-2 years experience but went through the graduate trainee program at my last firm.

Honestly when it comes to UIUX, it is all about your portfolio and your abilities. Most of the time people favour a lot on the UI skills because that is one you can opt to build especially in school days and all but when it comes to UX, its a little tougher unless you get internships at places and learn the UX related knowledge. Skills can all be learnt whether it is through online courses and classes. Just build your portfolio and then start looking out.

If you want to check out really cool ui/ux portfolios, https://cofolios.com/ is a really good source for reference, from interns that worked in big tech companies. Really inspiring to look at