Erik Kennedy – Learn UI Design

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OK. Still with me?

I’m going to paint a little picture. You can tell if me if this is you or not. You want to learn UI design, but you feel it’s confusing and open-ended. You find the advice out there vague, contradictory, and not really practical.

When you look at design topics like typography, color, or process, you’re thinking: crap, I can’t do this!

And what makes for beautiful design seems like some mix of:

• Subjective
• Arbitrary
• Easy to recognize, but difficult to create

I’m all too familiar with these feelings.

When I was a developer and PM, I felt this way constantly. I saw all these awesome-looking designs, and could even tell you which ones I liked the best, but when it came to recreating something similar for myself, I was hopeless.

I saw UI designers as magical creatures who sprinkle mysterious design dust over any wireframe and make it shine. It seemed like some art school voodoo that was completely inaccessible to others – myself included.

But enough was enough. I decided to learn UI design.

WHY UI DESIGN?

Everyone’s reasons for learning user interface design are different. If you’re already a developer, a PM, a UX designer, etc., why develop this totally separate skill?

Let’s break it down:

• UX Designers. You can present designs as beautiful mockups that your coworkers will rally around. You can work with interfaces from concept to pixel-perfection. Your portfolio stands light-years ahead of your peers.
• Developers. You can cover for design on your team. You can spiff up your side-project’s interface, instead of finding/hiring a designer. You can translate designs to code with minimal hassle, because you understand the aesthetic underpinnings.
• PMs. You can create amazing mockups for pitching new features and flows. You can work alongside your designers, and provide spot-on feedback for excellent product.
• Entrepreneurs. Like it or not, a good presentation for your ideas matters. Your marketing site, your app – even your pitch deck. Eventually, you’ll be in the big leagues and can hire out – but even then, a solid foundation in design will help you communicate and lead.
• Print Designers. More and more design work shifts to digital every day. You’ve got to learn the ropes, figure out this whole “responsive” business, and practically re-build your portfolio to keep working in the field you love.

For me, I had left my job to become a freelance UX designer, and my portfolio looked about as good as a Pentagon Powerpoint. Not to mention every one of my clients was asking: “hey, now that you made these wireframes, can you do the actual designs?” It was clear I could offer more to my clients if my end product wasn’t sketched out boxes and arrows.

So how do you learn UI design in 2020?

ART SCHOOL AIN’T THE ANSWER

One thing’s for sure: paying full tuition for a multi-year degree in Graphic Design or Visual Communication makes zero sense.

Let’s add it up. That’s tens of thousands of dollars for prerequisites, unrelated courses, and barely-applicable theory.

Then, when you graduate, you’d have $20,000+ in debt – and still have to learn a bevy of new technologies, workflows, and skills.

And when you get hired, you’d have to learn just as much on the job as everyone else.

Sadly, for me, there was not a great way to learn UI design. At least, not actual, pragmatic, finish-the-design-in-front-of-you UI skills. Now, a bunch of dev bootcamps are popping up – and there are some for UX designers, with a lesson or two on aesthetics, but paltry pickings for the aspiring UI designer. Rough, right?

THE HARD WAY

When I learned UI design, I had to do it the hard way. Largely self-taught, making progress an inch at a time. In the end, I learned the aesthetics of apps the same way I’ve learned any creative endeavor: cold, hard analysis. And shameless copying of what works. I’ve worked 10 hours on a UI project and billed for 1. The other 9 were the wild flailing of learning.

During those hours, I came to have a disdain for the theory-heavy blabbering that plagues so much design writing. You know the type? It’s all about color theory, the golden ratio, grids, etc. – and while it seems useful, it isn’t clear how exactly it makes your design better. There was only one metric that mattered to me: could this knowledge help me improve the design I was working on?

Let’s fast-forward a few years. Now, I’ve designed interfaces for clients like Amazon, Soylent, and more, and made hundreds of thousands of dollars doing it. I’ve circled the globe freelancing from a dozen countries. From enterprise systems to personal side-projects, I’m confident in my ability to design whatever I need to – and have it look awesome.

“But I don’t know Arial from Helvetica” you cry. How will you ever become confident in design?

I thought you’d never ask.