Venturing into the World of UI/UX Design: A Newbie’s Perspective
By: Somto Chike-Nwaka
Tags: Newbie, Figma, UI Design, Design, UX

A little over two weeks ago, I began my journey into the exciting (I certainly hope) world of UI/UX design and man, I can tell you for sure that I very nearly threw in the towel before the first 24 hours had come to an end.

Starting something new can often pose a challenge- that’s expected; however, the process can be a lot smoother when you have a structured learning environment (if you’re anything like me-at least) which is something I most certainly did not have. It was going to be me, myself and the kind people at the internet.com.

The thing that nobody tells you is that trying to learn UX design without knowing anything about UI design is an exercise in frustration. At least it was for me. User experience design is such an abstract thing and after spending hours watching lectures on Pluralsight it felt more than ever like I was missing some very vital information that I ought to have had at the very beginning. I was ready to pull out my hair- except that would really hurt and I was already in enough pain as it was. To say that I was frustrated is an understatement to be honest.

I went ahead to download Figma and Adobe XD. I even tried using them and realized that I would need to start with some tutorials to at least understand basic functions and controls so I paused. At this point, it was evident to me that I wasn’t off to a straightforward start. But hey, I was determined to get the hang of it. I still am as a matter of fact.

Eventually, Iyke called to check on me and find out how much hair I had left on my hair (thank God for good friends) and after I vented- and boy, did I vent, he put me on to @psybuglite who has been kind enough to provide some much needed direction.

In the first week, I basically spent my time getting comfortable with Figma, watched a couple of tutorials on You tube and tried to recreate a couple of designs that T sent.

There’s a ton of information on the internet. Its positively amazing how much you can find on the internet, however, it’s good to remember that not all of it is good. You’re going to have to sieve the wheat from the chaff. Literally. Don’t even let me get started.

One of the first things that T said to me that stuck was that I needed to understand the distinction between user experience and user interface design. According to him:

UI design is the part that the user can feel and touch while UX is how people communicate with said design. He also said that because UX is not tangible, as important as it is, most people will hire you to do what they can actually see which is the UI part of things.

This sort of filled in the missing pieces for me. And explained why I struggled so much in those first few days.

Over the last fourteen days, I’ve gone ahead to replicate a number of designs ( web and mobile) really just to get the hang of the tools at my disposal (Figma in this case).

I’m not sure about how ethical it would be to post some of these designs here because they aren’t mine 🤔, however, I replicated some websites and I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to show y’all how much progress I’ve made so far.

This is a replica of the Apple website. Here’s a Figma link too.

Advice from one newbie to another newbie who will probably stumble on this one day:

1. Decide what tool you’d like to use. Figma, adobe XD, Sketch, or whatever else there is. Whatever really. Maybe speak to people. On and off the internet and decide what your poison is.

2. Start trying to get comfortable. There’s so much that these things can do and I’m in the discovery process myself but it’s been a whole lot of fun.

Honestly, that’s about it. I’m not at the point where I have much advice to give anyone(yet) however I’ll keep y’all updated about my progress.

Wish me luck!