How I'd try to get into UX Design in today's landscape

In the last view months I’ve been asked a lot about how I got into freelancing and UX. And because I don’t like repeating myself I thought I’ll write this article so I can just send it to people.

Feel free to scroll further down if you aren’t interested in the backstory of ‘How Elisabeth spent her first year alone in London’ and just want to learn about how I’d try to break into UX today.

How I got into UX Design back in 2015

I had no idea or even heard the term UX until about 6 years ago. I was in my mid-twenties and only just moved to London. I’ve already had a job before which didn’t challenge me. So studying advertising and doing an exchange year abroad should be my career change into something I actually enjoyed doing: Copywriting — at least that’s what I thought.

Not being an English native made it hard to get a job in that field and I was running out of money. I had about 3 months left of savings and was too proud to ask my parents for financial help so I could stay in London for longer.

Never underestimate the power of your portfolio

Our university had an exhibition spot at D&AD New Blood and a few people from the industry would try and find new hires there. I had little hope to find a copywriting internship, but I’ve put my portfolio on top of the pile when nobody was watching. And then this guy came along.

He asked about my copywriting portfolio and who designed it. I said it was me, because you can’t just print a word document, and that copy and visuals have to work together. He had a closer look, we exchanged business cards when he said “I’ll give you an internship” and left. I checked his card. His name was Dan and he worked for a digital marketing company.

We were exhibition stand 7 or something out of I don’t know how many. So I assumed by the time he’ll be done looking at everyone’s work, he will have forgotten about me. The next day I got an email if I could come in for an interview.

How I got the wrong internship

I spent so much time learning everything I could about that digital marketing company. And when I finally had the interview, we barely talked about my copywriting portfolio. All they asked was “When can you start?” and “Are you okay with minimum wage?” and I had the job. I even remember high-fiving the receptionist on the way out.

I couldn’t believe it. This felt too easy. But I was just so relieved that I would finally earn some money and that I wouldn’t have to move back to Austria.

On my first day, they sat me next to their copywriter. I was so excited to learn from him.

Then Dan introduced me to everyone as the new design intern. Design intern? What the heck! The whole time we’ve been talking about copywriting. But I tried to pretend that I wasn’t surprised, I needed an income to stay in the UK, so I just played along.

Learning design basics

In hindsight, I was super lucky that I got the wrong internship. It was actually the perfect internship for me. My task was to design emails for Debenhams and Talk Talk which were their clients back then. And with emails, there’s only so much you can do: Image + text spread across 1 column or 2 columns. That’s it.

So I learnt the basics of design, all the shortcuts, how to best crop images etc. It was a great crash course. Once the internship period was over, they offered me a full-time role. Just to take the offer back the week after because they had no budget to pay me properly. Instead, they wanted me to extend the internship for another 3 months.

Always negotiate

I didn’t want to do that. My rent at the time was £650, travel expenses around £140 and I was earning just over £1k. I also started to get bored of the job. So I negotiated to earn the same as my internship salary, but to only work three days a week instead of five. They agreed.

For the other two days I found myself a new internship. That one paid me an incredible £20/day. I also had to invoice them, so technically I was a freelancer. No pension contribution, no paid annual leave, no national insurance cover. But hey, I had the other internship to cover for that.

Two steps back, one step forward

The new internship was for a startup that has recently got funding. They developed a parking app. My tasks included to help out with social media and marketing. I finally got to write some copy, even if it was just for a few tweets. I also designed graphics for the newsletter, which was my new “expertise”.

The team had an amazing woman working at the marketing team, Kristina. She had a look at the app data and said that the users weren’t using the main features. They simply panned on the map and clicked on pins, but they didn’t use any of the features to find the cheapest or nearest parking.

The CEO wouldn’t believe her. He was so sure the app he designed was obvious and intuitive to use. Kristina wanted to proof him that data doesn’t lie and invited some of our most heavy users.

Doing UX without knowing about UX

Kristina organised some research sessions and I helped her with creating a questionnaire and tasks. We got some Franco Manca for everyone and observed how they used the app. To the CEO’s surprise (not ours) they did exactly what Kristina assumed. None of them were using the features. When asked “How would you improve the app?” the users requested features that were already built into the app, but not discoverable.

We then took their feedback and made changes to the UI. I didn’t even know what UI was, but I made some tweaks in Photoshop. Yes, you read that right, I used Photoshop. But again, I didn’t even know what UX or UI was. I also had no clue that inviting those users and observing them was ‘User research’.

Talk to the right people

I don’t remember who I talked to, if it was one of the people we interviewed, one of my friends or someone I met on Tinder. But that someone asked me what I’m doing for a living and when I told them, they said “Oh, so you’re doing UX?”

So I went home, googled UX and realised that all the tasks I actually enjoyed at that internship were part of the UX spectrum. I started to browse for jobs that had UX in the title but they included tasks like wireframing, prototyping, using Sketch and all sort of things that sounded like a foreign language to me. So I didn’t apply. Yet.

Unpaid work

One random house party I met Luca who had an idea for an app but no budget. I voluntered to design it for him. After a few meetings, lots of googling and designing, I sent him the designs and he loved them. He hired a company to implement the designs and I had my first case study.

With that, I felt more confident to apply for UX roles. I must have sent easily over 200 applications until I got my first interview. It lasted 3+ hours. And I got the job.

Butterfly effect

This is how I got my first official UX job. If I wouldn’t have snuck my portfolio to the top of the pile, I wouldn’t have gotten that design internship by accident. If they wouldn’t have taken back their offer to hire me full time, I wouldn’t have applied for the internship with the parking app. I wouldn’t have had interest in designing an app for a friend and therefore wouldn’t have had a real life case study. And I would have never applied for a UX role. So after all I consider myself very lucky that Dan got me that first design internship.