Constant practice is the key. These are a few tips you can keep in mind to keep yourself ahead in the UI/UX game.
- If you have a day job, make sure you keep learning something new at your job everyday. It could be something related to a client job, take up an online course or a read up a book about design.
- Apart from client projects, practice some briefs on your own. Take up practical problem, check out apps/websites where you can correct UX or design flaws. Work on those briefs, come up with solutions, work on paper sketches and prototypes, brainstorm and discuss with other designers in your community; online or offline.
- You can constantly improve your visual design skills by working on some quick design briefs or signing/taking up challenges. The DailyUI challenge is something one can take up. You get a prompt each day and you need to design a screen or two based on the prompt. You can share these online on portfolio websites and get feedback from fellow designers.
- Attend conferences, workshops and network with designers. Not all conferences may be the best; be choosy with which one you think will add value to your career.
- Take up certification courses from IDF and HFI. The certificates of these courses are highly valuable and may give you a great push in the field of UX Design. Also, IDF has a lot of advanced level courses like AR and VR, Product design and more which will certainly prove to be useful in the long run in this ever changing tech world.
- Keep yourself updated with the trends happening in the design world; follow design blogs, read books not only based on design but also on psychology and human behaviour. Follow interaction and visual design trends and keep yourself well informed. You never know which project may need input and you could be the one providing it.
