You can become a UX/UI designer with the right skills. Use the courses and resources in this guide to learn how to become a UX/UI designer.

One of the best ways to get into web design or product development is to study how to become a UX/UI designer. After all, behind every successful product or web page is the person who created its look and feel. Both 

 are incredibly important facets of design, ensuring that the end result is both attractive and easy to navigate. 

Because of their obvious value, UI and UX designers have become hot commodities. More and more businesses are offering competitive salaries to find a dedicated designer for their software or web app. If you decide to become a UX/UI designer, you can make a lot of money. According to PayScale, 

In this comprehensive guide, we break down how to become a UI/UX designer. We’ll give you all the information you need to decide which path to take to become one. We’ll also share some helpful learning resources to get you started down the path to becoming a UX/UI designer. 

To understand the roles of UX and UI designers, you first need to know what UI and UX design are. UX design is the process of anticipating how users experience a product, and UX designers employ visual design, usability testing, and psychology to craft a product that’s easy to use and navigate. To 

 is to understand how users stay engaged. 

UX designers approach each digital product by thinking about the challenges that customers or users may face. Based on user research, they tweak each feature of the design to conform to what customers want, to communicate the company’s brand identity, and to make sure that users can easily understand the product’s purpose. 

UI design, on the other hand, is the process of creating the overall graphic design of a product. When you 

, you are studying how to manipulate the color scheme of a site and how to make sure the text is easy to read for as many people as possible. A UI designer makes the interface accessible and attractive by focusing on questions of style, structure, and flow. 

So, what is UI/UX design, and why are these roles often combined? Because UI and UX are closely related, UX and UI designers need to work hand in hand to create the entire user interface for a product. It is often easier for these two roles to be occupied by the same person. You can’t figure out how to become a UX/UI designer without understanding the difference. 

What’s the Difference Between UX and UI?

The difference between UX and UI corresponds to the difference between look and feel. Whether you’re a UI or UX designer, you need to consider the needs of the user, but the two roles approach users in different ways. Whereas a UI designer considers how the user interacts with the aesthetic qualities of a web page, a UX designer caters to the user’s deeper emotions. 

Put another way, the UI vs UX designer question comes down to the difference between surfaces and the stuff that lies beneath. While UI design ensures that the interface makes a strong first impression on the user, UX design anticipates users’ deeper needs to convince them of the underlying product’s value to their lives. 

UI/UX designers are responsible for turning an idea into a web design that meets a certain set of specifications. After they complete a design, it is passed onto the development team, which turns the design into a functioning application. 

UI/UX designers work to ensure that a site is easy to use and navigate. They collaborate with other members of an organization to create designs that adhere to the marketing strategy for a given product. For example, a UX designer might work with the customer success department to find out what problems users commonly report, which will help inform new designs.

To become a UX/UI designer, you need to be prepared to perform all of these duties, each of which requires specific skills. In the next section, we break down the skills and competencies that most UX/UI designer job listings call out by name. 

You can’t learn how to become a UX/UI designer unless you know which UI/UX designer skills you should be focusing on. The most important skills for people in the web design field fall into three categories, which are technical skills, soft skills, and the ability to use specific UI/UX design tools. Let’s take a closer look at all three types of UX/UI designer skills. 

Essential Technical Skills for UI/UX Designers

If you’re a UI/UX designer, technical skills are your bread and butter. These skills correspond to the industry-specific tasks that a UX/UI designer needs to perform to build satisfying web pages for users and stakeholders alike. Most design jobs require the following skills:

Essential Soft Skills for UI/UX Designers

A UI/UX designer’s soft skills are arguably just as important as their technical skills. Though soft skills may be harder to acquire, they are transferable skills that you can use to your advantage if you already have them. When working on your resume, keep in mind that a great designer is someone who can demonstrate the following soft UI/UX designer skills:

Just a few years ago, designers had very few UI/UX designer tools at their disposal. They could use popular and broadly applicable software programs like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, but they didn’t have access to tools that were created with UI/UX designer skills in mind. That is not true anymore. Here are the most important tools for today's UI/UX designers:

No two UI/UX designer career paths are the same. What UX designers do is conduct research and identify problems that customers have with a product, which places them on a different trajectory than the functional design and aesthetic features that define a UI designer’s career path. There are a few other ways to become a UI/UX designer, which we outline below. 

User research is what UX designers do, but a UX researcher is also a specialist UI/UX designer career path devoted entirely to understanding how customers use a product or service. The UX researcher may use surveys, interviews, and other methods to identify problems that customers encounter with a product and pass on their findings to UX or UI designers.

UI/UX designers perform both user interface and user experience functions. They assist in both designing the UI that a user sees and researching how the design should be structured by using UX design techniques.

Your UI/UX designer career could ultimately lead you to product designer roles, which focus on all aspects of a product, from designing components to creating site maps. These designers oversee both UI/UX designers and the software engineering team to turn designs into functioning end products.

How you become a UX/UI designer varies according to your education choices. While a 

 is still the industry norm for most tech jobs, there are other options available for any creative person who doesn’t have time for formal degrees. UI/UX designer education requirements can also be met by attending a bootcamp program or engaging in self-study.

The important thing to remember is that the education landscape is evolving. You can become a UX/UI designer with a certificate from a graphic design bootcamp like 

 and see what job opportunities it opens. As long as you can prove you have the necessary skills, any of the following education options will do. 

An increasingly popular way of learning the ins and outs of user interface and user experience design is at a UX/UI design bootcamp. A newer addition to the coding bootcamp scene, 

 have more flexible schedules and are more affordable than college degrees. Many high-quality web design bootcamps can teach you UI/UX design in just a few months. 

Before UX/UI design bootcamps came onto the scene, it was common for UI/UX designers to have a 

 or a related field. College degrees teach you the theory of design and the basic principles of the design process, but you may find yourself lacking practical experience and being burdened by debt once you graduate.

If you’re looking for a more affordable degree option, you can go to community college and get an 

 before transferring to a four-year school. If you already have a bachelor’s degree but don’t feel like you quite meet the minimum UI/UX designer education requirements, you can get a web design 

A solid portfolio and some industry experience might also be sufficient to meet the UI/UX designer education requirements. So, if classrooms and rigid schedules aren’t your thing, you can master the principles of design on your own by taking courses online, working on personal projects, and seeking clients as a freelance web designer. 

How to Become a UI/UX Designer: Step-by-Step

The step-by-step process for how to become a UX/UI designer involves prep work, some form of education, real work experience, and resume building. These steps culminate in a final job hunt for the UX/UI position of your dreams.

Career advancement is hard work, so it shouldn’t surprise you that some of the steps require you to go back over ground you’ve already covered. Like the field of UI/UX itself, the work of becoming a UI/UX designer is an iterative and cyclical process, defined by continuous learning and a commitment to upskilling. Study carefully the steps below to become a UX/UI designer. 

Because there is no one right way to become a UX/UI designer, you first need to create a roadmap for your journey into the design industry. As we discussed in the previous section, there are formal and informal pathways to acquiring the necessary skills. To choose the best path for you, just evaluate your learning style and decide how much time you want to spend.

Another important consideration is money. Not all career paths are created equal, and some are more cost-effective than others. You should conduct a cost-benefit analysis and try to calculate which career path is most likely to result in the highest return on your educational investment. 

The many options for your UI/UX designer education include college degrees, bootcamps, and self-study. The main advantage of college is that most job ads, even in the UX/UI design field, list a bachelor’s degree as the minimum requirement. The problem is that web design bachelor’s degrees may be too generalized, and they may lack opportunities for hands-on experience.

There are also more flexible and less expensive options out there, even compared to the 

. Slowly but surely, a combination of bootcamp training, certification, and self-study is becoming an acceptable substitute for traditional education. In six months or less, and for around $10,000, you can get the UX/UI skills you need. 

For any UI/UX designer, work experience is essential. You need to practice what you learned in school so that prospective employers will believe you know what you’re doing. You can become a user experience designer more quickly if you land some sort of junior position first, something adjacent to UI/UX that can give you relevant experience.

If you’re having trouble finding a junior position, here are a few ways to gain valuable work experience for your resume: 

This optional step is for aspiring UI/UX designers who want to market themselves as having specific skills. After all, if you’re struggling to move past entry-level jobs, it may be because the experience you’ve gained is hard to prove to employers. A certificate in UX design, UI design, or some subset of relevant skills or tools might be your ticket to becoming a UI/UX designer. 

Step 5: Build your UI/UX design portfolio

Your UX/UI designer portfolio is what matters most to the majority of hiring managers. It will make or break your entry into the design industry. Unlike many coding positions, design roles can be won with a strong portfolio. 

 or UX designer portfolio, focus on projects that show the most skill and cut out the ones that don’t. When it comes to portfolios, four amazing projects far outrank eight average ones.

Your resume is your chance to make a good first impression. It’s important to create a UI/UX designer resume that highlights your experience and skills, including any notable projects and awards. Whether you’re trying to figure out how to become a UX designer or how to become a UI designer, the advice is the same. Sell your qualifications as best as you can. 

This is not to say, of course, that you should oversell your qualifications. Be honest about the UX/UI design tools you know, and don’t lie about your education and work history. For each job you’ve had, remember to describe your most important duties clearly and accurately. Once you have a one-page draft of your basic resume, you can start applying for specific jobs.  

Although this is the most obvious step, it is worth emphasizing that you cannot become a user experience designer or user interface designer if you don’t know how to navigate the job application process. Your work experience, education, and skills will influence which jobs you decide to apply for. From there, it’s simply a matter of mastering the art of applying for jobs. 

At this stage, you should already have a draft of your resume in hand. Now it’s time to carefully review each job ad and revise your UI or 

 accordingly. If your application materials aren’t perfectly tailored to each position, the hiring manager may not give them a second look. 

 give potential employers the chance to assess your knowledge of the field. While your projects might look good, you should still expect that the hiring manager will use a well-curated set of UI/UX designer interview questions to put you to the test. Companies want to see how you handle the design and user testing process and how well you work with others. 

If you attend a bootcamp for UI/UX design, such as the UX/UI product design program offered by 

, these steps will be a breeze. With robust career services that include mentorship, interview prep, portfolio guidance, and resume reviews, bootcamps ensure that all students know how to get into UX design or UI design by the time they graduate. 

The UI/UX designer job outlook is quite promising. Although the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does not track the job outlook for UI/UX designers specifically, BLS does project that total 

 will increase by 13 percent by the end of the decade. This is due in large part to the boom in online retail. 

Learning how to become a UX/UI designer is a lucrative career move, according to most sources. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 

. If the median freelance web designer earns roughly the same hourly wage as the median full-time web designer, this works out to $38.41 per hour.

The salary range for web designers is $38,550 to $168,200. These figures correspond to the middle 80 percent of the salary distribution, from the 10th to the 90th percentile. Keep in mind that a key factor influencing salary is location, and BLS data shows that the mean salary for web designers in Washington, the highest-paying state, is $141,700, much higher than the national average.

Web designer, however, is a broad category, of which UX/UI designers are just one part. So how much do UI/UX designers make? It depends on specialization and experience. According to PayScale, the average UI designer earns slightly less than the average UX designer, $66,490 to $76,267. And PayScale estimates that an 

If you become a UI/UX designer, you can work for any business that maintains an online presence, which is most businesses nowadays. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the industries that employ the most web and digital designers are computer systems design, software publishers, and advertising and PR companies.

But not all web designers know UI and UX design. Online retail outfits are the most common employers of these specialists, who typically work alongside developers in engineering departments. Some companies also reserve a few UI/UX design internships for people at the beginning of their careers, which we detail in the next section. 

While there is no replacement for professional experience in the design world, UI/UX design internships are the next best thing. The typical intern is a college student or recent graduate, and the ideal applicant is someone with some education but little to no design background. For anyone who wants on-the-job training in UX/UI design, internships are the way to go.

The best UI/UX design internships use industry-standard tools, assign a UX or UI design mentor to each intern, and focus on skills that look good on a resume. Big companies like Oracle and Amazon have UI/UX design internships, as do many startups. According to ZipRecruiter, the 

, but the bottom half of UX interns only make between $10 and $22 per hour. 

Most UI/UX designers do not get professional certification to validate their skills. If you’re looking for the top UX/UI design certifications, what you might have in mind are certificates. The 

 is sometimes blurred, but the following three UX/UI certificates and certifications are some of the best non-degree credentials available. 

Google UX Design Professional Certificate

Google’s program for aspiring UX professionals is beginner-friendly, self-paced, and fully online. Offered by Coursera and taught by Google’s team of career gurus, it consists of seven courses covering a range of topics, from prototypes to UX research to responsive web design. The final course is a capstone project that prepares students for entry-level UI/UX design jobs. 

This top UX/UI design certification is the closest thing to an actual professional certification in user experience design you can find. Nielsen Norman Group is a consulting firm specializing in UX research and training. Its certification program requires candidates to choose five courses and pass five online exams. The courses vary in price, but most are around $1,000. 

UCLA Extension User Experience Certificate

This online certificate program is geared toward professionals of any background who hope to incorporate the principles of user experience into their current careers. This means that, with this credential, you can become a UX/UI designer even if what you’re doing now is only tangentially related to user experience. It includes six courses and takes a year to complete. 

The Best UI/UX Design Courses and Trainings

You don’t need to uproot your life to get access to high-quality UX and UI design courses. That’s because short-term and online UI/UX design training has become more robust in recent years, led by coding bootcamps and massive open online courses (MOOCs). But some students still want a traditional education. The following list contains UX/UI design courses for everyone. 

The UX and UI design courses offered by 

 include a nine-month UI/UX design course and a nine-month web development program. By choosing the former course, students can learn a wide range of web design fundamentals, from user research to prototyping. The latter course is for designers who wish to understand the coding behind visual elements. 

UI/UX Designer

user interface (UI) and user experience (UX)

best online web design bachelor’s degrees

employment for web designers and web developers

web and digital interface designers make a median salary of $79,890

difference between certifications and certificates