Vol. 007 How do you improve your UI skills?

Hi designers,

Welcome to Vol. 007 of the UX Jetpack Newsletter, where I share job searching tips weekly. This week we are talking about:

1. How do you improve your UI skills?
2. Does degree matter for product designers?
3. How should you cold reach out to people online?
4. The best site for web design inspiration

If you enjoy those tips, please consider sharing them with your friends. They can sign up at https://uxjetpack.com/newsletter

How do you improve your UI skills?

Hiring managers heavily favour designers who can design the final products. So UI skills are more crucial than ever in today’s job market. Here's what I would do to improve my UI skills now:

1. Read 'Refactoring UI' by Steve Schoger and Adam Wathan - my favourite book for learning UI.
   Even though it's explained from a developer's point of view, it provides tons of practical tips to improve your UI. https://www.refactoringui.com/
2. Recreate apps and websites in Figma.
   Visit mobbin.design or curated.design to recreate well-designed apps and websites in Figma. This will help you become familiar with Figma and learn from other great designers.
3. Create your own projects and seek feedback from others.
   Apply what you've learned from the book and your observations of others' designs to create your own projects. Don't wait until your projects are complete to ask for feedback. Iterating based on feedback is the only way to improve. Redesigning poorly designed apps or websites is an easy project to begin with.
4. Analyze well-designed apps and websites.
   Try using those well-designed apps and websites. The goal is to understand why they were designed that way. You want to think about what makes these designs successful or unsuccessful.

Let me know if you have other tips on improving your UI skills.

Does degree matter for product designers?

A question aspiring designers always ask is, does a degree matter?

As someone who attended a 4-year program to learn UX design, I can confidently say that my degree did not matter when I was looking for a job, despite graduating from a reputable university in Canada.

While school can provide a structured way to learn design and help you build your network, employers care more about your skills, problem-solving abilities, and communication skills. You can acquire all of these outside of school.

So, instead of worrying about your credentials, focus on honing your skills and gaining more experience. These will be far more beneficial to you.

How should you cold reach out to people online?

Next time you send out LinkedIn invites or cold reach out email, follow this 6-point guideline to boost your chance to hear back.

Point #1: Write fewer than seventy-five words.

Point #2: Ask for insight and advice, not job leads.

Point #3: State your connection first.

Point #4: Make your request in the form of a question (ending in “?”).

Point #5: Define your interest both narrowly and broadly.

Point #6: Keep over half the word count about the contact, not about you.

Here’s an example of how you can do this.

📨

Hi Brooke,

I’m Ryan, we recently attended the UX journey event. May I chat with you for a few minutes about your design experience at CompanyX?

I am trying to learn more about product design in the FinTech space, so your insights would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Ryan

📨

This great guideline is from the book The 2-Hour Job Search by Steve Dalton

The best site for web design inspiration

Forget about Pinterest, this is the only site you need for web design inspiration.

Craftwork has curated hundreds of the most inspiring web designs from the design community. Each showcased example is a fully functional live website, providing you with a firsthand view of what other talented designers are creating.

Check out: https://www.curated.design/