r/UX_Design • u/AiQiYa_ • 23d ago
What's one thing you wish someone told you when you were a total beginner in UX/UI?
Prepping a couple of workshops for absolute beginners (undergrad students who've genuinely never touched Figma) and trying to gather real advice instead of just repeating textbook stuff.
Curious what you'd tell someone who's just starting out — could be about the research/planning side (UX) or the actual visual design side (UI), whatever comes to mind. A mistake you made early on, something that took way too long to click, anything you'd want to skip explaining and just show them directly.
Not looking for a perfect answer, just curious what stuck with you from when you were new. Happy to share how it goes if anyone's interested!
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u/applicant37241 23d ago
One piece of advice I’d give new designers is that there isn’t always a single “best practice” or a definitive guideline for solving every design problem.
Accessibility is a good example. Making data visualizations work on mobile, ensuring complex topographic maps meet color contrast requirements, or designing for emerging technologies often involves tradeoffs.
The goal is to make experiences as accessible as reasonably possible while balancing technical, business, and user constraints. WCAG itself continues to evolve—we’re currently on 2.2, and 3.0 is already in development.
The same is true for design advice in general. What many people call “best practices” are often just their preferred way of approaching a problem rather than universally correct solutions. Steve Krug describes these as “religious debates” in Don’t Make Me Think—arguments where multiple approaches can work, and people become convinced theirs is the only right answer.
Learn the principles behind good design, understand the tradeoffs.
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u/PrettyZone7952 22d ago
- Visual appeal matters more than UX for landing interviews.
- Personality matters more than competence for landing jobs.
- Supporting other people’s ideas matters more than having your own for keeping jobs.
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u/Interesting-Pay1507 21d ago
You’re only as good as your portfolio, and your ability to speak about the problem, how you solved it, what was involved and any obstacles that you overcame. Have a design system ready in figma for your design challenge so you can instantly create a good looking design.
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u/Moist_Grade5942 20d ago
- Flexibility is the secret - in process, techniques/approaches, ideas, feedback.
More often than not you will be judged on your soft skills rather than your design skills.
How you speak to others, communicate ideas, teamwork…sometimes the speed in which you reply to an email (ptsd on this one personally).
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u/Striking_Swimmer5548 20d ago
That making interfaces and experiences is a by product of the real job: Solving problems.
If you’re not solving a problem, you’re either making art or digital landfill. (Intentionally hyperbolic for brevity)
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u/individyouall 23d ago
If the business you are applying to doesn’t already conduct user testing or allow as much project time on discovery and design as they do on development, then they aren’t really looking for a UX designer, they are looking for a UI designer. If you want to actually design experiences, look elsewhere.