How I got into UX 7 years ago
7 years ago, I made a huge change in my life.
My life was a bit messy at the time.
It started when I dropped out of law school to pursue a career in graphic design — not an easy decision.
As a freelance graphic designer, I was chasing clients for months just to collect the $15 they owed me for a social media poster I designed for them. I was so broke.
I knew I needed a big change. I wanted to do big things but lacked the skills and experience necessary to bring value to the world — at least, that’s how I felt.
I fell into an internet rabbit hole and stumbled upon the amazing world of UX.
And my jaw dropped when I saw the payscale. “Do people in UX actually earn that kind of money?!”
I decided that the natural transition would be to become a UX designer since my graphic design knowledge might give me some leverage.
I dedicated one year of my life to becoming the best UXer I could be.
I flipped every UX internet stone: I read every article, listened to every podcast, and most importantly, I wrote about it.
That was the game-changer.
I wrote a blog post comparing design tools (I mainly did it to figure out for myself what worked best for me).
That post got millions of views, and in less than a year, I received an offer to design the largest e-commerce store to come out of Israel. (I’ll talk about the imposter syndrome I had in that project in another post if you’re interested.)
As a curious new learner, I wrote about writing the words of the interface, which was an overlooked topic for most people in the UX industry back then.
The only person I saw talking about it was Kinneret Yifrah, and she read my blog post and told me that I have an interesting angle on the topic.
One thing led to another, and I decided to start a community for all of the other product writers out there. That laid the foundation for the UX Writing Hub which has grown to become the largest UX writing education platform in the world.
If you take away anything from this post, I hope it’s this:
- No matter where you are in your career, stay curious.
- Write about whatever you’re doing and build or join a community around that.
- Don’t settle in your career. If you’re feeling stuck, take action.
The next steps for me are scaling the UX Writing Hub to include more industries and fulfilling my vision of empowering people with the knowledge, skills, and tools to create world-class digital experiences.
And that’s what I’ll be writing about as well.
So, what are you curious about these days?
Read this post and more on my Typeshare Social Blog
