As I said before, completing a course is different from understanding each section and chapter and starting with its fundamentals.
As you can see, I started learning Webflow two months ago using its 101 course, and I haven't finished it yet (I'm only 64% done).
I'm carefully understanding each chapter and practicing them along the side. I can proudly tell you that my concepts are 100% clear so far. It's the same as learning about UX or UI design.
There are no shortcuts to what you learn 👋
To get your 🧗♂️foundation right in UI/UX design
👉Read some books, and ask multiple "why!"
Initially, when you read a new concept, your brain holds it in short-term memory, which has a limited capacity and duration (about 20-30 seconds).
Even if you're interested in working more on the UI side, you still need to grab some concepts on how this particular interface would work for a person–who could be a salesman, a medical representative, a designer, a person who trades in the fishing industry, or a person who hosts a curated collection of Arts using an App or physical places.
That's the reason you must understand the concept of UX.
If you understand the core concepts of UX, you will understand why creating a user journey is important—not just to show this in your presentation slide or case study in a fancy way. If you study this well, you will understand why brands like Zara, H&M, etc., have a clean design structure compared to Amazon's home page, where every thumbnail looks like clickbait.
Sooner, you will understand each brand or company's business model and why it follows a particular pattern. Not every website on the planet has to be minimal or look like Amazon.
You understand who you are targeting first, second, and third.
You're combining these users into a user group, AKA Persona.
Again, if you don't understand the benefits of persona, or why it's useful, you will end up making a beautiful template-based persona pages for your slide deck or case study that ultimately doesn't connect 100% with your final UI design, becuase...
There is a connection.
If you're not okay with it or get bored talking to users, writing use cases, or hate documenting things, UX is not your thing, at least not as your primary objective. You could perform very well in UI, Web Design, or Graphic Design. You can still earn more than what a UX designer is earning. That's a different game altogether as to how to learn and practice marketing yourself.
My today's tip would be to...
Read or complete a video chapter and practice 💪
Through active practice (revisiting, applying, or teaching), your brain encodes this information into long-term memory, which has unlimited capacity and can last a lifetime.
So don't hurry to complete everything within a week and forget in weeks. A client a company is not going to hire you just by seeing the number course certificates you have. They will hire you because you can fix their product or take their product to the next level by utilizing the knowledge & experience you've gained.
Remember this: There is no concept of just one book or a course" that can give you enough information on UX, no matter what the title says (master, ultimate, pro, 👀etc.).
So why is that?
User experience is vast, like an ocean 🌊
To understand the ocean of UX, you need to dive in and see for yourself. Which is basically the concept of Discovery. So can you explore an ocean in a day? Of course not!
Similarly, the very 1st course on UX or UI/UX can give you fair amount of "overview" about the methods, its processes, and how to do that, shortly. If you drill down one of such courses, you will see around 15-30 mins of talk on user research. How can you expect to become a user researcher (or work more on the research side) by listening to 30 minutes of conversation? This is just the outline, overview, types, and some of its usage.
You need to take dedicated courses or books to gain deeper insight into a particular method. If you want to learn more about users and talk to them, you should read Steve's beautiful book "Interviewing Users."
On the foundation side, you learn the basic first. Start reading this smallest book on earth I shared a multiple times and saying it again –"Don't make me think". This can help you think and ask yourself questions like "Do I really need to show 4 fields instead of just 1?". Not just for designers, anyone can read this book BTW.
Let's say you're planning to make a coolest food delivery app or a quick commerce App/Website that can help people to buy fresh vegetables within 10 mins.
Before designing the interfaces, you need to understand your users' mental models. The mental model can help you narrate how they usually do that in physical malls, supermarkets, or call restaurants to order food. Translating that well makes it easier for you to convert the flows into digital interfaces.
If you need, I can share a list of resources you need to get started. Consider them your small investment.
Stay tuned for more knowledge sessions and as long as they can help you grow as a designer 💪👋