How to Switch Careers into UX Design

Dominique Meury

Thu, December 21, 2023 at 9:40 AM EST· 2 min read

I work in high tech but I don’t have an engineering, business, or arts degree. I’m a journalist who managed to make the leap (really a bungee jump) into UX writing and content design, and sometimes I wonder, how on earth did I get here?

When I look back over the last three years, with the aid of hindsight I can start to see the pieces that helped me get here. I can rewind, find the lessons and the turning points, and pass them on to you. Even if you don’t come from a “traditional” tech background, making a career switch, even years after you’ve gone down a different path, is totally possible. And not only can you successfully switch, but you can thrive.

It will take a bit of soul-searching. If you don’t understand the main elements of who you are, why you’re interested in design, and what you believe is great design, then it will be much harder for others to understand you and your story and why they should hire you. Here’s what helped me.

Articulate your strengths

When I left my journalism job, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do next. But I knew what I was good at: simplifying complex topics for the average consumer, empathizing with people I interviewed to bring their stories to light, and writing to high quality standards and style guidelines. I knew these were the basic building blocks of how I was set apart, and that I would somehow use them in my job interviews to highlight what value I would bring to my next team.

I know, sometimes these aren’t always obvious. Perhaps you are a recent grad, or you have already tried a few career paths and still aren’t sure what your strengths are. But the reality is, we all have something we are either naturally good at, or been trained to be good at, and it’s an advantage, especially as women of color, to reflect on your past work experience, and to be bold and precise about what your best skills are.

• Try asking yourself, what skills do you have and that you enjoy? List a few of your technical skills: Perhaps you are great at creating prototypes, or building compelling narratives for a product vision, or illustrating novel concepts through visual design. 

• Then, list some of your soft skills: Maybe you are great at building cross-functional relationships that span multiple teams, or are able to influence people to rally together behind an idea. 

Whatever they are, you have them. You just need a little bit of time to think it over and bring them out of the fuzzy darkness of your consciousness and into the clear light so they can shine.

Contextualize your strengths

The next part is figuring out how to tie a connection between these strengths in your old role (as a writer, teacher, student, sales rep, HR rep, etc.) and the specific role you are applying for in design. In other words, how would these skills add value in the new context of design?

You might think this is impossible, or at least very hard to achieve. This is a myth. Skills are just tools that you use to solve a problem. And that’s the unifying glue: Find out which of your old skills match up to UX design skills. Think of a time when you used this skill to solve a problem at your old job. Explain how you would use it to approach a similar situation in the context of user experience and design. Your thought process, and your ability to explain it, is what employers are looking for. Here’s an example.

• Old problem: At my old job as a journalist, I was trained to be very good at listening to people. I interviewed dozens of people from different backgrounds, including teachers, businesspeople, immigrants, police officers, families, elected officials, farmers… and the list goes on. I empathized with them. I tried to understand their stories and respect them in how I ultimately wrote about them for the newspaper. 

• My skills: Interviewing and empathizing with people’s problems. Does this sound familiar? Yes! It sounds very much like conducting user research and the ability to probe user attitudes, feelings, conceptions, and motivations. 

• New (hypothetical) problem: When I interviewed for a job on a product design team at a DNA testing company, I did my research to understand some of the user problems they were facing with their product. Then, I deliberately stated how I would use my previous ability to ask the right kinds of user research questions and understand how users would feel about a new genetic health report, such as their interest in, reservations about, and comprehension of, the content in the report. 

It took a lot of practice, but eventually I got it: I could outline my top two or three key strengths and show, with concrete examples, how they would apply to design. I was able to land the job, despite having no prior “design experience,” because the truth of the matter is, I did have experience, and so do you, if you are looking to make a career switch. You just need to find a way to translate your strengths, skills, and abilities to UX design. 

Dominique Meury

Dominique Meury completed the UX Immersive Course from She Designs in 2022 and is now a senior UX writer at Google designing Fitbit's health experiences. Previously, she was a journalist for The Wall Street Journal, The Desert Sun, The Oregonian, and other newspapers.