How Long Does it Take to Learn or Become a UI/UX Designer?

In this article I want to answer the question how long does it take to become a UI UX Designer? This is one of the common questions I get for those that are just starting and don't have experience with those who are interested in UI UX design. They'll ask like how long does it take if I spend time watching videos and learning and really putting in the effort how long does it take.

I get what they're asking because this question is a very wide-open question. You know the short answer it depends right, but I'm not. I'm gonna give you some real-life specific answers.

Basically somebody's asking they'll hear about UI UX design and they're saying okay how long would it take for me to complete UI UX designing course. And really be a job-ready to where I can start making money. The real answer to that question is about two years.

But there's other levels to that with like for example in product UI UX design course, where people can teach you the essentials of product UI UX design, it's about 15 hours and a little over 15 hours worth of tutorials and videos and lessons and about 50 videos total.

So consuming that course let's say you go about an hour or so a day you know no more than that it's gonna take you about six weeks to kind of really consume it all.

And really understand what people doing in terms of like you know following along so after six weeks you'll start dabbling into understanding like hey you're started doing some stuff right.

Actually on a weekend you're gonna learn like you're gonna start becoming still you're familiar with the interface and start designing and things like that just not even knowing what you're doing. But you'll start getting familiar with oh I clicked on this button and it did something right in about six weeks.

You'll start to be able to consume like UI UX design course, but in about six months you'll be able to talk to your friends about UI UX design something that you've never been able to do.

And really have a solid knowledge education in terms of what UI/UX is and where you need to continue to progress in order to become job-ready. Now having said that in about six months you'll be able to design some stuff and everybody's skill level is different but in about two years in my opinion you would have enough information if you worked on it every single day to have built up a pretty solid portfolio.

Let's say to two to four projects within two years if you focused on it every single day you learned trial and error. Went through trial and error things like that in about two years in my opinion is when you I would say your job ready to the point to where you can command forty-five thousand dollars.

If you're in a market that's on the low end on the high end you're looking at starting point around $65,000 and beyond. But obviously, that depends on where you are in every market is different you know Los Angeles is different than Dallas, Texas and things like that. So it's the market you know Atlanta Georgia or whatever every market is different so your starting rate is going to be different.

But in about two years you're looking at a point to where you can become job-ready, and you can command that a starting salary in the UI UX design field. And then from there, you can progress it starts to roll after a year.

So in the industry you can start to roll and command. You know a big increase is not just 3% every year, you can command a 5%, 10% increase and that's how I recommend folks in the industry kind of bump their salary up.

You know after a couple of years at a job you're looking, you can get 10 percent or 10 15% increase if you start applying and continue to put your portfolio. But your portfolio and position yourself and so that is one way to raise your salary.

But in a nutshell you're looking at you know six weeks to kind of consume a course like mine six months to kind of just really be able to understand what's going on from there about two years before you can act we have a strong portfolio - where your job is ready.

So kind of think of it as around a two-year plan that's why a lot of people get confused. You know I can come in and I can learn this UI UX design
in two-three weeks, no you can't do that no and you don't want that because there's no value if you can learn something in two-three weeks and be at the top of your game obviously that's there's no value in that particular skill set.

It takes this as a real skill set. The visual UI design is one of the hardest things to learn and that's going to take months and months and months and months to perfect the UX design. Understanding of what UX design is and the principles and the methods that I people teach.

That's going to be easier to consume in several weeks, you'll be able to in a few weeks, you'll be able to really understand that and really start to. Your mind starts to open events and understand what UX is the actual visual design layouts and really putting an entire app.