Thursday, June 4, 2015

Can a visual designer become a ux designer?

I know I've been writing mostly about exhibition that i'm going to, but today i want to start telling you my UX story. 

A year ago i decided that i want to do a change in my professional life and become a UX (user experience designer) but than i found out that there is a struggle between the visual designer in me to the more ux strategic. 

I decided after 4 years of been visual designer to go and learn the world of ux. 
i went to John Bryce and i learned for 4 months in the program of UXVISION by Tal Florentin. A new world was open to me, I understood that I can become a magician that can do the UX magic and know what my users are going to do, how they will behave what they are going to think.

But can i combine between my profession until now and the new knowledge that i got as a user experience designer?
People told me that ux designer is a ux designer and visual designer is a visual designer and you can't combine them both. Because of that i figure out that i need to lose my visual designer thinking and change my thoughts to be a ux designer thinking. I had a lot of struggle with that i said to myself "i'm a designer this is all i know, this is who i am". In the exercises i've been doing in class in the begining i had a really hard time to make my wireframes with no design, everything that i start doing got a design.  
I knew that i need to work on that. So i decided no more design leave that a said and work only with sketches of black lines on a white paper. But in the minute i moved to the computer i start designing again. 

In my head you can't separate the two professions, a good visual designer is a one that knows his users and who his designing for. So how can i separate the two and why?

I decided that if i can do magic why not making it big!?
If we can be creative why not use all your creative assets?
A person that i met in some job interview asked me how i can do both of the things, he said that most people can't do both because the the creative right brain is much stronger in visual designer and the left side of the brain is much stronger i user experience designers. I don't believe it's true a person can be strong in a lot of things in his life and why not do so if you can you just need to train. 

So what do i say if people ask me what is my profession? 
I answer that i am a Visual Ui/Ux designer :) 
and to explain it to a person that doesn't come from this world it's a whole another story... (to be continued...) 

Please keep sharemydesign
Thanks 
Shir