How to Learn UX Skills for Beginners (practical step by step instructions)

Show Notes

Parker lays out a practical, beginner-friendly path to learning UX: separate UI from UX, build real design taste, study existing products, and apply a business-focused funnel mindset to your own projects. He shares concrete steps, tools, and patterns you can start using today.

Distinguish UI vs UX

• UI (User Interface) is the look, feel, and interactions you see on the screen.
• UX (User Experience) is the overall journey, goals, and how someone completes a task with your product.
• Don’t conflate the two. Great UX often requires strong UX thinking behind the scenes, not just pretty visuals.

Build your UX taste (the learning backbone)

• Study a lot of products and capture screenshots or quick notes.
• Build mood boards in Figma and collect patterns you like (e.g., onboarding, micro-interactions, progress indicators).
• Recreate designs to understand how they’re built and why they work.
• Treat yourself as a perpetual student of every product you use; this is the core “taste” you develop.

actionable tips:

• Use Mobbin (or similar resources) to collect patterns and flows.
• Save screenshots and annotate what you like or don’t like; capture not just visuals but the rationale (goal, user flow, friction points).

Foundational grounding: books and concepts

• The Design of Everyday Things: learn the philosophy of usable design and why good design solves real problems.
• Don’t Make Me Think (Steve Krug): the core goal is simplicity and effortless navigation.
• Understand heuristics and common patterns, then remix them thoughtfully rather than reinventing everything.

Start with a business and funnel mindset

• UX is not just pretty screens; it’s designed to move users toward a goal with minimal friction.
• FTUX vs EUX:
  • FTUX: First-time user experience (cold traffic; getting someone to sign up and start).
  • EUX: Existing user experience (repeat customers; retention and continued engagement).
• Map a real funnel for your product (example: food delivery):
  1. Sign up / Sign in
  2. Restaurants (local choices)
  3. Menu items
  4. Cart
  5. Checkout / Pay
• Define the goal of each step and how you measure success (conversion, time to complete, drop-off points).

Practical patterns and decisions

• Onboarding and coaching:
  • Use coach marks or progressive disclosure to guide users without overwhelming them.
  • Notion’s onboarding style provides a useful case study (balance education with usability).
• Use guest checkout to lower barrier to first conversion; auto-create accounts later if needed.
• Be mindful of heuristics: keep familiar layout conventions for predictable UX (e.g., cart in the top-right on e‑commerce sites).
• When in doubt, test with small changes and measure impact; not every product needs a radical redesign.

Tools and workflow for learning and applying UX

• Design and prototyping: Figma (install and start practicing with basic shapes and layouts).
• Pattern study and inspiration: Mobbin (pattern library), screenshots, and mood boards.
• Analytics and experimentation: Amplitude or PostHog for event tracking and funnel analysis; use session recordings to see where users get stuck.
• Documentation and collaboration: annotate changes, attach PRs, and keep a simple changelog of UX experiments.

How to approach learning in practice (step-by-step)

• Step 1: Gather and study
  • Pick 3-5 apps you like; note what works and why.
  • Collect screenshots and create a mood board for patterns you want to emulate.
• Step 2: Rebuild and internalize
  • Recreate a small onboarding flow in Figma to understand the interactions and flow.
• Step 3: Map a simple funnel
  • Choose a product area (e.g., food delivery) and define FTUX and EUX steps.
  • List the steps: Sign up, Restaurants, Menu, Cart, Checkout, Pay.
• Step 4: Identify patterns and choose tests
  • Decide where to apply coach marks, guest checkout, or simplified sign-in.
• Step 5: Collect data and iterate
  • Add events at key steps (sign-up, restaurant view, cart, checkout).
  • Use analytics to see where users drop off; annotate changes and measure impact.
• Step 6: Communicate and align
  • Share findings with developers and PMs; show how changes tie to funnel goals.
  • Consider goal-based compensation to align incentives with UX improvements.

Actionable takeaways for beginners

• Start documenting: every product you use is a learning opportunity. Save screenshots and annotate the UX decisions you notice.
• Focus on goals, not just visuals: always ask, “What is this page trying to accomplish for the user and the business?”
• Build a systematic approach: study patterns, recreate them, and create a checklist of UX patterns to test.
• Learn the tools early: get comfortable with Figma for quick mockups, Mobbin for pattern references, and basic analytics (Amplitude or PostHog) to measure impact.
• Run small experiments with clear metrics: a changeset that saves friction (e.g., guest checkout) can have outsized effects; document when and why you changed it and what happened next.

Quick-start plan (weeklong starter)

• Day 1-2: Pick 2-3 products you like; collect and annotate patterns; start a Figma mood board.
• Day 3-4: Recreate a small onboarding or a simple flow in Figma; map a basic FTUX funnel for a hypothetical product.
• Day 5: Identify a single friction point in a real product; sketch a minimal change (e.g., guest checkout or coach mark) and outline the expected impact.
• Day 6-7: Set up a basic analytics plan (events at key steps); plan a small A/B test or design review with teammates; prepare a short narrative tying UX changes to business goals.

Links

• The Design of Everyday Things (book) — Don Norman
• Don't Make Me Think (book) — Steve Krug
• Mobbin Design Patterns
• Figma
• Amplitude
• PostHog
• Notion onboarding and design ideas