Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Glen Baku

Whether you are a newbie or an experienced designer, the need to improve your skills is existent and inevitable. Being part of this fast-paced industry means that you need to be in sync with every design style, philosophy or framework that gets released.

And, to become a better designer, it’s not necessary to do that only by working on client projects or working on your full-time job. There are various methods and side-projects that might help you fulfill that goal.

Work on your own idea

I’m pretty sure each and everyone of us has a dream product in mind. Something that might help us or even other people solve a problem in our life. Taking some time to design your own product might be a really efficient way to learn and make yourself a better designer.

I’m not only talking about creating some mockups and be done with it. The ideal process would be to utilize every one of your skills. Researching everything, analyzing the competition, creating user stories and personas, developing user flows and then moving onto the visual side by designing wireframes, mockups and animating everything.

If you’re ambitious enough to learn coding, you might as well turn your product into reality by developing it after you’ve gone through the design process.

Redesign a product you use often

In case you don’t have any idea about a product, you might go into the “unsolicited redesign” route. It’s so cliche I think every product designer has done it in some point in his career.

There’s an issue with those unsolicited redesigns though. A big amount of designers go for a simple visual overhaul, without doing any research and taking into consideration product branding or UX concepts. They just sugarcoat and create a pretty picture, but design is just not that. As cliche as this sounds, design is about solving problems, and a shinny button or a floating card won’t solve that.

But, when done right, redesigns can be a major asset to your portfolio and will also will help you become a better designer. Take for example this project by Jason Yuan. The amount of work that was put into that project is the right amount for a valuable redesign project.

Create a challenge for yourself

This is one of my favorite ways to become a better designer. Creating a challenge for yourself, which really can be anything, will help you not only become a better designer but also working more efficiently in time-limited projects. The possibilities are endless. Take for example Vasjen Katro’s Baugasm project, where he designs a poster every day for a year. He’s on his second year now.

Baugasm Instagram Page — By Vasjen Katro

It that’s too much for you, the good thing is that you’re free to choose every time-frame you feel more comfortable working with. Here’s some quick ideas that came into my mind while writing this post:

Design a dashboard page every week.
Design a landing page every day.
Design a UI component every day.
Design a product every month.

The subject and time frame doesn’t matter. What matters is designing with problem-solving in mind and having the discipline to do that every day, week or month.

Partake in the Daily UI Challenge

One of the most popular challenges for designer is the Daily UI challenge. More than 30,000 designers have took part in this challenge, and fewer have completed it. It works like this: you get an email with a design prompt every day and you should design and post it before the end of the day. The prompts vary from Sign Up forms to receipts and digital boarding pass-es.

Daily UI Challenge designs on Dribbble

It’s a great challenge to get better at design, even though I think most designers tend to work on the visual side mostly and forget about the UX. It’s a matter of approach though; you might choose to not only take care of the visual aspect but also of the experience behind it.

Create a design product you can sell

Design products have been and always will be a great way to make some money on the side. There are various marketplaces online where you can submit your product and sell it. In this way, you do not only learn design but also make some money. If you get lucky (or of course, if your product is good enough) you can make more money than you can make by working on client products.

You can design UI kits, landing page templates, dashboard templates, wireframe kits, fonts, poster templates, you name it. Just pick what you want to design, design it and then choose a marketplace where you can sell it.

Contribute to charities and open-source projects

There are hundreds and hundreds of charity foundations around the world that don’t have good websites. Why not letting them utilize your design skills for free? You will not only be able to learn design by designing, but you will also be contributing to a charity in a way.

Another way to volunteer your design skills so you can learn would be to work on open-source projects that are in need of design.

A strip of designs from my Daily UI challenge

The Conclusion

There are a lot of ways you can improve yourself as a designer without the need of working with clients. Each one of the ways I’ve mentioned above have their advantages and their disadvantages, but the single most important thing is to keep designing, to practice.

Written by Glen Baku, Product Designer and co-founder of Avalon9 and Komunik.

Ways to become a better designer by yourself was originally published in Prototyping: From UX to Front End on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ways to become a better designer by yourself

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