I got sick in week # 43, so I thought to completely revise the learning plan that I am pursuing.

The burning question I have for myself is how long will it take to get market ready? Can I be so good in what I do that I can work my own terms IE. freelancing instead of becoming an employee to a company.

I feel these questions are tough and no one knows how the future will look like. The only thing I know is keep doing best and be so good at it that no one can ignore you. No one has the answer that I can freelance in this space or not. It can be progression also when I join a design agency and later progress to freelance. One of the corrections I want to make with my thinking process is, don’t listen to world outside, everyone will have thousand of advice’s. Just focus on being good at UX design. Let the portfolio do the talking.

I did a self Introspection exercise on reviewing everything that I have been doing since I left my job. Here is the timeline of what I have been doing so far.

In order to answer my own burning question I did a planning exercise yesterday, and as a result of it here is the learning plan I have created.

One of the areas that needs lot of time learning is Interaction design. I was advised to take it but It’s not making much sense now. So I thought to check with experts.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UXDesign/comments/dmbl8z/is_interaction_design_must_have_skill_to_begin/

The advise I got is, it’s not really required.

One of the answers that I really liked is :

“I think the most important hard skills for UX designer is user research, information architecture and wireframing/prototyping. You can do pretty good prototypes with Invision and most of the times that would be enough to test your prototypes.”

This is really a great answer I think. Every person sitting inside a room will think a lot. Once we talk with people we have an opportunity to self introspect. Thanks to UX design community on Reddit. I have found it helpful so many times.

Lastly I am excited about this plan because:

1. Its preparing myself to going out and see the world in real.
2. Fail fast and Iterate until it works - I cant spent time thinking what will work and what will not. Do the basic education and see the world. If it doesn’t work than come back again and revise the plan. No one knows what will work.
3. Portfolio work and I get to blog - Who doesn’t want to have a live portfolio, documenting my journey of design thinking. Personas, Storytelling all this sounds so exciting.

That’s all I have, lets set up weekly goals and keep the ball rolling.