"Get Into Ux: A Foolproof Guide to Getting Your First User Experience" isn’t the first UX book I’ve read, and it probably shouldn’t be your very first UX book either. You should first explore what UX is at a high level and all the possibilities that exist within the profession and proceed from there if you are inspired, motivated, and plan to commit to building the foundation for a career. Once you decide that you’re determined to proceed, absolutely do not hesitate to pick up Vy Alechnavicius’s book Get Into Ux because it provides invaluable information to guide your learning, portfolio efforts, and eventual job search. To describe it as invaluable is not hyperbole. Okay; it's hyperbole. But I’ll explain why I think it's very valuable to someone new to UX.

About the Author

I first encountered Vy Alechnavicius’s advice for aspiring and practicing UX professionals via his YouTube channel, vaexperience. His advice really shook me out of some of the misconceptions I was holding in my head about a few things. First, what it means to have a meaningful case study. Second, what a portfolio should really contain. Finally, just how important it is to base your work (yes, even your portfolio work) on feedback and observations from real users and not dismiss user research, even a little. The zero sugar-coated guidance he offers is exactly what people need to hear and what many people hope to find when they take an online course, go to a bootcamp, or even read a book. I found that Vy Alechnavicious’s major points for those learning UX and assembling their portfolio highlighted some glaring gaps in my own education and provided a way to connect the dots for me that I don’t think I would have been able to connect otherwise before heading into a job search.

Your Burning Questions Answered

Have you ever read a UX book or taken an online course and learned something about UX but then were left wondering: What should I learn next, and why? How am I going to apply what I’ve learned when I don’t have a job in UX? What should be in my portfolio and why? How can I truly prepare myself to work in this field? These are the types of questions you might have and Get Into Ux will answer them for you. To reassure you, just look at how practical the major divisions of the book are:

Digging into the table of contents a little bit further will show you that he is offering practical advice:

I know I'll be re-reading various parts of this book as time goes on. It’s more than just a cover-to-cover pick up and put down forever book. It’s a reference. As a reader/aspiring UX professional yourself, you’ll likely be revisiting his advice as you progress in your learning and work on your portfolio. You may pay particularly close attention to his advice on finding your first job when you’re ready to begin your search. I really appreciate that he is offering his perspective as an active UX manager and hiring manager. He is upfront and frank on the real world UX skills a person needs to have before starting the job search. It’s refreshing to hear this and practical to understand what’s expected of you while you’re still in the midst of your learning path and portfolio building effort (where I currently find myself in early 2022).

A Few Highlights Worth Mentioning

Now that I’ve emphasized how much valuable guidance this book provides, I’d like to highlight advice from the book that I find especially vital that you might find valuable too. The author has been vocal on his YouTube channel about what UX is and is not. Understanding that UX is not predominantly UI design is just a starting place. Understand that UX is both a “result” and a “process”. Perhaps a useful mantra to extract is this phrase: “Design the right things + Design things right: Quality user experiences.” He cautions against starting with an end goal in mind at the beginning of a project and effectively become unaware of what the actual problems are that need to be solved:

I found his comments on the importance of user research to be especially relevant. “One of the most important things about UX is that THERE IS NO UX DESIGN WITHOUT USER RESEARCH.” There’s a reason he capitalizes the last half of the sentence. The point deserves the emphasis. He goes on to explain that ignoring research and failing to develop a process will show up in your portfolio projects and “can stunt your development or make you unhireable.”

Part 3 “How to Get There” provides essential guidance on how and where to learn UX. In particular, the sections Find a Mentor, Find Your Design Community, and Learn UX Skills Faster included an approach I had not considered. Regarding finding a Mentor, after reading what he has to say, I can see how such a relationship could provide anyone with an enormous learning advantage. It made me reflect on whether or not I’ve had a mentor of my own in the past. In a way, I have had one or two mentors in my life, but not quite in the way he describes. This is a worthy long term pursuit; not an immediate transaction. He recommends “online communities” or groups on social media as a way to participate in a discourse on UX topics. This might come naturally to some people, but I appreciated the nudge. Finally, the “Kaizen 1% Principle” and the “DS3 Method” he outlines in the Learn UX Skills Faster section are ways to keep your learning on track. The entire book is evidence that the author is very concerned with guiding people on their journey to understanding, learning, and practicing UX. Here he’s guiding people on how they should even manage their learning time (not just what they should learn and where they should or could find that knowledge).

Also, in Part 3, Chapter 4 “Practice UX and Collect the Evidence Along the Way” his advice on how to gain experience and portfolio pieces prior to a job search is exactly what I needed to read. It may be what you need as well. He often references the conundrum of experience when applying for UX jobs (both in the book and also on his YouTube channel). How can you get that 1 to 3 years of experience prior to applying for an entry UX role? Boiling it down, the answer is that you need to find opportunities to practice UX in the real world with real people and, when possible, products/projects that are real. You need to document that work and learn from it. Document what you’re doing and that becomes your portfolio. That’s much more valuable because operating in an abstract environment with fictitious users is not the same as working for and with people/stakeholders and their different interests/viewpoints/agendas.

That’s where I’ve been focusing my time in the book to date. Again, this book is a reference that I’ll be coming back to over time as I move further along in my education and practice. I haven’t done more than casually glance at the sections that detail job interviews, customizing your portfolio for a particular job, or the entire section “What To Do Once You Get There”. Clearly, I’m not there yet. But, when I get close to “There”, I’ll be reading that part of the book.

The Takeaway

Overall, the practical advice laid out in “Get Into UX” is undeniably valuable and unfortunately rare. In my prior education and professional efforts in other fields, having a book similar to this one would have been an enormous help. If you've decided to pursue a career in UX, do yourself a favor and read this book.