1. What is UI design?
UI (user interface), Chinese name "user interface". Ps: (Baidu explained) UI refers to the overall design of human-computer interaction, operation logic and beautiful interface of software.
Generally speaking, the prototype design of all kinds of app, web software and other products used in mobile phones and computers comes from UI, including overall page color matching, button design, icon design, interface typesetting and so on.
UI design is an indispensable position in the Internet industry. He needs to participate in the requirements review, understand PRD, user research, emotional board combing, interactive design and other processes, and complete the visual design, visual review, UI walkthrough and acceptance of products. In the course of work, team members may be organized to re-examine the design scheme and project, so that each link can be polished in place by careful division of labor.
Generally speaking, the work of UI design is not only to make the software personalized and tasteful, but also to make the operation of the software comfortable, simple and free, fully reflecting the positioning and characteristics of the software.
Second, is UI design promising?
Whether an industry has a prospect, the most important thing is to look at market demand and dependence.
For the market demand, we can go to any recruitment website to see how many companies are currently recruiting UI design, and we can intuitively get the number of job vacancies in the market.
For dependence, we can think about where the products designed by UI are used in our lives.
One day in daily life, I use my mobile phone to scan the code in the morning and take the subway or bus, and I use my mobile phone to punch in at work. Then go to the office to use all kinds of office software, browse all kinds of web pages, eat takeout, buy food after work, pay by mobile phone and shop online. In the evening, I will brush the news, play games, catch up with dramas and perform variety shows. The interfaces of the products we use are all designed by UI. With the rise of Internet, Internet of Things, 5G, artificial intelligence, big data, VR virtual reality and artificial intelligence. The UI design market will not be saturated, but needs more, more professional and more knowledgeable UI designers.
How much is the salary for UI design? Let's take a look at the national average salary of UI designers:
Third, the learning process of UI design
What should I learn first if I want to switch to UI? Learn what? How to study? Let's split the learning content, take one week as the learning cycle, and share the learning process of UI design.
The simpler the collocation of elements, the more you can examine the basic skills of a designer. Without excellent technology and solid basic skills, it is difficult to accurately convey the tonality and marketing selling points of products.
We all know the importance of creative thinking to designers, but we can't ignore the necessity of basic skills to designers. Only by persisting in constant weight-bearing training and solid artistic foundation can we easily master various styles in future commercial actual combat.
Week 1: Hand-painted
The focus of hand-drawing is mainly to cultivate students' body structure and the relationship between light and space, which is an enlightenment of aesthetic cultivation. At present, the most popular vector illustrations are closely related to hand drawing.
Week 2 and Week 3: Learn the basic software of PS and AI.
To learn software from scratch, you need to use actual cases to learn, which makes it easier to get started. Moreover, the learning of UI design is not only a simple learning software tool. Many people think that UI design only needs to know PS, AI, etc. In fact, it is more important to understand the meaning behind design through actual cases, that is, design thinking and creative understanding.
But just learning to think is not enough. It is necessary to strengthen the basic skills of design and master the software comprehensively.
Week 4 and Week 5: Plane Composition, Logo
Master the points, lines and surfaces in graphic design and extend them to logo design. Logo includes graphics on the one hand and fonts on the other, so it is very basic to understand the text structure. If you learn it well at this stage, the cost is unbelievable.
And in the study of logo brand, we should study the form, temperament, basic attributes, thinking mode and standard drawing of logo in depth. A simple figure has evolved into an ever-changing shape through morphological deformation. Are you afraid that you can't design so many different Logo?
For example, from the shape, a circle can become a solid circle, a hollow circle, a semicircle, an ellipse and a semicircle. Can it be associated with eggs, fried eggs, poached eggs, hats and water cups?
Week 6: Complete the design of brand logo and VI manual.
This week, the focus is on Party A's thinking design. Yes, that annoying father of Party A needs to learn to put himself in the other's shoes.
The whole learning content in the first stage is very basic, and the purpose is to cultivate design thinking. As the saying goes, you can't design a good product if you know what users think?
Week 7: Response Website, One Screen Website
The composition, color, font, function, buttons, design specifications and typesetting specifications of web page design are all described from cases.
Week 8: Background Data
In addition to the background design, more is the background data statistical processing, how to make it simple and clear.
Week 9: E-commerce Design
The homepage design of e-commerce platform, every month, major shopping platforms will have full-station activities with different themes, so in fact, the talent gap of e-commerce design is very large.
Week 10: Taobao platform details page, backstage
In this part, you can apply for Taobao shop and put your own products on the shelves. Any learning is not as fast as getting started directly. Practice and practice, and experience the specifications of major platforms personally, and you will understand it more clearly.
Week 1 1: C4D, Banna
Entering 3D training, enriching visual effects, improving employment competitiveness and knowing more skills are also the reasons why we should constantly learn and improve ourselves.
The second stage is more about web design training, focusing on mastering the interface design specifications and output specifications of enterprise stations, and being able to design pages according to the real needs of enterprises.
Week 12: user experience, competitive product analysis, prototype diagram
This week, I began to design the APP, analyze the competing products through data analysis, and draw the prototype of the APP with Axure.
Week 13: icon
Interesting icons are also an important part of a complete APP design.
Week 14: Interface and Capsule
Talk about pop-up pages and flashing pages through icon applications.
Week 15: Interface design
Continue to complete the APP and learn how to cut, name, label, package and hand over (whether the front-end brothers and sisters can play depends on this week's learning content)
Week 16: operation interface
The user's thinking training in marketing promotion can grasp the pain points of users and improve the overall operation interface to achieve the purpose of marketing promotion. This is generally through pop-up windows and splash screens that suddenly jump out, such as publicity pages, to increase visual appeal and promote users to click.
Week 17: interactive effect
Learning AE well will be very rewarding, because it can accurately convey your thoughts and show the expression effect you want. This is bound to become a popular trend of UI. If you don't want to be eliminated by the market, you must keep learning!
At this stage, you can try to design your own APP, you can choose your favorite theme, there is no limit, and you can become the content of the portfolio with zero-based career change.
Week 18: Front End
As we all know, it is the front end that works closely with UI designers. As a UI designer, only by knowing the front end can we cooperate better and improve work efficiency. We can learn HTML5, CSS3 and so on.
Although it is divided into weeks, the schedule is very full, so the learning process is suitable for most zero-based friends. If the content of each week is not solid, you can keep your feet properly, because everyone's learning ability is different and the degree of learning mastery is different. We must learn knowledge in a solid way and move forward step by step, in order to truly master the knowledge of UI design firmly.
As for whether you can learn, it depends on your learning ability, and it is also important to keep learning. Finally, I hope that your sharing will help you switch to study UI design and find your favorite UI design job as soon as possible.