femininenachos Answer:

It varies, but you don’t necessarily need a degree in interaction design (or product design or service design, or the myriad other degrees on offer). Many people transition into UI/UX from other design disciplines or professions. You could consider doing a crash course/’foundations in UX training’ certification—although these courses are usually expensive, so it might be worth talking to your employer about your career progression and whether they would be willing to help fund your training in part or in full.

My own route into UI/UX: I have a joint degree in English & Politics. I completed a postgraduate diploma in Multimedia Communications (basically, the first half of a Master’s degree), cut my teeth at various small web design agencies, where I was responsible for design and front end development, then moved into an in-house purely UI/UX role, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

In terms of general skill set, it’s useful to have some broad knowledge of psychology and human behaviour, and to have a basic understanding of how websites and apps are built. You don’t need to learn to code, but it does help to know some terminology (front end engineers will be your friends if you can at least speak their language). Being empathetic, having a curious mindset, and good research skills are all essential—as is the ability to communicate effectively via the medium of GIF.

Recommended reading:
- Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
- Just Enough Research by Erika Hall
- The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
- How to Make Sense of Any Mess by Abby Covert (good intro to information architecture)

There are tons of free articles on Medium about UI/UX and I highly recommend signing up for the webinars that Invision put out. They have a good newsletter, too, that does a weekly roundup of interesting links.

For design practice, check out Daily UI. Sketch is the industry standard tool for UI design, although Figma is catching up, so you should familiarise yourself with those. Tutorials abound on their sites and on YouTube.