Transitioning to UX Design after 40

In my early 40’s, after 15 years working in the fields of education and mental health therapy, I began my transition to a new career as a UX designer. This transition came with questions and obstacles, but from those, I also gained new insights and acceptance, and learned some valuable lessons about career transition.

Why Change Careers?

One of the questions I’m most frequently asked has to do with my reasons for leaving behind a career that took three years of advanced education and multiple hours of supervised practice to earn a license to practice. The simplest answer? My needs.

I need to solve problems that leave me feeling more invigorated than exhausted. While education and therapy can be creative endeavors, they lack much of the visual communication that has always inspired and attracted me. I need to use my creativity to bridge my interest in humans, my love for problem solving, and my delight in creating something exciting, useful and beautiful. I also need to work in a career with a potential for growth I did not find in my past career path.

Obstacles in The Path

That is not to say the transition was easy. I encountered loads of obstacles as I prepared to make the move. Yes, my program cost money- as much as I paid for 2 ½ years at my alma mater! Yes, I needed to be financially stable enough to take three months off for school, and possible more to get a job. But those financial obstacles made sense to me… sign up for school, study hard, learn something new and make a new start! This idea never caused me to even pause.

I had to face shame and guilt over leaving a profession that needs experienced practitioners, and the recognition I was bound to burn out if I stayed in that profession.

It was my internal thought processes that proved to create the biggest obstacles in my career change. I had to face shame and guilt over leaving a profession that needs experienced practitioners, and the recognition I was bound to burn out if I stayed in that profession. I had to face my fear of the unknown. While I knew I was not fully satisfied by my career as an educator or as a therapist, I was fearful of what other careers I could flourish in with my established skills and experience.

I spent nearly two years wrestling with this idea, looking for adjacent career paths and participating in career coaching. I learned some valuable lessons from this period; Mostly, that the certainty I was looking for would never come. Still, I remember the fear of making another career choice I would want to leave behind after a decade.

New Insights

Becoming a UX designer has forced some new insights for me. I have a strong love of learning, but I realized I had chosen my past career paths because they aligned so closely with my natural abilities. Learning to be a UX designer meant that I often felt frustration with the challenges that did not come so easily. I had to recognize my tendency to avoid things I’m not inherently good at and open my eyes to how this has limited me at earlier points in my life.

I also had to accept my visual design limitations. As I began to explore my ability to create useful and compelling interactions and designs, I found a mismatch between my intentions and my abilities. I wanted my creative output to be universally recognized as good. Instead, I had to accept the fact that my early designs (and from time to time, my current ones) are objectively bad. This allows me the opportunity to iterate, grow and refine my designs into something closer to what users need every day.

Lessons Learned

My experience is not a limitation. It’s a platform I stand on, allowing me to reach even higher.

One of the most valuable lessons I learned from my transition to UX design, was that I wasn’t starting over. My experience is not a limitation. It’s a platform I stand on, allowing me to reach even higher. I have found the mirror I held up for my clients in therapy, helping them see the solution within, is not unlike the mirror I hold up to stakeholders, colleagues and potential users helping solve user problems. It’s an understanding of one way the world works, and it’s has made me a better designer.

A Curious Stance

I tend to get caught up in the seriousness of the tasks in front of me, which makes me a dedicated researcher and designer. I can be very evaluative and critical of my own work output. But I have to remind myself that I set out on this path with a curious stance. I have no idea where UX design will take me. And that is exactly the point.