Hello,
My cousin graduated this year with Psych major. His dream is/was to go to a med school but his MCAT score is less than 500 in 2 attempts. He is evaluating if there are good career options in UX/UI areas instead of waiting for another year preparing for MCAT as he doesn’t feel so strong about MD now.
Anyone here made a switch successfully? I’m curious to see what programs you took and how is your professional career going on?
This article discusses paths to UX design as a profession and mentions preparation in psychology as helpful:
How about pursuing an N.D. degree instead of an M.D. or D.O.?
For a psychology graduate, UX research is probably a more natural first step than UI design, since it relies on study design, interviewing and making sense of qualitative data, all of which the major touches. Before paying for a bootcamp, two or three informational conversations with people working in UX would show how they actually got in. A small portfolio piece also helps a lot: run a mini usability study on an app he uses, then write up the findings and the changes he would recommend. That gives hiring managers something concrete to evaluate. Building that one case study before choosing any program is the most efficient way to test whether the field suits him.
I used to work with a UX /UI researcher and they had a psych background! (though they had a PhD). I also know someone with a PhD in anthro in this field…