What are UI/UX designers and what do they do? That’s kind of a loaded question, but we can try to boil it down into two main things — making sure websites and apps look great and work well for users. In more technical terms, UI/UX designers oversee both visual design and user experience.

The demand for UI/UX designers is still going up and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected a 23% rate of job growth between 2021 and 2031. As an added bonus, UI/UX design is one of the most entry-level-friendly jobs in tech! You don’t need a fancy tech degree or years of experience to get started, like today’s spotlight: Sebrinia.

Sebrinia Welch is a Skillcrush student who took our UI/UX design course and turned it into a successful tech career. From learning the principles of user interface design to creating visual layouts, she’s proof that a successful career switch is entirely possible!

Table of Contents

• Day in the Life of UI Designer: Sebrinia Welch
• 7:30AM
• 8:30AM
• 9:30AM
• 11:30AM
• 12PM
• 1:30PM
• 4PM
• After Work
• Daily Toolkit
• Start Your Story as a UI/UX Designer

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Day in the Life of UI Designer: Sebrinia Welch

Meet Sebrinia Welch, a former school counselor who swapped academic support for design wireframes. After over a decade of shaping young minds at the school and district levels, the pandemic hit, and like many of us, Sebrinia found herself stuck with a huge question mark about her future. Instead of waiting for things to go back to “normal,” Sebrinia packed up her life in 2021 and hit the road with her partner for a full-time travel adventure. With her partner already working remotely, now was the chance to hit “refresh” on her career so she made the bold decision to step away from education.

To be fair, her transition into UI/UX design didn’t exactly happen overnight. In fact, it all began with her own website — a travel blog to document the highs (and a few lows) of life on the road. Building the site turned out to be more than just a passion project, and it sparked an unexpected interest in design. Before she knew it, Sebrinia was helping her friends with their small business websites. She eventually discovered Catchafire, a platform that connects professionals with nonprofit organizations, where she dabbled in copywriting and digital marketing. But at the end of the day, visual design was what held her attention.

What really clicked for Sebrinia was the satisfaction she got from using visual design to tell stories and amplify voices. This pushed her to take the next step — finding a structured program to develop her skills. And after researching different options, she landed on Skillcrush’s Break into Tech + Get Hired program.

Fast forward to today, and Sebrinia’s spent the last few months thriving at a digital agency where she can work on all different types of projects as a UI designer. She kindly sat down and gave us a little look into her new career.

7:30AM

Sebrinia gets her work day started bright and early. At 7:30AM, she’s going straight into the day’s administrative tasks, starting with a thorough sweep of her inbox. Working remotely means her team communicates almost entirely through Slack, so she checks in on messages, updates, and anything she may have missed while offline. Once she’s caught up on the essentials, she takes some time to review what’s on her plate. From there, it’s all about organizing and prioritizing tasks so she can be as productive with her day as possible.

8:30AM

After knocking out a bit of admin work, Sebrinia signs on for a quick sync-up with her creative director. It’s their daily check-in where they take some time to go over their latest designs, chat about what’s due for client delivery, and squeeze in any last-minute revisions. This meeting usually clocks in around 30 minutes to an hour, but today, it went a little longer than usual.

Like many other UI/UX designers, Figma is never far from Sebrinia. In today’s meeting, she uses Figma to share some wireframes for a major website redesign project. Sebrinia and her creative director spend some time creating and refining components and blocks for different web pages — balancing the big-picture strategy with those little details that make all the difference. Sebrinia also shares the work she’s doing on an infographic for another client’s “Top 10” list of 2024.

It’s not all web design today! On top of all that, her meeting also includes dipping her toes into video design for an end-of-year campaign. She’s still getting the hang of After Effects, and her creative director helps walk her through layering text, logos, and videos — skills she needs to create an attention-grabbing 15-second video.

9:30AM

Sebrinia starts working on her video project, spending a solid two hours in After Effects to fine-tune the 15-second video ad. Outsiders might be thinking that two hours of work for 15 seconds of video sounds excessive, but in the world of design, it’s definitely not! Without leaking too many details of her project, Sebrinia uses After Effects to do everything from animated text to smooth transitions and layered effects. So, for the next few hours, she focuses on things like perfecting the timing, adjusting color schemes, and layering visuals so the client’s message comes across loud and clear, especially since they have just 15 seconds.

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11:30AM

Sebrinia takes a break! Fortunately, she doesn’t have to punch a clock or keep a rigid 8-to-4 or 9-to-5 schedule, so instead Sebrinia uses Productive.io, a project management tool that the company uses to keep track of how her time is spent on tasks. It doesn’t matter if she’s fine-tuning a design or brainstorming with her team. The system lets her log her hours for each task. If she needs a break, she can just stop the timer, walk away, and come back when she’s ready.

12PM

After her break, Sebrina sits down for another meeting with her creative director. This time, they’re joined by a client to discuss the client’s ongoing branding redesign. The client is in the midst of a major overhaul of their brand identity, and Sebrinia’s role is making sure their marketing collateral reflects the same design that was built around this new brand guide. Together, they go through all the thoughts, questions, and feedback the client has on the initial drafts, diving into detailed discussions on the documents — about five or six in total.

While the brand guide itself was created in Figma, the client’s marketing assets are all in Google Workspace, which does present a bit of a challenge. Google’s tools are good, but most designers would agree that Figma is the gold standard for collaboration and prototyping. Still, with the second round of revisions on her plate, Sebrinia has to bring the brand’s new look to life while learning how to design in Google and using their new-to-her design capabilities.

As the meeting wraps up, the client brings up a quick request: some design assets for their team. Not everyone at the client’s company has access to Figma, so Sebrinia offers to create user-friendly templates in Canva, complete with frames and backgrounds. The client’s team can easily use them for headshots or images for their future marketing materials.

It’s a solid hour and a half of hashing out and fine-tuning ideas to make sure everyone — and everything — is aligned so Sebrinia can move forward.

1:30PM

As the afternoon sets in, Sebrinia jumps back into the web redesign project she’s been working on all week. She’s back in Figma, piecing together the first draft of the site — lining up components and blocks into neat, functional pages. She checks her work against the content document from the team’s strategist to make sure every detail matches up perfectly. And with every tweak and adjustment, she gets closer to a finished product. She spends a few hours tweaking this project before she wraps up her session, hits “stop” on Productive, and ends her work day.

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4PM

And just like that, Sebrinia is done for the day!

After Work

When Sebrinia’s official workday ends, she doesn’t always shut off her computer and call it a day. On those quieter afternoons, she keeps the momentum going by tackling a side project or diving into a new course. Her company even encourages this, allowing her to log time for learning. Right now, she’s juggling a few external courses. She’s enrolled in an accessibility course for UI/UX design on Udemy. On top of that, she has a membership with the Interaction Design Foundation where she’s taking two courses on mobile UI and UX design.

For Sebrinia, her initial design training was just the starting point. She knows the field is always evolving, so staying ahead of the curve and upgrading her skills are all part of her life as a UI/UX designer.

Daily Toolkit

These tools are Sebrinia’s day-to-day essentials that help her take her ideas from concept to reality.

• Slack
• Figma
• Adobe After Effects
• Adobe Photoshop
• Productive.io
• Google Workspace Canva
• Bugherd (for design QA)
• CleanShot X
• Contrast Tools
• DevTools

Is Tech Right For you? Take Our 3-Minute Quiz!

You Will Learn:

☑️ If a career in tech is right for you

☑️ What tech careers fit your strengths

☑️ What skills you need to reach your goals

Start Your Story as a UI/UX Designer

Ready to start designing your future — see what I did there? You can start preparing for a career in UI/UX design right now. All you have to do is sign up for Skillcrush’s Break Into Tech program and enroll in the UI/UX design track. You’ll learn everything from user research to wireframing and get all the support you need with job search prep, 1-on-1 coaching, and interview practice. No more waiting around! When you’re ready, Skillcrush is here to help you take the next step toward landing your dream job in tech.