Beyond Therapy: How to Open Doors to Design
Pivoting from a traditional Psychology degree
As someone who has switched from psychology to user experience, this is what you need to know.
After I graduated from my bachelor’s in psychology in 2022, I immediately started applying for remote internships.
In my mind, there were 3 things I was specifically looking for in an internship.
- I wanted a paid remote internship. (If you studied psychology, you know why the ‘paid’ part is so important)
- I wanted it to be in the healthcare space, digital to be specific.
- I was interested in content & research roles.
I spent a couple of months applying to roles, scrolling on LinkedIn, and interacting.
In June 2022, I joined as a content (copywriting) intern at a mental health app and within 6 months, transitioned to design.
If you’re looking to pivot from psychology to design, here a few things you can expect:
1. You need to be open to learning technical skills whether that is visual design, UI, bot design, learning how to read basic programming languages etc.
You need to mentally accept that your ‘skillset’ is now design oriented, and your background in psychology is likely your approach to user experience.
2. You also need to be open to understanding the business side of design. As a designer, you will be given certain requirements.
Balancing user needs, design quality, business goals, and timelines is foundational. This might seem a bit contradictory since people view design as a creative field where you expect things to be spontaneous.
This isn’t always the case. I’d say it’s ‘structured’ creativity.
3. Communicating with other teams like the product owners, backend developers (or frontend), quality assurance testers etc. will be a significant part of your job.
You might work independently on a task basis, but mostly not on a project basis.
As a conversation designer, I worked closely with the backend development team. In my 3rd month as an intern, I was assigned my first project to improve chatbot responses triggered by a specific AI model.
I didn’t understand what the model exactly was, or how to get it to our live users. I had to get these changes on ‘prod’ and I didn’t know what that meant.
If I had to explain this process now, this is how I’d do it. Think of a play in a theatre.
- Development (dev server) → behind the scenes, where the work & testing happens, iteration etc.
- Staging server → dress rehearsal, everything needs to be functionally as expected here.
- Production (prod) → the live show! This is where your users can see your content, design, product etc.
This seems very basic to me (now), but when I first started working at an app, this was brand new information.
A website, app, device, or product is what you will be working on as a designer. Whether it’s at an agency or company. Learning how it works on a basic level in business, product, and development is going to be a big part of your skillset.
Be curious and ask questions.
This is how you stand out and learn.
