New to UI/UX design and have no idea what niche to pick?

I’ll give you a few ideas to get you started.

Picking a niche early is kind of different but it also could be one of the best decisions you can make in the crowded design market.

Unfortunately, as a newbie, you have no idea how to pick one.

You don’t have any previous design experience to use as a guide for picking your niche.

And not only that but also…

• You are getting conflicting information from different places
• You have no idea what people are willing to pay for
• And you feel the pressure to make a decision
• What if I tell you there is a simple solution for everything but that you just need to know where to look.

Let’s dive in.

Step 1: Review your digital history

Go through all your social media history and accounts you follow, plus your purchase history:

• YouTube history
• Instagram accounts
• TikTok follows
• Pinterest board or follows
• Amazon purchases
• Audible purchases
• Netflix series, movies and documentaries
• Your bank statement history

You get the idea.
The places most of your attention and money goes on a daily basis. What’s your favourite content to consume? Pure entertainment and super obscure topics also count.

Review everything without filtering.

Step 2: Spot the pattern

Start writing down all the recurring topics you see.

For example, you notice you’ve consumed a lot of content about the morning routine, meditation, journaling, meal prep, deep work and so on. The overarching topics are self-development, wellness, and health.

When you find a topic think:

• What are the sub-topics that this topic contains?
• Or what is the bigger, overarching topic?

List down all the topics you can come up with by reviewing your digital history.
Then group them by similarity.

This is not a hard science so don’t get stuck on the exact format.

Step 3: Look for companies and products

Find the companies and software products that serve people interested in the same topics.

Search in Google “[topic] apps”, “[topic] software”, “[topic] companies”. For example “wellness apps”, “health software”, “top healthcare software”.

The idea is whatever you are interested in there is probably already a software company serving the people interested in the same topics as you. Learn about the top companies by listing interviews with the CEO, reading their blog, watch reviews of their app.

Pay attention if you get bored if you do move to the next topic.

Step 4: You found something!

It seems that you found a niche of apps that you like to design.

• Read this to make sure you found a good niche
• Read this to learn how to get into a niche with no experience

If all else fails

If this method doesn’t help for some reason get an entry job in a big design agency or development shop.

This way you can experiment with projects from different niches and use the job as paid research to help you figure out what you are into.

I’m curious, what did you find?
What are the most common topics you uncovered? Any examples of tech companies related to the topic? Reply in the comments.