Here's how you can navigate a career change in UX Research without a formal education or degree.

Developing a solid understanding of UX & UX research is important to start your journey. Look up courses or curriculums of college courses etc. to identify the topics you need to learn about. And then start researching, reading books, article etc. for each of those topics. If you can buy a course or take part in a bootcamp or similar, it will give you a basic understanding of everything. But please don't rely on a bootcamp or UX course and think you are ready to be a UX researcher. Too many people fall into this trap and end up not getting a job. That happens because you need more than the theoretical understanding of things. The deeper knowledge you need, you can only gain through learning by doing and feedback - lots of feedback.

Getting hands-on experience and working through things yourself, is the best way to learn. You'll encounter problems that you need to solve, which will give you more learning opportunities than reading a book would give you. Start by thinking about projects you would like to do – A passion project. Execute on the things you previously learned to bring your passion project to life. Additionally, you can apply for internships, use an existing product to analyze, rebuild or improve, and you can even reach out to non-profits or small businesses to gain actual 'learning-by-doing' experience. At the beginning, you might not be able to charge for your service. But remember, we all have to start somewhere.

Be a sponge – take in all the information you can get. The best way to do so is to connect with other people and learn from more experiences peers. Attend local UX Meetups, conferences and industry events. Start building your network on Linkedin and other platforms. Talk to people, join online communities, and ask as many questions as you can.

While having a degree is useful, it is not crucial. The only time I was ever really asked about my degree was at my first job. Any other time after that hiring managers, teams and companies alike cared about my skills, how I can help them and what I've worked on so far. So having a strong portfolio is the key to showcase your skills and projects. And don't worry I started out with very few client projects in my portfolio and still got a job. Tell a story, talk about goals, the problems you encountered, the solutions you found and what kind of impact your decisions and skills had on a project.

As with any other profession and even with life in general, you should never stop learning. There will always be a new method, a new product, a new tool or a new way to do things. So stay up to date and learn as much as you can. One thing that helped me is not to focus on learning only the things that are currently important in my own industry. Keep your learning area broad! You are interested in nature? Cool, learn about that too. There are big news in the medical industry? Read about it. It doesn't hurt learning about other topics as well. And who knows... it might come in handy sometime. "I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it." Pablo Picasso