Notes

Go find a website that lacks in it’s user experience and figure out how to fix it. Maybe it’s a small business down the street from you or maybe it’s a feature on eBay you think could be better. Redesigning sites is a good way to practice a process and make mistakes on your own time. If you can involve the owner from that small business down the street, that’s even better because then you can get a sense of the customers (users) that you will be designing for.

Some other ideas:

Solve a real-world problem (NO it doesn't have to be an app). Examples: How would you redesign the experience of determining if/how clothes will fit before buying online? How would you redesign the experience of tracking an illness and its symptoms over time? How might deaf and people who are hard of hearing make use of voice-controlled devices?

Contribute to open source projects.

Start making small UX improvements within your own organization. The human-centered approach to problem solving can be applied to lots of situations outside of product design.

Once you have done this, you have (some) experience! Start a portfolio and add to it!