I guess one of the questions that I would ask is, is there anything in UX that you think you like or would like to explore more?
For instance, do you really want to know what makes people tick, how they work through things, and get into the nitty gritty of the user. If you really like the thought of that, then more of a research centred approach might be for you. If you like to work through content, how users get to different places, mapping out the path that the users take through a product or website, then information architecture may be more your thing. But then if all/a lot of the areas that UX covers appeal, then you may be looking at being more of what is called a “UX Unicorn”.
I don’t currently have a particular area that I’m interested in, so I’m dipping my toes in a lot of areas, and waiting to see if anything pops out :).
There are a lot of helpful resources on the UX mastery site, and taking courses in those topics is definitely a good place to start! And there are some other helpful tips throughout this forum, including internships or offering your work for free to organisations, to gain experience and work up a portfolio.
My personal opinion is that no you do not necessarily need to learn to code. It really does depend on what area you want to look at though. For instance my last work place had the problem that our clients wanted higher fidelity prototypes that demonstrated transitions and concepts so that they could get a better understanding, and this wasn’t really possible in Axure (prototyping software). It would have been easier to code up an example in HTML, CSS and Javascript. But if you are really not interested in learning to code, you can manage things so that your clients know what level of output they will receive. But then saying that, a lot of jobs now do expect some kind of proficiency in HTML and CSS, and it can be good to know the technology to have an understanding of its constraints, things that can or can’t be done using it for when you ideate on designs.
Hope this helps :).