If you’re a newbie to the design world or have a basic understanding of user experience, you need to possess certain skills to jumpstart your career in UX designing.
As a UX designer, you must not limit yourself to design. Being versatile can be beneficial and also help you grow in your career. So, if you have these skills from the very beginning, you will have a fruitful career in UX designing.
Here are the 9 Skills for UX Designer to Have Today
A UX designer should be multifaceted and know the nitty-gritty of plenty of aspects to be an expert at it. Here are some of the skills for UX designers to get better at it.
Let’s get rolling!
1. Flawless Communication Skills (Verbal and Non-verbal)
As a UX designer, you will have to interact with other departments, and for that, you need to be good at communicating your ideas to them. For instance, you may work closely with the marketing and the development team, learn the user perspective, and present your design to the stakeholders. All these require impeccable communication skills.
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Most importantly, business communication skills are essential as you need to persuade stakeholders about why your design best fits their business. It would help if you also had the knack to convince them to buy your design, so knowing the terms like KPI, revenue, and more will help you sell better.
Apart from verbal communication, visual communication is equally important. The ability to express ideas visually will help in painting a precise picture for the viewers. Not only that, if you have a knack for writing a copy to engage users, you get a brownie point!
2. User Research Skills
User research is paramount to user experience. Thorough research will help in striking a chord with the users. Understanding the target audience’s needs and their intent through analysis, interviews, feedback, and more can help design better and lead to the product’s success.
User research is a perpetual task as the user behavior varies time and again and from product to product.
Being empathetic and rectifying the subtle things can enhance the user experience to a whole new level. Conducting research is a must-have skill if you’re planning to start a career in UX design.
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Touching your user’s heart is essential. When it’s all about giving a good user experience, you must put yourself in the user’s shoes and see what works well for your customers.
A thorough understanding of the psychology of the users will give you an edge over others, and it is a must-have skill for a UX designer, be it an amateur or an expert.
Reading the users’ minds and designing the product by understanding the audience will help you create better websites. For a fine user experience and user satisfaction, user understanding is key.
3.Be a Keen Observer
Whether you’ve been inclined to designing or are planning to embark on the UX journey now, being observant of the user trends, shifts in the user behavior, and ability to analyze helps create a better design. It’s one of the essential skills for UX designers.
Understanding the user perspective and knowing what works and what does not will help build a good portfolio. Rectifying minor errors in coding or wireframing and watching the analytics will help you overcome the issues and better your designing skills every day.
4.Wireframing and Prototyping
Wireframing is the skeleton of your design. It’s the initial draft or the first draft of your idea visually. And putting your ideas into paper may not be a walk in the park for all the designers. But, if you’re not a designer by education, you can learn wireframing only if you’re keen on learning it.
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The next step after wireframing is prototyping. Again, you need to be proficient in using prototyping tools as this phase of your design is critical. It’s where you show your client a preview of the final product.
A lot of trial and error will be made in this phase. Prototyping is where you demonstrate the functionality of the product. Once your clients are happy, customers will be too.
5. Basic Understanding of Coding [HTML, CSS, Responsive Design]
You’re not bound to know the in-depths of coding because there are developers for that. But, having basic knowledge about HTML, CSS and JavaScript can help you communicate with the development team better. It’s another important skill for a UX designer.
Knowing the terms will help you understand the process and also boost your CV while applying for jobs. If you’re not tech-savvy, you can look up online resources. There is an ocean of courses available for free. To level up your skills, these basic coding skills are much-needed.
Utilize the resources and step up your design game right from the outset.
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It’s essential to have a seamless user experience across all the devices for a user – compatibility shouldn’t be ignored. Responsive design is how your app responds to different devices.
The best skill for a UX designer is to know web design to provide a seamless user experience, be it mobile, laptop, or tablet.
With technological advancements and businesses going digital, you cannot find a single person without a smartphone. So, you should be able to deliver across all platforms to be a better UX designer.
6. Knowledge of Basic Design Principles
For a UX designer, being versatile can help move up the ladder. Knowing the basic elements of design like color theory, design theory, typography, logo, and more will help understand and create interfaces with a cooler visual representation.
Since visuals present a better story than boring texts, having an elementary knowledge of design helps. You can unleash the creative beast in you and apply it to your maximum potential. You need to hone your skill by learning these additional skills for a UX designer.
7. Information Architecture
For any UX designer, a step-by-step process should be followed to arrive at the outcome. Information architecture keeps the information structured to find it easy to navigate and locate what customers are searching on your website.
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You need to incorporate all points of view as a part of IA. Right from user research, navigation, wireframing, structure. By keeping the information organized, users will find the desired output and have a hassle-free user experience.
Get started with your portfolio, and you’ll learn an awful lot about information architecture in no time.
8. Ability to Find Solutions
Problem-solving skills are a must anywhere you go, and when it comes to UX design, you should come up with real-world solutions to problems or the products you’ll be designing.
Designing a product comes with plenty of challenges, but the ability to take it up and add features that truly resolve the issues users face is a skill indeed. Design thinking and product thinking go in tandem.
You need to come up with innovative ideas and design a well-thought product to excel as a UX designer.
9. Knowledge of Interaction Design
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Unlike responsive design, interaction design is about how the users interact with the product. Placement of buttons, images, animation, and icons that help users have an overall good experience comes under interactive design.
Right from the text used to the end-product, every minute detail should be taken care of. Any changes or errors might leave the customers confused, and that’s when the bounce rate becomes high.
Having good interaction skills for UX designers will help deliver exceptional products and, in turn, happy clients.
Final Thoughts
Now that you got an idea about the skills for UX designers, it doesn’t end there.
UX designing is quite exciting, where you get to work on different areas like research, tech, and design. It’s a rewarding career indeed as long as you have the drive in you to dive deeper into it.
A passion for designing, curiosity to learn more, and staying up-to-date with the industry trends will make you a better designer overall.
Ultimately, with all the hard and soft skills, if you’re open to learning, no one can stop you.
Give it your all and get started with designing today!
Last Updated on by Navya S
