The UX design industry is rapidly growing and is the requirement of UX designers. As a UX designer, you improve a product’s user usability and accessibility with the aim of making the user derive pleasure from it. Most designers want to become a jack of all trades but a king of none, which is wrong. As a fresher, you must know that to move ahead you need to know some necessary skills that will help you to put behind competition climb up on the success ladder.
Here are ten essential skills every UX designer needs to possess:
Rapid prototyping
Software gets updated once in every week or few months depending on the demand for improvement, and therefore rapid prototyping becomes a necessary skill for all UX designers. So how can a designer keep up with the rapidly changing technology?
As a designer, you have to create a rapid prototype for yourself, based on visual interactions. It can be as simple as something written on the paper or in coded format, rather than depending on traditional methods of communication.
Service design
Service design is a complex of many processes that improve the interaction between the designer and client, such that it tracks the end user’s journey. These processes include organizing material components, infrastructure, and communication. However, even if one of these isn’t in place, even the best of all designers won’t be able to make a good UX design.
Make your tools for measuring customer experience as they will help you when a new project, that you are doing for the first time.
Wireframing
Every company is now moving to responsive web design, and that’s why wireframing is an important skill to possess. It will assist you in creating a hierarchy in web design, which in turn will help you create a website that is more practical and usable on every device.
Wireframing also helps the UX designers to stay focused on the project’s primary goal. Eventually, it will help you to find out what exactly the client wants and what you have to provide to satisfy the clients.
Participatory design
It is essential for a UX designer to take inputs from the stakeholders involved in the process and link them to end-user demands. The ability to actively engage these people in your design will make you a great UX designer.
If it is a big project, you can host workshops and discussions with the stakeholders to get a better understanding of the company and what they want to give to the end user.
User research
A good UX designer is the one that knows user behavior and expectancies. You will be told many things in the office or by the client, but at the end of the day, you have the responsibility to guide them properly. If you have done the research well, you won’t have trouble while testing usability.
Analysing user problems is a significant part of user research as you have to guide your clients through your study and help them solve the problems faced.
Crowdsourced design
Crowdsourced design goes hand in hand with participatory design. As a UX designer, you must know how to use the internet as a resource to collect data for your projects. There are many UX tools available today that help you find the right kind of data.
Also collect feedback from your clients and their end users, so that you learn about your errors and rectify them in your next project.
Revising skills
Taking constructive criticism to review your skills will help you in the long run. Communicate with your old clients and take their feedback seriously. Sometimes, companies might ask that if you would’ve done something different with the product, what would that have been, and you have to give a valid response.
Also, be flexible to the demands of your clients because you are going to get more projects from them or their friends if they like your work.
Responsive design skills
In today’s world, everything has become user-friendly and having responsive design skills have become a priority. Make your concept more responsive and fluid by giving more importance to the emotions and thinking of the end user rather than just the technical aspects of the app or product.
Ditch those Photoshop frames, enhance yourself from sketches to prototypes, and create modular designs to become a successful UX designer.
Communication
Communication is one of the core skills every UX designer should have. It not only involves interacting properly with your clients but also trying to convey your idea to stakeholders about the end user requirements.
Keep aside visual communication for a while and strengthen your powerpoint presentation skills and your speech conduct. When you speak confidently and look into the person’s eyes, there is no way the person in front of you will reject your proposal.
UX writing
No, we aren’t talking about coding here. Pick up an application that you have created and see if you like reading what’s written in it. The language should be crafty, such that it keeps the end user engaged.
Language is still the most used form of communication and required right from convincing the user to download the app till convincing them to keep it on their phones forever. Apple and Dropbox have the best UX writing displayed throughout their concept.
Remember, you are an end user as well, so put yourself in those shoes while thinking your project’s concept. The only way you can see if your end users are happy is by checking the number of downloads and ratings the app you created makes. Less number of downloads or fewer star ratings is surely going to make you sad, so avoid that by being empathetic towards the end users.
You should also be able to visually communicate your idea through your concept to the stakeholders and end users. Coding isn’t a necessary skill, but having it will take you beyond your capability. So, work on all these skills and become the best UX designer version of yourself.