A higher UX designer is now more on-demand than it ever has been. There are many different reasons for the rising demand for UX designers, for instance, the increased need for user-centered design and design thinking, the rising popularity of web and app design, the rising demand for UI/UX designs on social media, and an increased focus on customer experience.
Every day new businesses are popping up to provide original products and services. These companies need to turn their idea into an actual product that is engaging and provides a seamless experience for their users, and they can do this by hiring a freelance UX designer. This blog will go into detail about how to become a higher UX designer.
UX Design Current Context
The evolution of technology, trends, and consumer needs has turned UX design into an ever-evolving and demanding domain. The creative needs of digital assets have also changed. And that means, to become a better UX designer you need more than just technical skills.
Tech companies are trying to cater to UX design dynamics by looking for the right UX talent to hire. As a User Experience designer, you must know the skills that make you the right fit for the role. Besides the typical tech knowledge and UX designing skills, you must constantly strive to learn new skills to meet the growing demand. Your personality traits and mindset also play a role in succeeding as a higher UX designer.
UX design is all about meeting users’ expectations. As a better UX designer, your goal is to improve UX by creating an engaging and enjoyable experience or solving a problem. Everything you do contributes to a larger goal, which is increasing customer loyalty satisfaction through utility. It would be helpful if you had more than hard skills to succeed as a better UX designer. UX soft skills are equally crucial to producing deliverables. These skills are much more than add-ons to improve your resume. They complement your daily design activities.
5 Demanded Soft Skills for a Higher UX Designer
In this section, we will discuss the soft skills of UX design, which end up being as important as the hard ones if you want to become a success in this career.
1. Problem-solving mindset
Problem-solving is the core of UX designing. The job of a higher UX designer is to identify and solve users’ pain points. Therefore, you must learn how to identify users’ problems before you try to resolve them.
Critical thinking and problem-solving are two soft skills every recruiter looks for in a UX designer. The best kind always looks at the bigger picture before making a major decision. They pay attention to finer details and inspect a problem from every possible perspective. In most cases, prospective employers often ask candidates to work on a problem statement as a part of the evaluation process.
2. Communication skills
Good communication is the solution to almost every problem. UX designing, at the core, is about satisfying users by offering them utility. This means it is proper for UX designers to know how to communicate with and comprehend the client’s instructions and what they want out of a design project. Other soft skills, such as presentation, also heavily rely on communication. Here are some scenarios where good communication is a lifesaver for a better UX designer. For example, building a good rapport with clients, collaborating with other team members to churn out creative designs, pitching creative ideas to business stakeholders, selling UX design value to clients or the management, etc.
3. Prone to collaboration and teamwork
Designers work in teams. Thus, the ability to collaborate is important to produce eye-catching UX designs. In the past time, the design process only involved one person who would code and design the User Experience. It still happens in some startups. Yet, with the evolution of creative needs, an entire team works towards creating an engaging and enjoyable user experience. In most cases, UX designers need to work with people from diverse backgrounds and with varied expertise. This makes the soft skill of collaboration crucial to succeed as a UX designer.
Working in cross-functional team results in an outstanding product design. It offers multiple perspectives and a well-rounded view of the issue at hand. It enriches the brainstorming process and makes it quick and simple to come up with a solution. The ideal UX design candidate is open to critique. Most hiring managers prefer humility and coordination over most hard skills while hiring for design-related roles. Candidates with a wide perspective and immaculate decision-making soft skills as graphic designers are the ones who tend to get hired.
4. Storytelling
People tend to remember stories more than facts and figures. Great marketers know how good storytelling can do wonders for their company. They know how to capitalize on their audiences’ emotions and make them reach out for their wallets. A good storyteller looks at things from the user’s perspective and steps into his audience’s shoes. He tries to understand users’ emotions and engages them through creative storytelling.
A good UX designer narrates a character’s story through personas and storyboards. His designs tell a story that prompts his choice of users’ emotions. You can also listen to podcasts or read books to understand how other designers leverage storytelling, among other things.
5. Understanding basic design and aesthetic principles
Staying true to the design process is as important as design tool proficiency for different types of UX designers. A professional UX designer not only knows how to best use UX-specific software programs but is also familiar with design principles. They know where, when, and how to apply these principles in the design process.
The hallmark of a good designer is his commitment to research. They create, test, and repeat prototypes to produce the best deliverable possible within their capacity. They believe in evidence-based critique and are open to changing their designs accordingly. Questioning assumptions and steering clear of biases other positive attributes of the best types of UX designer’s soft skill sets.
Final Thoughts
Becoming a higher UX designer is a long road, but incorporating the things mentioned above in this blog can certainly help you make sure that the road that you are taking is the right one.
