8 skills first-year UX designers should master
Here are top 8 skills first-year UX designers should master.
1. Fundamental principles of user-centered design and design thinking
User-centered design is a process in which designers focus on the users and their needs in each phase. When you practice user-centered design, you focus on making your products valuable for users, simple to use, and accessible to various categories of users.
Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that involves empathizing with the user, defining the problem, ideating solutions, prototyping, and testing.
Most of the time, the product design is not linear but rather an iterative process with many back and forths. So that first-year designers should be open to change and iteration throughout the design process.
2. Hands-on experience
Design is all about creating new things. No wonder getting hands-on experience is integral to your career as a UX designer. When choosing prototyping tools, most organizations use either Figma or Sketch. Getting hands-on experience using one of these tools is integral. As a UX designer, most of the time, you don’t need to create a pixel-perfect design, yet you need to use the same tools that UI designers use because it will help you to share your design with them much easier.
Apart from prototyping tools, first-year UX designers might also want to master ideation techniques (like mind mapping, ideation matrix, and business model canvas) as well as usability testing techniques (like user interview, contextual inquiry, and guerilla testing). Ideation techniques will help UX designers find the right idea to build, while usability testing tools will help them validate it.
3. Constructive criticism
Designers should be open to receiving feedback about their work. No matter how good you are at designing products, there will be moments when your team or stakeholders will tell you that your solution doesn’t work for the project. You need to be open to constructive criticism and use feedback to improve your design skills.
Notice I mentioned the word constructive. Feedback can be destructive and constructive. Destructive feedback is usually used to tear someone down. Unfortunately, destructive feedback is very common in product design. So it would help if you learned to understand the nature of feedback.
4. Collaboration
Design is a team sport. It is essential to collaborate with team members regularly when creating a new product. Collaboration promotes a sense of teamwork and shared responsibility, which can lead to more efficient problem-solving.
First-year designers might be hesitant to work with senior designers because they are afraid that the senior designers will judge them for the work they create. However, most senior designers are willing to help first-year designers become better at what they do.
5. Networking
Good networking is essential for any career, and UX design is not an exception. It is much easier to join the organization via a referral rather than apply for the role from a job board.
Much of the networking these days happens online, and Twitter is the best place to join to connect with industry experts. You can start following industry leaders like Don Norman, Nielsen Norman Group, LukeW, and Laura Klein and Twitter will recommend other people to follow based on your selection.
But meeting people in person is also integral. It would help if you also dedicate time to attend industry events and conferences and join local UX design groups and organizations. The best way to find such events is to look for them at meetup.com.
6. Proactivity
A narrow focus is one of the major problems that many junior designers suffer from. First-time designers have relatively low self-confidence and are afraid to suggest new ideas to the team. As a result, they only do tasks they are asked to do. But when team leaders evaluate the performance of individual contributors, they often focus on the ability to bring something new to design.
You need to take the initiative and be proactive in your role. Try to look for opportunities to improve the user experience, and don’t be afraid to suggest new ideas to the team. Remember that
There is no such thing as a dumb idea
7. Observation
The best designers are great observers. They observe how people interact with products they design to gain a deeper understanding of user behavior and needs. This skill is particularly helpful during the usability testing part of the design process because no matter how good the user interviews are, there will be many things that users won’t tell you in plain words.
8. Constant learning
Product design is a fast-paced field. New trends and tools appear almost every day. To be competitive in this field, you must keep learning new skills and tools to improve your abilities.
You also need to stay up-to-date on the latest industry trends. Try to dedicate time during your week to browse visual design resources like Dribbble and Behance to learn the new visual trends
and check resources like TechCrunch to learn about new product concepts.
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