The role of the UX designer has grown significantly over the past decade.
Today’s UX design job description is completely different from what it was in 2009 when the first iPhone had just been made!
Different companies have very different responsibilities and requirements for people who are hired as “UX designers”. Therefore, you need to know what are the main and required skills of someone who is hired and works as a UX designer.
If you want to become a professional UX designer, in this article we will review the set of required skills that are a combination of hard skills and soft skills:
Table of Contents
Classification of skills
Hard skills are abilities that can be taught and their quantity can be easily measured. You usually learn them in classrooms, through books and other educational materials, or while working at your workplace, and soft skills are the same. Are personal development skills. Such as communication skills, personal and inherent characteristics, the ability to deal with job crises, etc., which are unlike hard skills that can be learned, soft skills are like people’s feelings and inner perception, and learning these skills is far more difficult than hard skills.
Soft skills
1. Curiosity
UX designers must be passionate about the unknown.
You might ask, “Is curiosity a skill?” We tend to think of soft skills as personal traits, such as curiosity, empathy, and critical thinking, rather than acquired competencies and skills. If you’re naturally curious, that’s great! However, curiosity can also be cultivated through deliberate actions.
You can try everyday activities that will help you to boost your curiosity and explore the unknown. For example, sometimes you go to your home or workplace by a different route. Pay attention to your surroundings by taking pictures of something unusual.
Practice active listening and discuss unanswered scientific issues and questions in your daily interactions.
2. Empathy
UX designers must identify and recognize the needs and feelings of other people. Humans are social beings and having empathy and emotional intelligence are important skills in every person’s daily life.
Empathy is of particular importance in the UX design process, because by definition UX design is a user-oriented discipline and empathy is the first step in the design thinking method and helps to have a better idea of the situations in which people will use something. And better anticipate the issues that they are likely to face.
3. Continuous learning in UX design
UX designers must be constantly learning. Design is a discipline where there are new things to learn every day, from every person and in every project… More importantly, the industry is constantly changing and developing, and the standards are changing every day. , contracts, tools, operating systems, and new devices are still at the top.
Over the past decade, the entire digital design industry has shifted from interface designs for conventional computer mice and keyboards to user-centric designs for touch-based smartphones and smartwatches. In addition to the changes in previous technical limitations, User expectations have also increased dramatically, so:
- Familiarize yourself with the basics of UI.
- Learn the creative UX process.
- Read design articles every day.
- Design fake projects.
- Learn the latest web design tools.
So get started and don’t forget an important part of learning design is learning how to learn. This means fixing the defects of each project and interacting with it as an opportunity to discover new approaches and your professional practice.
4. Critical thinking of the UX designer
UX designers must question assumptions and analyze problems in depth.
Critical thinking, like curiosity, can be more or less inherent in people’s behavior, or we can strengthen this skill through practice.
For example, you can search for hidden presuppositions or presuppositions in an argument or proposal. Ask why something is happening or why a change is being proposed.
Identify errors in arguments and find weak points in systems. Analyze things that seem too simple or too complex and…
5- Cooperation and communication
UX designers must collaborate with many stakeholders, including users, product managers, and developers. There is almost no aspect of a UX designer’s job that doesn’t involve collaboration.
When conducting user research and testing, we need to work closely with participants and earn their trust to generate high-quality information about their needs.
Likewise, when working on design solutions, we must be able to identify relevant business needs and understand how our work contributes to the creation of a product.
All of this requires effective conversations with product managers and other senior employees so that when a project is launched, we can efficiently detail the performance of a design and empower development teams with the information they need.
Hard Skills
1. Wireframing
UX designers need wireframing skills. Although wireframing may seem simple, it can be either excellent or poor. Which has a great impact on the final design result. Wireframing can also be used as product documentation; That is, designers who are building an application or website, consider Wireframing as a kind of guidance.
Wireframes are rough sketches or specified versions of the screen. They are important in UX design because they allow us to explore possible design solutions in fine detail without investing too much time and effort. Wireframes are used throughout digital design projects.
2. Visual design and UI
UX designers need basic skills in visual and UI design.
Good visual design skills and front-end design have not been part of UX design skills before.
But times have changed, and most UX designer hiring companies expect candidates to have a strong foundation of visual and UI design abilities.
3- Prototyping and testing in UX design
UX designers must create prototypes and lead user testing.
UX designers are often responsible for creating prototypes of product concepts that are then tested with groups of users.
Then, after doing UI and design work with high confidence, they test prototypes and final designs and gather user feedback about the product experience.
4. Research and analysis
UX designers must examine user needs and competing products through quantitative and qualitative research and structures. Much of the creative power of UX designers come from asking good questions.
Although industrial methods for conducting user research such as interviews, questionnaires, and observation still exist, the usefulness of research depends on critical thinking skills, which are called soft skills.
Above all, critical thinking and other soft skills are essential in understanding what information you need, and then designing questions that help you arrive at useful answers. In the analysis phase, critical thinking can help you understand what the data is telling you.
5. Organization of information (information architecture)
UX designers must be able to prioritize and organize complex sets of information. When creating digital products, UX designers must control information from both project management and product design perspectives.
Understanding how to organize information is what makes the difference between an attractive and efficient menu in an app, and a disappointing and confusing product design.
6. UX design for development
UX designers must understand how to create designs that follow development best practices.
UX designers don’t need to know how to code, but they do need to have a basic understanding of how programmers work. Programming is just as easy as creative design—perhaps more so—and developers aim to create code that is economical, modular, and efficient. Even a basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript designers can help in prototyping or designing. Interactive (interaction design) is useful. When dealing with interfaces, programming skills can help with a modular design.