Skills to have as a UX designer
Tags: Ux Writing, UX Research, UX, UX Design, Skills Development

Naturally, as a UX designer you should possess skills that can make you a qualified UX designer. Many a time, people call themselves UX designers without examining themselves thoroughly if they have what it takes to be a UX designer. Today, I will show you what skills you should have before considering yourself a UX designer.

As a UX designer, you can have the very common skills which I will be discussing shortly but to be fully imbibed into the UX life, you have to possess some really inevitable skills.

Common Skills to have as a UX designer

Communication

Before you call yourself a UX designer you should understand the need of communication. Most of the tasks you will be working on will definitely require communication with either your team members, target users, stakeholders including others. Communication is a key aspect of UX design because you need to understand the pain points, goals and how to satisfy your target users.

Empathy

This is a very important skill you must possess / acquire as a UX designer. Empathy is needed to help share the feelings of the target users towards the product being created. As a UX designer, you should be empathetic towards building a product so you don’t build a product that suits your lifestyle rather than a product that is useful, usable and functional to the target users.

Organization

This cannot be emphasized better. Organization matters a lot as a UX designer. UX designers work with numerous documents ( interview results from the users, jottings made during meeting with stakeholders or team members ) which could become very messy when not properly documented. Being a UX designer, organizing your documents will help you stay focused.

Inevitable skills to be acquired as a UX designer

User research

This is a very important step in the whole UX process as it is the backbone of every project. The reason behind my statement is, without User Research, you would not totally understand your target audience’s pain points, needs and goals. But if proper research were carried out thoroughly on your target users, you will understand them better and create a better product to solve all of their difficulties and help them achieve their set goals. Hence, User Research is a key skill to have as a UX designer.

“User Research is the backbone of every project”

Information architecture

Information architecture refers to the organization of information in an effective, accessible, and meaningful way. The role of information architecture has become all the more significant. A good information architecture ensures that whenever a user enters your site or app, they know exactly where to go for the information they need and can easily navigate to it. Tasks in this skill set include producing and implementing site maps, labeling systems, and organizing navigational structures in ways that would feel intuitive to a user.

Wireframing & Prototyping

Wireframing & Prototyping is a crucial component of UX design. They allow UX designers quickly communicate their ideas with team members, stakeholders and target users. Wireframes could be a simple white and black post designed on a wireframing tool and could go to the extent of designing a high-fidelity design mock-up so your team members, stakeholders or target users could see the bigger picture of what message you are passing without hitch.

Technically, these are the major skills to have as a UX designer including some minor others. But without the above skill set, it will be a very daunting task for a UX designer to create a useful, usable and functional product.