How To Become a Better UX Designer
A UX designer is a part of the entire process when it comes to acquiring an idea for a product and turning the idea into a reality. Throughout the initial stages of the project and throughout its development, a UX designer role is critical to the project’s success.
One of the challenges that comes with any role, within any industry, is improving yourself in your role and that’s exactly the case for a UX Designer. Not only as a designer but someone who is influential to the customer’s experience of the product, a continual need for improvement is important.
So in what ways can a UX designer improve their knowledge and skills within their domain? In this article, you’ll discover ten tips for any UX designers that want to excel and elevate their abilities. Whether you’re a designer yourself or you have someone in your team that needs improvement, these tips should be useful.
1. Start off with some personal goals
Personal goals are great for helping motivate any employee and as a designer, it’s useful to have a personal development timeline in place. Remember to make these goals within an easy reach, rather than them being impossibly difficult to accomplish. That will likely have the opposite effect in motivating you or your designer.
According to a Harvard Business Study, 14% of individuals studied, who had goals, were 10 times more successful than those without goals. It just goes to show having any type of goal can be useful to the employee not only for them but for the rest of their team.
So if you’re setting some personal goals, make them attainable. Add a deadline where necessary and find time to check back in to see how much progress you’re making. Don’t forget that once those goals are achieved, a reward is welcome.
2. Make use of user analytics and testing
By a user experience design definition, it’s all about creating a relationship between the product and the person using it.
As a designer, the user’s experience is often one of mystery and a mix of data and testing can provide clarity. It’s a great way to understand the audience you’re targeting and through testing, you can put those theories or features to the test.
In order to acquire this knowledge in the first place, you want to make use of what’s available immediately to you. Whether this is through sales data, marketing data such as website traffic, etc. There are lots of resources where data can be found within the company, so dig for it.
Usability testing is part and parcel of a lot of UX/UI design and so it’s worth introducing some of it into the designer’s development. Testing can help provide real results, whether they’re positive or negative. Many UX designers will go through many user testing sessions, throughout the process of development in order to get the product just right.
3. Become a master of storytelling
Storytelling is a wonderful way of communicating with your users. For a UX designer, it’s all about creating the best experience possible from start to finish. From the moment the user comes across the product to the point at which they come off it.
Using storytelling is not just handy for the development of the product itself but for other parts of the development process. The project is a collaborative one and so some of the design work may need to be pitched to stakeholders or the project manager, for example.
By telling stories, you have a much better opportunity to keep your audience engaged – and for longer might we add. LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community found that whilst audience relevance is number one for content effectiveness at 58%, compelling storytelling comes in second at 57%.
Start developing your storytelling skills through everything you do as a designer.
4. Let go when it comes to the idea of perfection
Most of us will want to get as close to perfection as we can. For some, in anything they do in life, perfection is something they strive to achieve. The reality of life though is that perfection doesn’t exist.
As a designer, you’re going to make mistakes and the user’s experience is one that won’t always be 100% accurate. Why? Well, you can’t control what every single user of the product does and how they behave when engaging with the product.
You also can’t please everyone in life, so the product’s user experience design won’t be for everyone. If you spend too much time trying to achieve perfection, the product will never hit the market or at least on time. That means a lot of wasted investment and hours spent on something that perhaps could have been launched earlier and with less extra effort.
5. Get back to basics with pen and paper
As a designer in this modern day and age, a lot of the design work that’s done is likely to be on a computer. Whilst a computer or piece of software can be effective when designing, sometimes it’s good to just get back to basics with a pen and paper.
Sketching is a great way to help develop digital products without actually having digital within sight. Digital products can often limit our creativity, whereas a pen and paper is limitless in it’s design capabilities.
This can be a great way to develop and brainstorm ideas or to try and communicate a feature that you’re trying to create but it’s simply not working via the digital tools you’re using. It might sound old-fashioned, but trust us, it works.
6. Use the right tools and software to assist your work
For design development, there’s a lot of digital tools and software available that can help assist your work or of the designer in question. You could be a pro at UX design but using a computer or technology in general can be a great way to help advance your ideas or features.
It can also be helpful when you’re trying to troubleshoot problems or to speed up parts of the design so that you can get more done. 36% of digital marketers use online tools or graphic design software alone to create visual content. The need for it in industries beyond just the design world is apparent.
A few great suggestions worth looking at for UX design in particular are:
- Maze – Useful for remote user testing.
- Sketch – Great for design.
- Axure – For prototyping and developer hand off.
- Origami Studio – For more advanced design capabilities.
This is just a small selection of what’s available on the market for digital tools and software. There’s a lot more to explore and compare!
7. Recycle what’s worked before and adapt it
Sometimes, the best way of creating excellent products is by utilizing what you’ve done successfully before. It’s worth recycling any work, where applicable, and then adapting it to the current project’s needs.
If you have the experience of finishing UX projects before, explore the insights that you get from that product. Use these insights to solve existing problems you’re having or to guide you in the creation of your new product to avoid all the issues you faced that time previously.
8. Collaborate where you can
Collaboration is definitely an important one, especially as there’s likely to be other individuals working on the product itself. Whether they’re in development, marketing or managing the project itself. There’s a lot that you can do in the way of collaboration that can not only inspire you but to help others find the answers to the issues or fixes that need to be made.
For UX designers, collaboration is a great way to improve yours or their skillset. There’s also more appreciation for others who are working on other parts of the project.
9. Stay inspired by watching what others are doing
Design is creativity and a lot of creativity needs inspiration. You can find inspiration in everything you do in daily life, whether it’s in the workplace or outside of it. As a designer, it’s always good to stay switched on with what’s going on around you and to pluck inspiration from things that could help you develop your skills further.
Listen to others, read a lot of content from other designers and digest as much of this as you can so that you can adapt it to your work.
10. Be open to constructive criticism
Finally, be open to constructive criticism. No one likes to be told that they’re doing something wrong or that there’s improvements needed. However, it can all contribute to a better project and for the designer to ultimately get better at the role.
Be committed to improving as a UX designer
Regardless of how experienced or successful a UX designer becomes, there’s always room for improvement. So with that being said, spend the time on improving your craft wherever possible. From collaboration and accepting constructive criticism, to setting goals and letting go of perfection, it’s all relevant to better yourself as a designer in user experience.