We understand that the longer most of us are in a job, the more we consider ourselves to be experts at that job but little tips to improve your UX design skills may be just what you need to up your game. It is worth remembering that learning never ends and even the best professionals at a job still have learnings to be done.
In the face of an ever fast-evolving technological universe, even the world’s most respected designers understand the need for continuous learning. In order to make sure you are delivering the best possible results for the users, it is important to keep challenging your habitual practices and constantly push yourself to do better.
In this post, we’ll look at seven simple tips on how to improve your UX design skills which may require you to step out of your comfort zone, refine your skills, and become a more confident and experienced designer.
Here are 6 tips to improve your UX design skills:
1. Get Curious
People who are open and curious tend to orient their lives around an appreciation of novelty and a strong urge to explore, discover, and grow. Researches have recently shown that being an open, curious person is linked to healthy social outcomes.
One of the important tips to improve your UX design skills is to get curious. Curiosity is a lot about being nosey. You have to follow what you want to know, ask the right questions, seek the right answers, keep digging.
When you are digging into user experience (UX) discovery, you need to be unafraid to ask as many questions as you need to ask. Let your curiosity run wild with questions that will help you create and design better.
And if you get a chance to talk to real users, that’s even better!. That can be considered a treat in any UX design project. A chat with users is a great chance to dig into what makes them thick when it comes to using your designs. The beautiful thing about users is they often compare their experiences across several products, and having a conversation with them can unveil a lot of great insight.
2. Trim Your Communication
As UX designers, we have vocabularies and technical terms that can be considered as in-house terms which the average user does not use or understand. For example, most users have not heard of heuristics or phenomenology and these users really don’t care much about these terms anyways.
These kinds of technical terms are fine within the UX community but when trying to communicate with the rest of the organization and end users, these terms need to go into the bin. Throw them away, delete them.
Our clients are the stakeholders in our project. One of the tips to improve your UX design skills is to use the language that our clients and users understand when we communicate with them. If you’re not doing that – you are definitely alienating them.
3. Start Networking
Before you even land your first job, it is important that you have started networking.
The real magic of UX happens when you start meeting people who share the same goals and values. Showing up and participating at events is one tip to growing a meaningful network. your network is how your land great jobs like website design for big brands and how you grow and do your job even better.
Try out different ways of approaching and talking to people, it may be physical or virtual. Learn to reach out to people you admire, the worst that can happen is getting an unpleasant reply or no reply at all.
Therefore, while in the process of trying to network, you must be prepared to fail often, to fail fast, and finally to learn and try again
4. Conduct a UX Audit
In lots of roles in busy organizations, activities tend to be focused on just completing tasks. We get our tasks, we complete them, we communicate the results and we move on to the next project. There is usually very little time for a pause and reflection. This process of doing things most times gives room for us to build products with flaws.
Sometimes, it is important to take a pause and go through your previous work, your processes, the results and it’s functionality. Among the tips to improve your UX design skills is to ask questions about the effectiveness and value of your work and take time to resolve and improve your processes based on the answers.
Some questions you may want to ask includes:
- Does this product still function effectively in the way it was intended when it was created?
- What does the product’s data tell about users’ behavior and their needs?
- Where do users experience difficulties in understanding the product’s navigation or functionality?
- What can be potentially changed to improve the product’s performance?
A UX audit will help you to find and resolve problems in your product, and can increase your product’s conversion rates, its usability and improve user experience.
5. Try New Tools
It’s always a good idea to try out new tools. It’s not just one of the tips to improve your UX design skills, there are also career benefits to learning how to work with the right tools. The right knowledge about the right tools can land you the right jobs.
Research on tools, ask questions, follow the trends. A good new tool will make the job faster and easier.
6. Test Yourself
It is not enough to have skills and knowledge about UX design, it is important to improve them. One of the relevant tips to improve your UX design skills is to constantly test your skills, are you improving? Are you stagnant? Do you need more classes? More skill improvement goals?. You want to give yourself the chance to grow by always knowing where you are in your career skills and what steps you need to take to improve your skills.
We have created a UX design tool that will allow UX designers(beginner and experts) to test their skills and set improvement skill goals for themselves. Try out SimplifiedUX here.
In conclusion,
As a UX designer, you must never stop striving for self-improvement and development. With new software and tools continuously being introduced, it is essential to continually upgrade your skillset in order to make sure you’re designing the best possible interface for the user.
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