UX design is one of the highest paid professions in the world today and as well as one of the most demanding. Being a successful UX designer requires a lot of determination, patience, hard work and willingness to improve every day.
As most top organizations realize the importance of user experience for their brand’s success, they are continually looking forward to hiring the best UX designers available for their organization’s websites and other apps. Being a strong choice for these top organizations is a sign that you are on the right path to becoming a successful UX designer and this demands a high level of quality and attitude.
Unlike some other professions, a 4 or 5 years university course is not very relevant to becoming a successful UX designer. UX design is a profession that allows for self-mastery. What this means is that you can certainly learn the ultimate UX skills on your own with dedicated self-study and constant tests and practices which will boost your confidence.
Therefore, before making a decision to take up a career in UX design, you must be certain that it is what you want. A passion for design and eye for design is one of the standout qualities of a successful UX designer as opposed to a mere hunger for money and wealth. It is important to have a genuine interest in technology and your quality of self-starting can also be of real help.
So, are you looking forward to being a successful UX designer and making a difference in this competitive field and in this era? Check out these tips, tricks, habits and wise strategies that will help you become a successful UX designer.
Let’s dive right in…
Pay Attention To Your Users
To create value for your users you‘ll need to pay attention to them.
Love is most times defined as conscious, intentional attention. So to fall in love with your users as Dana Chisnell suggests in the image above, you’d need to put in lots of energy and pay close attention to understanding and getting to know your users. And to do that, you must learn to listen. Great listening skills are very important in becoming a successful UX designer.
To understand anything in your design role, especially your users, you may have to ask lots of (and the right) questions and then really listen and take note of the answers.
Paying attention to your users can also mean observing, watching with no much need to converse. Observe and pay attention to your users beyond interviews and surveys. Try to explore the universe around them in relation to the problem you are trying to solve. Think like them, act like them, talk and reason like them for the entire period of your project. You can also use Empathy Maps to map out what they say, do, think and feel and use Personas to mostly understand what their needs are, their goals, their pain points, their mindsets, and how best to solve their problems.
Get Excited About Solving Problems
This is an important function of design: finding the users pain points, defining these pains and providing solutions. A problem-solving skill is a very important skill in being a successful UX designer. You need to be a natural problem-solver with great instincts in recognizing where a user’s pain lies and effectively creating an efficient solution to these pains. But even if you’re not a natural, that’s fine too! It’s a skill that can easily be learned through exercise by constantly and consciously trying to spot problems around your environment, paying close attention to the products, services and people you encounter and creating the habit of questioning and understanding what doesn’t work well and why.
As a designer, you want to see problems as opportunities, seeing that solving them is actually your core mission. An important point to note is that solving any type of problem starts with understanding it well enough. It may seem like common sense, but it’s not so common as oftentimes, most designers fail to research thoroughly, explore enough, and deeply understand the challenges they need to tackle with a product.
Understanding a problem is supported by asking lots and lots of relevant questions as many times as possible, with particular focus on Why’s and where’s. If the problem definition is not clear, then, the solution may not be right either. This is why too often so many products and services fail because they’re solving the wrong problems or not solving any problems at all
Develop key skills of a UX designer
But of course, to be a successful UX Designer, you definitely need the right skills. you will need to develop essential skills in user research and persona development, information architecture, wireframing and prototyping, and user testing, among others.
To become a successful UX designer, you will need to have the technical UX skills as well as the soft skills needed to excel in your career,
And not only do you need these skills, you need to constantly TEST YOUR SKILLS. Testing your skills allows you to grow and develop them. You have a knowledge of what skills you possess, where you are at your skill growth and how best to improve your skills.
You can test your skills using an online tool – simplifiedUX
