7 Types of UX Designer Skills to Master for Career Success
If you want to build a career in UX design, you need to bring the right UX designer skills to the table.
UX design (user experience design) is a high-demand industry with a lot of competition for top positions. In order to stand out, it’s important to cultivate UX skills that are well-suited to the goal of better, more meaningful user experiences. That starts with getting a clear idea of what those skills are – and how to develop them.
Whether you’re prototyping a new app or optimizing the functionality of an existing service, here are the UX designer skills that will take you further in the field and help you compete with the best when applying for jobs.
What Does a UX Designer Do?
A UX designer ensures that users have a positive interaction at all points of contact with a product or service. While it’s technically a tech-based profession, UX design reaches further to encompass everything from marketing and engineering to psychology and graphic design. It’s interdisciplinary by nature, since user interactions happen at multiple points between first and last engagement, and there are quite a few hard and soft skills that need to be mastered along the way.
Foundational UX Skills
Think of foundational UX designer skills as the essential building blocks that everyone involved in UX design needs to be proficient in. These skills are at the root of pretty much everything you’ll do, and are indispensable as you expand your career.
User Research
To create a truly great user experience, you need to know as much as possible about user intent, challenges, behaviors, and needs. A skilled UX designer understands how to do this research, as well as the importance of these insights in making informed design decisions.
User research is typically done in two ways:
Quantitative research – Statistical analysis of the correlations, patterns, and trends behind measurable user metrics.
Qualitative research – Observations and interpretations based on non-statistical data collected through user surveys, focus groups, and interviews.
It’s important to understand not just how users will interact with an asset but how they expect to interact with it. This requires proficiency in data collection and analysis, plus an ability to turn those insights into actionable progress in design development.
Wireframing and Prototyping
Wireframing and prototyping are among the most critical UI/UX designer skills, allowing you (and your management team) to envision what the end result will look like before building it into existence. Not only do these UX skills save you time on the back end, they also help you get familiar with how your ideas will play out when – and if – you put them into practice.
Not totally sure what these terms mean? Here’s a quick overview.
Wireframing is creating a two-dimensional, bare-bones representation of an interface. A wireframe gives you a big picture look at the features and functionalities that will be included in a design, minus the visual elements that will eventually guide users through the experience.
Prototyping means creating a sample of the end product, which can be evaluated and tested. A prototype can be as simple as a sketch on paper or as complex as an interactive mock-up that you navigate as the end user would.
Both of these basic UX designer skills help you visualize design concepts. They’re also part of the broader process of turning largely conceptual insights into usable design components.
Information Architecture (IA)
A UX designer must be able to organize the information within the end product in such a way that users can intuitively grasp what they’re doing and what will happen next. This process is known as information architecture.
Mapping out your IA in a visual format serves as a blueprint for how your product or service will function. It also provides your team with an operational map that can be referenced throughout the development process. And as a UX designer, you’ll want to be proficient in creating IA and interpreting it so you can support the structure of your design from start to finish.
Visual UX Skills
Visual UI/UX designer skills are where you get to really put your creativity to the test. These skills are related to the aesthetics of your product or service and, equally important, what these aesthetics communicate to users. Your portfolio is a fantastic place to display your visual skills, and should give potential employers a quick way to determine whether or not you understand the basics of visual UX requirements.
Typography and Color Theory
Typography (how text is displayed, arranged, and formatted) says a lot about a brand, and needs to be accessible and appealing to users. Meanwhile, color theory (how colors are used to impact emotions and perceptions), can make or break a visual interface and the harmony of the overall design.
They may seem like two separate concepts, but typography and color theory are closely related cousins in visual UX design. Tackle both concepts to improve your ability to streamline stunning design and ensure your products or services are inclusive to all users.
Graphic Design
UX designers need to have a firm grasp of graphic design skills like image creation and art direction. They should also have proficiency in photo editing software and digital illustration tools. All of these skills will come in handy when creating, modifying, and managing your projects, and will go a long way toward helping you craft visually appealing interfaces for your company and/or clients.
UI Design Principles
UI (user interface) design and UX design are often discussed as two sides of the same coin. More apt though is to consider UI as a subset of UX, with UI encompassing most of the visual aspects related to UX design but not the full scope of the process.
The underlying principles of UI design mirror those of UX design in many ways – i.e. accessibility, clarity, consistency, efficiency, and visual appeal. Keep them in mind as you go about your work, and pay close attention to not just how you’re achieving your goals visually but how your visuals are enhancing your wider UX initiatives.
Interaction Design UX Skills
User experience is as much about how a product or service feels to use as how it looks. UX designer skills related to interaction design are intended to ensure ease of use and create an intuitive flow from one action to the next. Navigational elements like buttons and menus are integral here, and should be as obvious to the end user as they are to you.
Microinteractions
Microinteractions are single-purpose tasks within the UX design framework. For example: to communicate status, to change a setting, or to “like” or “favorite” an item.
These small, interactive elements of UX design pull a lot of weight. Done well, they enhance user engagement and keep users on the path you’ve set out for them. Done poorly, they disrupt the flow of behavior, confuse the user, and, potentially turn them off of your product or service entirely. With so much riding on getting microinteractions right, it’s clear why they’re one of the top UX designer skills you need to have.
Animation Principles
Animation is central to UX design, but perhaps not in the way you think. Rather than the act of animating visuals, animation, as it relates to UX design, is more about the flow and fluidity of movement. Sure, there may be some actual animations involved in a seamless user experience, but it’s the principles themselves (timing, staging, anticipation, space orientation, and so on) that you need to have in your back pocket as a UX designer.
Feedback Loops
Just as you turn your key in a lock and the door opens, your users need to have a clear understanding of the reaction they’ll get for performing certain actions. These are called feedback loops, and they set up user expectations and allow them to navigate your product or service with ease.
You should know how to create feedback loops and how to optimize them for meaningful engagements. The intention with this skill is to not just satisfy your user’s expectations, but to strategically utilize feedback loops to influence behaviors and send your users down a desired path.
Usability Testing UX Skills
Successful UX design is all about how users actually experience your product, not just how you hope they will. And to that end, usability testing is key for discovering the obstacles and opportunities they’re facing as they move through various points of contact.
User Testing Techniques
There are many techniques that UX designers use to assess the usability of their product or service, including:
Card sorting
Heat mapping
Remote screenings
Click testing
Contextual inquiries
Your skills in this area come down to your knowledge about which techniques are best suited to a particular usability assessment and your ability to facilitate each test.
Some questions you should be able to answer as you go about user testing: Would this test be best performed remotely or in person? Is this technique closely mirroring a user’s natural environment? Does this test need to be done as a one-off, or do we need to collect multiple sets of data for comparison? Companies value UX designers for their ability to guide user testing and answer questions like these, especially regarding efficiency in testing and product development.
Analytical Skills
Your user testing data only has value if you know how to interpret it. For that reason, your design skills must include the ability to pull out insights from usability test results and put them to use to refine and improve designs.
Good analytics start before testing itself. Be able to clearly define in advance what you’re trying to learn from each assessment and have a plan for how you’re going to collect and organize your data. From there, you can take your results and draw conclusions within that more narrow, more accessible framework.
Coding and Technical Proficiency UX Skills
Basic coding and technical skills will broaden the horizons of what you can achieve in UX design. So if you think you might want to move up into an executive role – or if you have an interest in UX engineering or development – be sure to add these core technical skills to your arsenal of UX designer skills.
HTML/CSS
Foundational coding skills will take you far in UX design. You likely won’t have to do any coding yourself, but having these skills will improve your ability to understand and communicate effectively with developers. They’ll also help you make more informed design decisions since you’ll know what’s realistic versus what sounds good in theory but would be hard to actually put into practice.
Familiarity with Design Tools
At the heart of all UX teams is a stack of design tools that help bring their ideas to life.
Applications like Sketch, Figma, InVision, and Adobe XD empower UX design in a multitude of ways, from creating project workflows to prototyping and testing your products or services. Which design tools you’ll ultimately be using depends on who you’re working for and what you’re building, but it won’t hurt to have a cursory understanding of the most popular options before you start applying for jobs.
Soft UX Skills
In UX design, as in most career fields, soft skills are necessary for getting where you want to go. Here, the reasons are twofold: one, soft skills help you connect and collaborate with your team; and two, soft skills help you put yourself in your users’ shoes and design a product or service that genuinely meets their needs.
Communication
UX design does not operate in a silo. You’ll be in constant communication with other departments, and will be expected to articulate design decisions and function well with other teams.
Some of the communications you’ll be doing will be obvious, such as emails with your project manager or actionable responses to stakeholder concerns. Others will be more abstract, such as the subtle ways you communicate intent to your users within the designs you create.
As you get more confident in your role, you should be able to communicate more efficiently. But come in with a baseline understanding of how to best get your point across and you’ll be miles ahead of those who struggle to articulate their thoughts and ideas to those around them.
Empathy
Empathy is your ability to understand how someone else feels. This skill helps you create designs that cater to your users' needs and goes hand-in-hand with making the most of the clinical data you collect through user research.
Your ability to empathize is somewhat tied to your personality. However, it’s also something that you can develop with targeted practice. As much as possible, challenge yourself to examine your biases and exhibit curiosity for the world around you. You’ll learn to question narrow thinking and, in turn, open your mind to how others might experience what you’re creating.
Adaptability
UX design is rarely a linear process. You should be able to adapt on the fly, navigating evolving project requirements and industry trends as they happen instead of getting thrown off course. Disruptions can and will happen, and if you can weather the storm you’ll bring a lot of value to your team and stakeholders.
Continuous Learning UX Skills
Industry shifts are part and parcel of UX design, and it’s up to you to stay on top of them. A love of learning will take you far, as will dedicating time to staying informed on new industry developments, tools, trends, and platforms.
Staying Updated
You’ll spend a lot of time becoming skilled in the basic standards and practices of UX design. And then before you know it, new expectations will pop up and you’ll have to change course and adapt.
Staying updated on these new expectations as they occur puts you in the driver’s seat of changing circumstances and helps you grow as a designer. It also helps you exhibit passion for what you do and the field at large.
Professional Development
Speaking of growing as a designer, don’t neglect professional development. It’s a real skill to know what you don’t know and be willing to learn. Likewise, exploring resources for ongoing skill development can only help you as you move onward and upward in your UX design career.
To Improve Design, UX Designers Have to Improve Their Skills
All of the skills mentioned above are important, and they’re all skills you can learn if you put in the time and effort. Our mission at Ideate Labs is to help you do it, and we offer UX design courses, workshops, and mentorship opportunities that help you cultivate your talents and take your career in the right direction. Enroll in a course today and let’s work together to develop the skills you need to make your mark in the world of UX design.