User experience design is a huge decider in the success and revenue of a company. It’s been proven that UX Design has an ROI of nearly 10,000%, as $1 invested can easily return up to $100. Because UX design is such a huge factor of how successful a company will be, it’s considered a really important skill and a lot of people may be considering user experience design as a career.
What does it take to become a user experience designer, however? Here are thirteen of the most necessary skills that will determine whether or not you have the chops to design user experiences the right way.
1. Ability to Visualize
If you want to be part of a digital product studio as a UX Designer, you need to be able to visualize. You need to be able to draw a picture in your head about how you want something to work or function if you want to be able to do it the correct way.
2. Customer Empathy
This is a big one. You need to be able to understand how someone else feels and thinks to design user experiences properly. 88% of online shoppers would avoid a site after a negative experience. This is important stuff. It can decide massive chunks of revenue for a business.
3. Voracious Appetite for Knowledge
Information is always changing and you need to be able to stay updated to be a good, effective UX designer. You need the information to problem solve – and you’re only going to get that if you have the drive necessary to acquire it.
4. Reasoning Skills & Logic
Of course, you need to have the necessary logic and reasoning skills, too. To be able to discern what’s a good idea – and a bad one – and put important ideas in place in a way that makes sense.
5. Research Skills & Ability to Analyze
You should be able to research trends, new important information, and analyze it in order to pull out what you need to design things correctly. This is one of the most important aspects in a UX Designer’s kit.
6. Ability to Accept Criticism
This is more of a general trait than some of the others, but if you cannot accept criticism about your design, you’ll never be able to improve. This is critical to your ability as a UX Designer to be effective when it comes to your work.
7. Ability to Understand Current Psychology Trends
It can help a lot in user experience design to be able to understand current psychology trends. What makes someone want to download an app? What keeps them logged in – what makes their attention stray, and how do we prevent that? This kind of information is really integral, and you should keep up to date on it.
8. Being Able to Create Prototypes of Ideas
It’ll help a lot in your UX Design career if you’re able to create proper prototypes of ideas. You need to be able to show off what you want your design to be with minimal investment to higher-ups and managers. It will help you get the ideas and designs you’re really passionate about into the projects you work on.
9. Being Able to Negotiate
This would be key when working with your supervisor or higher ups, or even other team members – you need to be able to convince and negotiate with them to follow your design and ideas, even when they may not agree with it personally.
10. Understanding Needs and Points of Frustration
Because about 13% of customers will tell 15 or more people about bad experiences, and 72% of customers will tell 6 people about good experiences, understanding needs and points of frustration is absolutely paramount. You need to be able to address problems before they happen and design an absolutely great experience for the user.
11. Technical Skills, Coding, and Understanding Platform/Software Limits
As great as being creative is, you need to understand what software or platform you’re working with. It will help you create things with realistic limitations and design in a way that can actually be carried out by other members of the team.
12. Curiosity is Necessary
You need to have a desire to learn more or experience other things. Practice and intense focus can solve most of the other issues with being a UX Designer, but curiosity and a drive to explore are necessary to truly succeed.
13. Connect Design With Business Outcomes
Finally, all the great design in the world doesn’t matter at all if you can’t connect that with the project or business in a meaningful way. Find methods that allow your designs and ideas to fit in perfectly with what the project lead or supervisor wants: or use your negotiation skills to make it happen that way, too. If your design doesn’t lead to sales or numbers, in the end, it’s going to be culled: so you have to prevent that from happening.