Remember when Elon Musk said, "any product that needs a manual is broken"? This quote pretty much summarizes which type of UX design skills you should master.
To put it simply, User Experience (UX) refers to any user's interaction with apps or websites. More than aesthetically pleasing, the point is to create a smooth and intuitive experience for the user. When the user needs a manual to understand how to purchase a shirt on a clothing app, then they will probably look for another shirt in a different app.
Table of Content
- Why Are UX Design Skills Important?
- 10 Technical Skills For UX Designers
- UX writing
- Research on User Persona
- Wireframing & Prototyping
- Mockup & Client Stream
- Information architecture
- Visual plan and plan programming
- Client examination and convenience testing
- Application development
- Data Engineering
- Agile
- Last Thoughts On UX Design
Why Are UX Design Skills Important?
UX design skills are important to satisfy the user's needs. The scope is to create a positive experience to build a loyal audience and increase a company's leads. In short, users have a good experience when they feel as if they have always been using that website or app.
Just think about it. People go on apps and websites to accomplish a certain action with the minimum effort. When completing a step becomes too complex, 90% of users stop using the app looking for alternatives. Pioneer in User Experience and Information Architecture Peter Morville isolates seven principles to create a great user experience: Useful, Usable, Findable, Credible, Desirable, Accessible, and Valuable.
The core idea behind these principles is that the aesthetic of the app or website is strictly related to its usability. In other words, an app is beautifully made when colors and features make the users' life as simple as possible.
Let's look at the 10 technical UX design skills anyone needs to create a smooth and interactive experience for users.
10 Technical Skills For UX Designers
1. UX writing
UX writing includes every visual feature on the interface. From headings, microcopies to buttons and menu bars, UX designers take care of everything. Based on users' feedback and responses, the writing process aims to improve the usability and readability of the interface. Each element is created to guide users from the beginning to the end, encouraging them to stay on the page and complete different actions.
2. User Persona
Without in-depth research on user personas, it's impossible to create a good UX design. User research happens at the beginning of the process to target UX writing features. This research includes creating buyer personas, identifying several elements such as demographics, motivations, behaviors, and habits. Further, UX designers analyze competitors to find alternative visual strategies to capture users' attention and empathize with the product.
3. Wireframing & Prototyping
To a considerable extent, a UX designer's research is based on User Feedback. At the beginning of the development process, wireframing (a blueprint of the product concept) and prototyping the app/website are crucial strategies to gather information. Combined with research on buyer personas, collecting (and interpreting) users' feedback is necessary to target and design visual features on the interface.
4. Mockup & Client Stream
Another important UX design skill is creating mockups and client streams. The first is a visual model of the page, like what clients can usually do with self-guided web design software, and the next one is a graph visualizing the customer journey. Strictly related to wireframes and prototypes, a UX design needs to understand the user's actions to adjust visual elements and graphics.
5. Information Architecture
When it comes to user experience, aesthetics connect with usability. Information architecture is the process of organizing content to show users the interface's functionalities. The scope is to overview the app/website options to adjust each on the user's journey.
6. Visual Plan
Together with UI designers, UX designers need a basic understanding of visual plan programming tools like Figma, Sketch, Photoshop, or Illustrator, to create the visual components. Visual planning also includes shading hypothesis, typography, format, symbols, and general plan hypothesis.
7. Client Examination and Convenience Testing
To create a focus-user interface, client examination and convenience tests are the last steps. Creating a model based on future customers' needs, you can guide clients through the app and show how the design encourages actions on the page. This stage is crucial to make your clients approve the model. So, it's important to include data from surveys and client streams to illustrate the visual components and flow of the interface.
8. Application Development
Even if UX designers aren't programmers, among UX design skills, you should include an understanding of basic coding languages like JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. It's important to understand coding scripts to collaborate with the dev team actively and coordinate the software functions with visual components you need to engage the user.
9. Data Engineering
Data design (IA) is now one of the most popular methods to organize content. UX designers extensively use it to create visual documentation for their clients and send them updates.
10. Agile
Finally, UX designers work with other departments, from marketing to sales and development. Along with communication and collaboration skills, it's wise to include Agile (or other project management methods) among UX design skills. Especially working remotely, practical experience with these tools can speed up the process increasing collaboration across departments.
Last Thoughts On UX Design Skills
To recap, the first UX design skill is thinking about and empathizing with your users. Remember what we said in the beginning? When a user needs a manual to navigate an interface, that's a bad example of UX design. The secret to creating a great user experience is to transform the aesthetic in usability, putting yourself in the user's shoes.
About the author:
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/costanza-tagliaferri-1a00789a/
Role: Content Writer
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