What Makes a Good UX Designer? 10 Traits You Should Follow
If you are just starting your journey in UX designing, then you must be aware of all the latest trends and upcoming tools. From working on a friendly design to providing a memorable experience to your users, there are so many things that you need to take care of. After all, that is what makes a good UX designer, right?
The overall design of your product can be a dealbreaker for your users and it is important to have a good UX designer in any company. To help you become a better designer, I have come up with this post, including several expert tips. Without much ado, let's learn how to become a good UX designer with these practices.
Source: Userpeek
Trait 1: A Good UX Designer is Never Satisfied
Truth to be told, UX designing is one of the most demanding industries out there. With so many changes and emerging technologies, it is never feasible to know it all. Therefore, if you want to be a good UX designer, then you should never be satisfied.
Learning is an evident (and the most important part) of UX designing and you should keep it as an ongoing practice. For instance, you should keep learning new courses, watch online videos, subscribe to newsletters, and master emerging technologies to keep yourself ahead in the game.
Trait 2: Good UX Designers Maintain a Balance between Analytical and Creative Thinking
While working on different kinds of products, you need to make sure that you find a balance between analytical and creative thinking. What makes a good UX designer is how they can apply the most creative approach by meeting the overall business goals.
At first, you need to keep all the analytics and business-related things in mind. For example, consider the budget, the business model, your target audience, and other vital details. At the same time, try to be more imaginative and have an outward approach while designing any product. This will help you apply your creative side while still meeting the business goals of your company.
Source: Vault
Trait 3: A Good UX Designer Always Has a Plan B, C, (and even D)
Do you know that according to a report by Harvard Business School, around 95% of the newly introduced products fail in the market every year? A bad user experience is one of the major reasons for this and it can easily be avoided by a good UX designer.
While working on the overall user experience design, you should never stick to a single plan of action. To learn how to become a good UX designer, you should come up with several contingency plans (like Plan B, C, or even D). According to the performance of your product and its feedback, you can easily work on another plan of action without any delay.
Trait 4: A Good UX Designer Makes the End Product Intuitive (and Easy to Understand)
Ideally, any new product has a learning curve, which defines how easy (or hard) it is to use the interface of the product. When a good UX designer works on a product, they need to think of the proficiency and experience of their end-users.
Source: Jshakespeare
If your project is specific to a certain audience, then you can make it a bit complex, depending on their experience and proficiency. Though, if it is a generic product, then you should make it intuitive and easy to understand. What makes a good UX designer is to ensure that the learning curve of the product is minimum so that anyone can utilize it without prior experience (or going through the user manual).
Trait 5: A Good UX Designer Should Hold a Strong Holistic View
Every good UX designer knows that the design thinking process is not linear. The best way to work on a foolproof design is by having a holistic approach to the overall environment.
In simple words, to know how to become a good UX designer, you should think from the perspective of your audience. To do this, you can use dedicated tools (like Wondershare Mockitt) that would provide an instant preview of the designs and let you check them from a user's perspective. This will let you achieve deep and meaningful learning of designs across all user-interaction levels.
Trait 6: Good UX Designers Excel in Collaboration and Teamwork
If you are an experienced UX designer, then you might already know that it is not a one-man job anymore. These days, managers, quality experts, copywriters, and other professionals also collaborate on the UX design process.
Therefore, if you want to become a good UX designer, then you should learn how to collaborate with others and work in a team. The best way to achieve this is by using a dedicated designing application like Wondershare Mockitt. With a tool like this, you can upload your work on its cloud and collaborate with the entire team in one place. It will also let you assign different roles to your colleagues for seamless collaboration.
Trait 7: A Good UX Designer Would Follow Multiple Methodologies to Do Customer Research
Coming up with an overall UX design for your product is not enough and you need to conduct testing and market research. What makes a good UX designer is your overall will to be involved in different research methodologies.
From surveys to focus groups and interviews to observations, there are all kinds of techniques to do customer research. These days, A/B testing is also conducting extensively in which two different interfaces are tested. Later, we devise the conversion rates for both options to pick the more effective design.
Source: Orderhive
Trait 8: Good UX Designers Don't Solely Rely on Their Own Judgment
It might sound surprising, but one of the best ways to have a holistic approach to your designs is by relying on the judgment of others. Just like any other creative process, you can also be stuck in the bottleneck and have a one-dimensional view of the design at times.
To overcome this problem, good UX designers seek the help of others and don't solely rely on their judgment. As I have listed above, performing an A/B or multi-option testing is one of the best ways to know how your designs are perceived. There are several other ways to know what your prospective audience or clients would think of the design that every good UX designer should explore.
Trait 9: A Good UX Designer Never Stops (Even if the Product has been Built)
This is a rookie mistake that can easily distinguish a good UX designer from the crowd. If you also think that your work stops after coming up with the final product, then you are wrong.
What makes a good UX designer is having an understanding of the overall design thinking and implementation process. After all, it is an iterative process that starts with ideation and prototyping, but it doesn't end at the implementation step.
Source: Serverless
Even after you have implemented your designs, you need to get the feedback of your audience to identify what isn't working in the right way and what can be improved. To become a good UX designer, you need to redo the process over and over again for keeping your products up to date and futureproof.
Trait 10: A Good UX Designer makes the Solution Obvious and Universally Appealing
Last, but most importantly, you should make sure that you provide a simple and effective experience to the end-user. To achieve that, work on obvious solutions that are easy to implement and won't need any learning experience.
Apart from that, to learn how to become a good UX designer, you should try to make your work universally appealing. Ideally, anyone should be able to use your designs, irrespective of cultural boundaries.
One of the best ways to achieve this is by using different color codes that are considered the same universally. For instance, you can use green to depict something fresh or earthy while purple has always been associated with luxury or royalty. In the same way, you can use red as a cancel option while green can be used to show acceptance in your interface. Feel free to implement all kinds of color codes and other tactics to make your designs obvious and universally acceptable.
Source: UXStudio
Now when you know how to become a good UX designer, you can certainly work on these traits to enhance your skills. As you can see, a good UX designer should not only be technically aware but must be open to learning new technologies and tools. One of the best ways to improve your designs is by using a tool like Wondershare Mockitt that would let you work with your team in one place. Feel free to explore this professional designing tool and share this guide with your colleagues to teach them what makes a good UX designer too!
