The profession of a UX designer is demanding. It necessitates constant upgradation in the knowledge related to design.
Here are a few tips to keep yourself updated:
Set Goals
Constant learning is essential to keep yourself polished as an expert UX designer. So, you should practice constantly.
But, random practice will not work. You should practice methodically, setting reasonable goals.
Again, do not jump into accomplishing your goals straight away. Instead, you should prioritize your goals.
You can set many goals. In such a case, you can get lost in deciding what to achieve. Therefore, you should clearly define what you want to achieve. And you should formulate the appropriate action plan.
Importantly, you should not set easily achievable goals. Instead, you should set challenging goals. It will help you develop efficiency and skill to do away with challenges, making you a great professional and an asset for user experience design companies.
Here is a four-step process to help you achieve your goals:
- Set achievable goals
- Set deadlines against each goal
- Put a reminder in the calendar about the deadlines
- Reward yourself upon achieving your goals
- Assess what went wrong if you fail to achieve your goals
Practice Active Listening
Keeping the ears open is another effective way to learn. So, you should develop the habit of listening.
Again, you can divide listening into two main categories: passive and active.
Passive listening is the act of listening with little motivation to listen carefully. For example, a passive listener might pretend to appear listening to look polite.
On the other hand, active listening is careful listening. In this listening, the listener concentrates, understands, responds and then remembers the topic that was spoken. Notably, active listening makes communication smooth.
Active listening makes a better UX designer. And, to become good at active listening, you should:
- Allow the speaker to speak first
- Listen more, speak less
- Avoid answering questions with questions
- Avoid dominating the conversation
- Do not speak what others say
- Maintain the conversation on what the speaker says, and not what you like it or not
- Respond after the speaker finishes speaking, not during the speaker speaking
Develop Storytelling Skills
Communication plays a significant role in the entire design process, in which you need to communicate with your client now and then.
Using the storytelling method is one of the most effective ways of communicating.
The members can create the best design if your team understands the story behind the final product. So, you can regard storytelling as an essential skill for UX designers.
You can better engage your audience with the help of the skill. And it also helps provide the best user interface design service.
Here are a few tips to help you tell effective stories:
- Try to understand the story of the brand thoroughly. It will also help you to know about the design subject. If you do not know, you will miss out on many ideas. Therefore, try to learn about the brand as much as possible before starting to design.
- Creating storyboards is an excellent idea as they represent the story. It can help you to present your ideas.
Formulate More than One Idea
Before starting a design project, you might tend to formulate one idea. And many designers do that. But, you should have more than one idea in your mental kitty.
When you have a single idea, it is challenging to figure out whether it is good or bad.
As such, try to generate more than one idea. And assess the ideas, and settle on the best one.
Ditch the Urge to be Perfect
You might be a perfectionist. But, there can be a downside to it. You might spend too much time and energy in your attempt to create a perfect project. And that can result in missing deadlines.
Conclusion
As we said earlier, UX designers cannot stop the learning process. If they do so, their competency will erode. Therefore, they should keep on learning to provide the best services.