User experience (UX) design is the entire process done by UX designers, including designing and implementing services that offer an enhanced, integrated set of experiences to the user.

With an ever-evolving demand for UX design skills, beginners often find themselves at crossroads with design requirements, technologies, and individuals with varying competencies. Here we cover the most critical skills needed that can transform a person from a mediocre to a great UX designer.

Hard Skills for UX Designers

Hard skills are the technical, functional, and measurable abilities you possess. As a UX designer, the essential hard skills you need are:

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1. User Research 

A crucial make or break UX design skill, user research determines how you connect your user-centric product to the market and the company’s vision/mission. The skillset includes thorough user identification, background research, competitor product research, and other quantitative-qualitative research.

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2. Information Architecture 

You need to have organizational skills for handling and controlling complex sets of data — structured and unstructured — on a priority basis. Then, you can further mold this information into an architecture for an easy navigational experience through the website/product. Here you can read the article about information architecture in UX and how to make it.

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3. Wireframing

As a UX designer, you’ll first draw rough sketches or blueprints of the website screen, known as wireframes, including low-fidelity/early-stage wireframes and high-fidelity/later stage wireframes. This UX design skill is used throughout the design process, and it is essential for catching possible mistakes in the interface.

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4. Prototyping and Interaction Design 

By creating prototypes quickly and efficiently, you can test the functionality and navigation, ensuring that users and the system connect before the end product is created.

As a UX designer, you will create early-stage prototypes of websites for initial user testing and later stage prototypes for detailed user experience testing. This is interaction design: understanding how the users interact with your design.

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5. Visual Communication 

Visual communication skills refer to the designer’s ability to communicate with users through the signals received by their eyes:

• Layout design should be used for proper information presentation on the screen and page-to-page.
• Color should be used for adding emphasis, improving recognition, organizing, and making an emotional impact.
• Typography involves the laying out of words, either in motion or static, for invoking human emotion.
• Icons are added for quick-symbolic reach, organization, increased engagement, and visual effects.
• Images convey your website’s message visually to the user.

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Soft Skills for UX Designers

Soft skills include the interpersonal and character traits:‍

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1. User Empathy 

This is the skill of being able to understand someone’s needs and emotions and is key to a great UX designer. You should be able to attach to your user’s mind and understand their personas. FlowMapp is perfect for uncovering key customer moments and emotional user experience instances.

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2. Collaboration 

This is the ability to listen to other team members, speak, and provide constructive feedback. It lays the groundwork for efficient work strategies. This involves acknowledging different viewpoints, talents, and principles.

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3. Analytical Skills 

The quick-thinking analytical ability is developed over time with extensive user research, user analysis, team collaboration, user empathy, wireframing, and other vital skills.

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As a UX designer, the key is to constantly learn, evolve, and practically integrate these skills with the aim of designing products that offer impactful user-centric experiences.