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Why you should read this?
Are you tired of feeling stagnant in your UX career, unsure of how to improve your skills?
Continuous improvement is essential to achieving success in UX Design, but without a clear direction or starting point, it’s extremely challenging to make progress.
After years of trial and error in my UX Design career, I’ve found the top 5 most actionable and realistic UX practices that will help you on this journey.
By using these practices as your North Star ⭐, you can boost your skills, knowledge, and achieve your UX career goals faster.
Let’s dive in 👇
Practice 1: Learn the UX Design basics and fundamentals
The foundation of UX design lies in understanding the basics and fundamentals.
Without this basic knowledge, you can’t build or create designs that work for users.
Here are the 3 most crucial Design fundamentals to get familiarised with:
- Principles of visual hierarchy, colour theory, typography, and layout design.
- User research methods such as surveys, interviews, and usability testing to understand user needs and behaviour.
- How to create user personas, user journeys, and wireframes to effectively communicate design solutions.
If there’s too much information and knowledge for you to consume, I’d suggest you focus on learning from a few credible sources first.
Avoid over-consuming and under-applying
Check out my UX Playbook for a step-to-step, all-in-one Design process guideline.
More actionable tips and fewer headaches:
Join designers from 40+ countries using UX Playbook. Get detailed step-by-step guides and templates to supercharge your UX process. Get instant access to UX Playbook
Practice 2: Go Beyond UX Design
Although design knowledge is essential to learn, what makes you successful as a UX Designer is your solid understanding and implementation of other disciplines in your design, including:
This knowledge ensures that your designs are:
✅ Practical, accessible, and usable (meet the actual needs of users)
❌ NOT just pretty UI design
In addition, as you advance in UX, you need to understand how the product you work on impacts your company’s business goals and objectives.
So start learning about Business Acumen, Sales Strategy, and Finance/Investment Basics as early as you can in your UX career.
Practice 3: Find your UX Design niche
As UX design is evolving and expanding constantly, the KEY for you to stand out and become a sought-after Designer:
Find a specialised niche that you’re passionate about and become an expert in it
This practice helps you:
- Provide more specialised, effective solutions to design problems
- Create more targeted and successful user experiences
- Differentiate yourself in the job market
- Increase your value to employers
For example, you can position yourself as:
Mobile App design, E-commerce design, or Healthcare design,…
Build your portfolio around your expertise in this niche + the solutions you’ve created
Practice 4: Learn from other UX Designers
Learning from others is the best way for UX Designers to gain:
- Valuable insights
- Constructive feedback
- Opportunities for growth and collaboration in your UX career
I've learned that the more Designers I talk to, the more successful my design approach becomes as it’s helped broaden my perspective.
If you don’t know any UX Designer personally, you can always find them through:
- Joining and contributing to UX Design communities like APDList and Designer Hangouts
- Posting or sharing your UX career’s personal experiences online
- Supporting local Designers by following or sharing their work
Practice 5: Explore multiple Solutions and Perspectives
Design is subjective, and what may work for one user may not work for another.
This is why you can’t afford to be close-minded in UX Design.
Here are some of the practices I personally implement to explore more diverse solutions:
- Test out different design solutions to the same problem
- Use questions as your compass: Why? What If? How can I…?
- Consider the user's perspective and how they might interact with your design
- Put yourself in the user’s shoes and imagine how they would interact with the design
- Solicit feedback from non-design stakeholders, users, and other designers to gain a deeper understanding.
Summary
5 UX Design Best Practices that have fast-tracked my UX career:
- Learn + Absorb + Apply the most fundamental UX design knowledge
- Expand your knowledge to non-design but impactful fields (Psychology, Marketing, Human Behaviour,…)
- Find a Design niche and become an expert in it
- Learn proactively from other UX Designers
- Broaden your Design solutions and perspectives
Hope that these practices can help you become a better designer and succeed in your UX career.
Thank you for reading, see you in next week's blog post ✌️
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