Table of Contents
- How to become a successful UX designer?
- Tip 1: Continuously Learn and Expand Your Non-Design Skills
- Financial literacy
- Strategic thinking
- Leadership and communication
- Tip 2: Build a Strong Online Presence
- Tip 3: Seek Feedback and Be Open to Criticism
- Identify areas for improvement
- Increase self-awareness:
- Fosters collaboration and teamwork
- Tip 4: Set Powerful Goals and Celebrate Your Achievements
- For goals-setting
- The BIG goal
- The MINI goals
- For celebrating achievements:
- Summary
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Read time: under 6 minutes
How to become a successful UX designer?
As a UX designer, it's important to constantly prioritise improvement and growth in your UX career or you will simply fall behind as the UX industry is becoming more and more competitive by the year.
In this article, we'll explore the 4 best tips for you as a UX Designer to level up your skills, expertise and THRUST your way to the top 1% in your UX career.
Prototyping your Design Career with Kate Pincott.
Tip 1: Continuously Learn and Expand Your Non-Design Skills
The first crucial tip to thrust your way up to the top in the UX industry is to continuously learn and expand your knowledge.
Here’s a mistake that I see many Designers make:
❌ They limit their knowledge only to UX Design.
If you want to set yourself apart in your UX career, become obsessed with the following:
Financial literacy
Understanding financial statements and metrics like ROI, EBITDA, and net income.
→ Applying this knowledge to make informed business decisions in your company, such as profit opportunities and cost management.
Strategic thinking
Ability to analyse market trends, competition, and other factors to develop a long-term plan.
→ Making data-driven decisions that influence your company’s profitability goals.
For example: deciding to enter a new market segment or launching a new product feature.
Leadership and communication
Effective communication of vision and strategy to non-design stakeholders, as well as the ability to inspire and lead a UX Design team to achieve goals.
→ This can include conflict resolution, delegation, and mentorship.
For example: communicating the company's vision to your Design team to boost morale and retain the top talent.
Want to learn more about UX Management?
Check out UX Management Playbook — made for first-time managers building healthier and happier design teams.
Here are some of the most powerful non-design skills that UX Designers can get educated on to increase their influence within an organisation. The list of things you can continue to learn outside of UX Design is limitless!
Remember
The more you can broaden your skill set and knowledge outside of UX, the more valuable and influential you'll be as a UX Designer.
Tip 2: Build a Strong Online Presence
You can be THE BEST UX Designer in the world, but it’ll mean nothing if NOBODY knows about you.
Having an impactful online presence is what takes you to another level as a UX Designer.
It not only helps you attract potential employers or clients but also helps you provide free value for others to make an impact on the world!
Building your online presence includes:
- A professional + personal online portfolio
- A strong social media profile where you can share your UX experience and expertise
- Joining and contributing to UX Design communities like APDList and Designer Hangouts
Putting yourself and your hard work out there, not knowing what people are going to say about it, can be super scary.
→ Do it anyway.
All of your fears, NOT taking this leap, are only in your head.
Trust me, I’ve been there!
Want to learn more?
I’ll go in-depth on how you can build your LinkedIn and make you stand out from the crowd in UX Portfolio Playbook.
Nail that portfolio. Nail that case study. Nail that personal branding.
Tip 3: Seek Feedback and Be Open to Criticism
Having a big EGO can’t get you far in your UX Design career.
No matter how skillful, experienced, creative, intelligent, capable, or special you are.
If you’re not able to take and learn from feedback and criticism, you simply can’t grow as a UX Designer.
Here's why seeking and learning from feedback and criticism helps you level up:
Identify areas for improvement
→ This gives you a different perspective on your work, allowing you to see it from a different angle and make changes to enhance your Design.
Increase self-awareness:
Listening to your work being criticized and scrutinized with a big smile requires humility and self-awareness.
No one is perfect, and there is always room for growth and improvement.
→ This quality helps you become a better Designer and a likable person overall.
Fosters collaboration and teamwork
UX Design is a team effort, and seeking feedback and being open to criticism allows you to work collaboratively with your colleagues, stakeholders, and users.
By creating a culture of openness and trust, you can work together to create the best possible experience for your users.
Tip 4: Set Powerful Goals and Celebrate Your Achievements
Finally, to become a successful and thriving UX Designer, you need to know how to set goals and celebrate achievements, whether they are big or small.
For goals-setting
Setting goals can manifest in many different ways, I’d recommend you start from your biggest career goal and work outward to align this with the mini goals.
For example - if you’re new to UX Design, you love working in E-commerce and have known where you want your career to be in 5 years, here’s how you can set your goals:
The BIG goal
To become a Head of Product Design, making 6 figure salary, ideally in a span of 4 - 5 years.
The MINI goals
- Get a Design job, regardless of salary, in any E-commerce platform
- Gain enough experience to advance to a Senior position, within 2 years
- Build a UX Design team with this Senior position
- Build a network and influence within UX Design industry after year 3
- Make a business impact in the company after year 4
This is just an idealized example of how you can approach goal setting and make the most out of it. I personally use my goals like a North star to guide me through all of my career decisions.
The key to this practice is YOU, knowing what you are capable of, and setting yourself up for success.
For celebrating achievements:
There are 1000 things you want to achieve in your UX career but then take all of them for granted when you finally achieve them.
Don’t make this mistake!
Celebrating your achievements (and your team, too) is a way for you to honour your hard work and, essentially, practice self-love and compassion.
There are many activities you can do to celebrate an achievement, to go out eating a fancy dinner, party with your team or just stay in and have a chill night.
No matter what you do, remember this:
Feeling happy with what you’ve achieved and what you will achieve in the future and celebrating them is not cheesy or impractical.
Doing this can help you:
- Stay motivated with your work
- Maintain a positive and uplifting outlook on life
- Become self-driven regardless of your circumstances
Summary
Advancing your UX career and becoming the top 1% of UX Designers require you to:
Learn and expand your non-design skills
Build an impactful online presence
Seek feedback and open yourself up to criticism
Set powerful goals and celebrate your achievements, big or small
Applying these 4 tips will not only help you to become an impact-making UX Designer — the quality that gets you to the top, but also show you how to make your UX career more enjoyable.
Thank you for reading! Hope to see you next week for another blog post ✌️
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