In this article, we want to talk about soft skills for a senior UX designer.

What distinguishes a “great UX designer” from a group of “good and average UX designers” in the market?

Soft skills: Introduction

A UX design project doesn’t only consist of simple black and white sketches, and there are many complexities and challenges at different stages of the design process.

These challenges can only be solved if the designer has special soft skills to support his or her technical knowledge.

The good news for you is that many of these skills can be developed through practice and personal motivation.

Here we are going to list the top 10 soft skills that a UX designer should strive to acquire and develop:

Soft skills: Excellent communication skills

A designer’s job, unlike an artist’s, isn’t just to represent personal ideas or display design-related ideas.

A UX designer can’t continue his or her work as soon as the initial design is done and send the design files to the employer after the design work is finished without establishing any communication between the work steps.

As a UX designer, you should pay attention to some tasks from the beginning of the project:

• Ask relevant questions to better understand the design.
• Communicate with users when conducting user research.
• Coordinate with other departments such as the developer team and product managers for successful project execution.
• Present your design ideas.
• Conduct user tests to understand the points where users face problems while using the product.

Soft skills: Passion for excellence

Getting to that moment when the user says “WOW!!” takes a lot of time and effort.

An innate passion for solving problems is a huge plus in UX design.

You must be someone who thinks design can change the world.

Only this level of passion can help you keep up with the endless cycles of creating and testing product design.

Soft skills: Patience

Patience is a virtue in any field, but in design, even more!

Doing multi-user tests, tinkering with the product, constantly communicating with other teams, and waiting for feedback from users until you come up with a great solution.

For all these things above, you need patience.

Always think of ways to make the product better.

And this requires continuous analysis of test results and keeping an open mind about the fact that there is no such thing as a “perfect product”.

Soft skills: Curiosity and having a questioning mind

The field of user experience is always evolving.

New concepts and ideas are always introduced to the market. To maintain these changes and incorporate them into the design process, you must develop a sense of curiosity and a desire to continue learning.

Only an inquisitive mind can consistently ask stakeholders clear, actionable questions and use them to engage with users more deeply to understand the various problems that arise in product design.

Soft skills: Being a member of the team

Product design can never be a one-man show!

It involves collaboration between multiple stakeholders, designers, developers, product owners, marketing teams, and users.

You should engage with each of these departments at different points in the design process.

For this, you must be a person who participates in discussions with different teams respectfully and wisely.

Soft skills: Flexibility

A great UX designer is someone who can adapt to changing times.

This change includes keeping up with evolving technology trends, new design tools, changing user behavior, and iterating product processes based on user data analysis.

Every design project brings new challenges.

No two design processes can ever be the same.

The industry in which the product is based, user demographics, interests, needs, wants and problems of the user.

They are all factors influencing the design process.

A UX designer must be flexible enough to adapt to these changes.

Soft skills: Open minded

What distinguishes a UX designer from a marketer or an artist is that they can’t be categorized as left-brained or right-brained.

This category for a user experience designer should be a combination of both creativity combined with rationality.

Unlike an artist, a designer can’t think about user research alone, or unlike a marketer, a designer can’t make decisions based on numbers alone.

Soft skills: To speak assertively

This skill is essential for most leadership roles.

Being assertive and standing up to your own decisions is something that everyone can benefit from.

With the type of work UX designers do, assertiveness is especially important because of the large number of people you’re dealing with.

A UX persona is like a fan of a group of users and their needs.

To design a great product, the words of a designer must be heard.

And if you want that everyone hears of you, you have to have an assertive voice.

Soft skills: Humility

Humility is a very important feature for UX designers that usually do not look very well.

It’s easy to fall in love with a product you’ve designed.

Criticism is not always welcome.

Accepting criticism is not always easy. In such cases, it is important to have humility.

A designer mustn’t put too much pressure on users during user tests and make sure that each human has a certain tolerance limit.

Humility makes it easier for users to accompany you to review and point out problem areas in product design.

And this point is very crucial in improving your product.

Soft skills: Sympathy

In today’s world, when the focus is shifting from the IQ to the emotional quotient (EQ) of digital products, empathy has become a key skill for any UX designer, and it’s even on the technical skills list.

To create a product that makes your user’s life easier, you must first put yourself in the users’ shoes and think and feel like them.

Conclusion

The key thing about being a UX designer is not how good you are at using software like Adobe XD, Balsamic, or Sketch.

What matters is how you interact with different stakeholders (business leaders), how you engage with new ideas and concepts, and how you react to the feedback you receive.

How much human interaction can you add to the technical design process of the product you’re working on?

These qualities will help define your superior position as a UX project manager among the many designers in the market.

We hope you enjoy this article and we would like to you share your thought with us in the comments.