What makes a great UX Designer?
Let’s tackle this common interview question
They spend more time researching than wire-framing
I Would Spend 55 Minutes Defining the Problem and then Five Minutes Solving It. — Albert Einstein
Great designers don’t jump into their favourite wire-framing tool or pick up their pencil to start sketching ideas as soon as an observation is made or a requirement passed to them. They don’t do either of those things until much later in the process.
The first thing great designers do is ensure the problem has been well defined and that in fact, the problem exists. This will almost always come in the form of an observation. This could be during a usability test or observed by an external team member (outside of UX). If the requirement has come from the business it is important to dig deeper to uncover the problem as these usually come as assumptions or solutions.
A simple way to focus on the correct problem is to ask the right questions, you can find which questions to ask here:
If I had 8 hours to chop down a tree, I would spend 6 of those hours sharpening my axe. — Abraham Lincoln
Once the problem has been well defined great designers still avoid sketchbooks and wire-framing tools. They will have a lot of questions and unknowns, especially if it is something they are not familiar with yet. Even better than that they workshop with a cross-functional team to understand the groups questions and existing knowledge.
They become an expert by understanding best practice through desk & user research. Take for example a UX Designer who has never worked on an eCommerce site before. How do they know what is good design for a product page? There are plenty of articles out there and 3rd party companies that offer a good baseline experience. Baymards is one example for eCommerce.
They take the time to understand user behaviour, needs, and pain points either running these sessions themselves or collaborating with the user research team. Syncing up with the customer support team and other user experts in the company to collate as much information as possible.
Wire-framing is easy at this point as you have the problem and information at your fingertips to make better more informed design decisions. The route is clear and is even easier if you have a design system in place.
They have research to back up every detail of their designs
Continuing on from the last point if you spent your time sharpening the axe you should be able to explain every detail of your design. This should include minor decisions too like why is the icon on the left and not the right. When reviewing with stakeholders and they try to insert their assumptions you can back your own decisions with logical reasoning based on research instead of an assumption-slinging match. Having the title UX Designer does not mean your assumption is better than someone else’s. Without evidence your guess is as good as theirs.
They understand they are not the only experts
UX Designers are not subject matter experts or the only user experts on the team
A great Designer communicates and collaborates across business functions. We as Designers are usually not experts on the products or services that we work on. We are also not the only ones with knowledge of the customer/user. Think about customer support, sales, user researchers, market researchers, etc… these functions work with users more often, each in a different way and can provide unique viewpoints.
UX Designers are not subject matter experts or the only user experts on the team
This means we need input from experts within the business to design the best solution. This can include sales, marketing, customer support, engineering, management, and more… each function will have a viewpoint on both the business and customer (if customer-facing). The different points of view highlight problems and ideas you would never have thought about from only a design viewpoint. It’s a designer's job to synthesise this expert knowledge into a single design solution. There are a few ways we can get this knowledge:
- Setup 15 minutes with each function and discuss requirements and questions
- Run a design workshop including 1 colleague from each function
- Include each function during a design review session (this may be too late in the design cycle…)
- Use all 3 of the above in order, if the time can be spared
They communicate, collaborate, and involve others
Being a UX Designer is not enough, the best designers facilitate the design process with a cross-functional team. With this power Designers can join any team with little to no knowledge and output innovative solutions using the teams collective expertise. This helps to bring out the best ideas from themselves and others. They guide their project team through the design process ensuring best practice is followed and understood. This way the team and not just the designer feel ownership over the design. Review sessions become checkbox exercises and previous points of friction fade away.
In companies without this you usually find unhappy UX Designers who are actually UI Designers being dictated solutions through requirements and user stories. This is due to the business not understanding design or its true value because of the lack of design facilitation and education.
That leads me on nicely to the last skill that the best UX Designers use.
They educate the business and share their insights and knowledge
The best way to educate is to involve others which ties in with my previous point. If you facilitate the design process with your immediate team and lead by example. You will have a team of advocates and colleagues from different departments preaching the benefits. This is the best place to start and to repeat, repeat, repeat until it becomes habitual for the team. You don’t need prior buy-in from stakeholders, just plan workshops for each stage of the process and invite the team. Keep them short at first and adapt based on feedback. You also don’t need final outputs from these sessions, you are still the designer, get as much info as you need and synthesis it into a design asset.
Random one off presentations on process and benefits are nice but won’t achieve any results. What great UX Designers do instead is present to the wider team at the end of each requirement or project the assets created, final designs and how they led the cross-functional team on the design journey, step-by-step. This does two things, firstly, it educates those not involved on what the process looks like and not just the final design output. Secondly, and most importantly it’ll cause what all humans feel when something different is happening, Fear Of Missing Out or FOMO.
The 5 skills that make a great UX Designer
In summary here are the 5 skills you should talk about if anyone asks you “What makes a great UX Designer?”.
- They spend more time researching than wire-framing
- They have research to back up every detail of their designs
- They understand they are not the only experts
- They communicate, collaborate, and involve others
- They educate the business and share their insights and knowledge
Have I missed any? What other skills do you think make a great UX Designer?
Let me know in the comments!
