Here’s the third in a series of articles with traits you need to work on to be a successful UX/Product Designer.

First article in the series

Second article in the series

You need to break the process

“Designing a feature with an end to end process is becoming rare.”

As a designer when you start out your process is everything. It gives you those guard rails you need to work through the problem.

As the years go by and depending on where you work, you‘ll notice can’t do all the stages of your process. It just isn't feasible. You need to break the process and choose carefully parts to use to solve the problem.

You need to spend time with your co-workers

“Focusing on users and their experience is undoubtedly vital to the success of what you design. Still, less talked about and often equally important as the end-user is the experience teammates have working with you.” —

Tanner Christensen

Tanner wrote a great article Time with teammates is as important as time with users. The message behind the article is that building relationships with your work colleagues is crucial to creating a high functioning digital product team.

It’s not just the manager’s job to build strong working relationships. It’s everyones. (Tanner’s article)

I’d argue that this is one of the most important things to nail with your team. Check-in on co-workers. Ask how they are. Take time out to chat with them.

When you spend time with your co-workers, you get the ‘psychological safety’ of the team right. This is when the exceptional stuff starts to happen.

You need to learn to be humble

“True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” — Rick Warren

This is arguably one of the most powerful traits for you as a designer.

You need to be humble to know you know you have to keep learning. To know you have to keep questioning.

To know that you don’t have the answer. To know that your designs can be improved.

Regardless of your experience, humility allows you to be open to new things. Without it, you limit yourself to becoming a self-serving designer never reaching your potential.

You need to have a curious spirit

“There are young men and women up and down the land who happily (or unhappily) tell anyone who will listen that they don’t have an academic turn of mind, or that they aren’t lucky enough to have been blessed with a good memory, and yet can recite hundreds of pop lyrics and reel off any amount of information about footballers.

Why? Because they are interested in those things. They are curious. If you are hungry for food, you are prepared to hunt high and low for it. If you are hungry for information it is the same. Information is all around us, now more than ever before in human history.

You barely have to stir or incommode yourself to find things out. The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious.

Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.”
― Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles

Be prepared to hunt high and low for new ideas, better ideas. Question what is there and question what you have designed. Not for question’s sake but to stretch your thinking and stretch your designs.

Curiosity allows you to ask how and why things work. It leads you to uncover new opportunities. It leads you to design better.

You need to realise the experience is just one piece of the puzzle

“It’s only design”

Realise that design isn’t more important than other departments (marketing, development, management etc.). It’s easy to think that your design is everything but there are many pieces of the puzzle to get a great product to market.

Be sure to understand other departments context for why things need to be done. Put yourself in their shoes.

You need to stop being too nice

Designers are nice people, and nice people say yes because they want to be liked. In business, you need to know how and when to say no.” —

Chirryl-Lee Ryan

Taking everything on is not a productive way to design. You need to pick the most important work that needs to be done and put a hold on the other stuff.

It’s stupid not to be nice, but you need to be firm in what you can and can’t take on.

You need to speak simply

Design is hard enough to explain without over-complicated design-speak. Try to imagine explaining what you’re doing to your grandmother. —

Chirryl-Lee Ryan

The business of speaking in tongues really shits me. Be inclusive to people listening They may not get your acronym. Keep it simple and consider who’s listening. Speak simply.

You need to work on your visual designs to make the experience great

“The aesthetic–usability effect describes a paradox that people perceive more aesthetic designs as much more intuitive than those considered to be less aesthetically pleasing.” — Wikipedia

“If your visual designs look awesome in the eyes of the user, and there are a few crappy bits usability-wise, then folk are more willing to overlook it. As long as the crappy bits don’t block the user.” — My understanding of aesthetic–usability effect

Your experience needs to be solid. Your visual design needs to be solid. They’re both crucial to creating the best experience.

You need to be like water

“You need to be like water. Follow every path to every terminus, and truly understand the nature of the problem. Understanding the “why” of things is your superpower. It’s not a nice to have. It’s your job.” —

Andrew Doherty

This is a bit Bruce Lee-esk. I’ve quoted this line several times from Andrew because I love it.

Get right to the heart of the problem and find out everything that’s going on. You need to be a digger, a proder and a questioner.

Ask lots of questions and log a trail of notes.

You need to be able to defend design decisions

“Always have a reason for your decision”

Do have a rationale for each design decision you have made. Think about this as you work through your designs. Keep asking yourself this question as you design.

Imagine a stakeholder is asking you why you designed something like you did. Can you confidently answer it with some good reasoning? If not maybe look at tweaking the design.

Your designs need to be consistent. They need to be accessible, they need to be intuitive and they need to be solving the problem. They need to be doing lots of things.

Be sure to have a solid reason for your decisions.

In summary

• Break your process
• Spend time with co-workers
• Be humble
• Have a curious spirit
• Know that your work is one piece of the puzzle
• Stop being too nice
• Speak simply
• Work on your visual designs
• Be like water
• Defend your decisions