UX and Soft Skills
Soft skills are a combination of personal attributes and social and communication skills. As a UX designer, we often work on cross-team and cross-functional products; this is where soft skills can make the most impact.
Knowing what people need and how to craft a solution that is easy to use, useful, and delightful takes a significant amount of reading between the lines and a knack for verbalising abstract concepts. But what are these essential and critical soft skills?
Empathy
UX wouldn’t exist without empathy. In UX, users are at the centre of everything we do. Empathy’s probably something that’s more innate than something you can learn but UX designers need to be able to step into other people’s shoes and see the world through their eyes constantly. From empathising with a user’s motivations to knowing why they use a product in a certain way, a UX designer’s objective is to make sure that the product is useful for their users. This means truly understanding the end customer.
Persuasive
Us UX designers are a charming bunch! We constantly use our persuasive [hypnotic] powers to evoke the right emotional experience and encourage users to complete specific objectives. From the business side, getting buy-in from relevant stakeholders is paramount.
When proposing a solution, designers need to make sure they’re solving the stakeholders’ problems while communicating the benefits and risks clearly. The ability to effectively represent both the business and user interests is important in winning a stakeholder’s support. Doing this for different parties means speaking their language to keep the whole team focused on the end goal.
Persuasion doesn’t just stop at stakeholder management. Designers use persuasive design constantly to nudge users to stay motivated and complete their goals.
Articulate your words : Communication
Ever wondered how some people are just so good at explaining really hazy and confusing concepts? Just a little secret, it takes a lot of practice. UX can seem mysterious simply because it’s a broad category. The subjects it covers ranges from how a product makes you feel to the change in ROI when a button’s colour is updated. It’s therefore the job of the designer to explain these abstract concepts to the clients.
Communication is essential in UX Designers. You must convey product ideas, explain thinking behind designs, and work with other teams. Their work also requires elements of storytelling. Effective communication skills help designers create, collaborate, adapt, and improve products and systems with ease.
Active Listening and Open to Feedback
There is nothing much valuable than being a active listener. It’s a process of more than shutting your mouth and opening your ears. It’s about questioning people to demonstrate. It’s about taking an active interest in what people have to say and rather less of an interest in anticipating what they are going to say.
We are on a journey to create impactful designs. Design is an art that is never perfect. Every person who designs has a different perception towards it. A core lesson is to learn and collaborate with talented people without being hesitant.
UX as a field is constantly evolving and follows in the wake of technological developments, it’s more important for aspiring UX designers to have the right attitude and soft skills rather than technical know-how as those can often only be developed over time. At least at first, UX designers need to tap into their soft skills and get used to wiggling their toes in other people’s shoes.
What makes you different? UX Soft Skills was originally published in Designerrs on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.