What are the most important skills for a UI/UX designer to have, and how can you develop them? Find out in this post.
Working in UX/UI design requires a diverse mix of skills. There are the soft and interpersonal skills essential for cross-team collaboration and understanding your users; then there are the technical, design-related skills that enable you to create outstanding products. Finally, there’s a whole host of tools to learn.
To help you focus your efforts and get on track to becoming a UX/UI designer, we’ve compiled our top 15 must-have skills (both technical and soft skills), as well as the most important tools and programs. We also share some advice on how to learn them.
Contents:
- 1) What is UX/UI design and what do UI/UX designers do?
- 2) 8 Essential technical skills for UI/UX designers
- 3) 7 Must-have soft skills for UI/UX designers
- 4) 5 Tools and programs all UI/UX designers should learn
- 5) Do UI/UX designers need coding skills?
- 6) How to develop essential UI/UX designer skills (and continue improving them)
Before we get to the skills, let’s establish what UX/UI design is and what a job in the field entails.
What is UX/UI design and what do UI/UX designers do?
UX/UI design is a digital design discipline. It’s a combination of user experience (UX) design and user interface (UI) design—two separate but related processes which guide the conception and design of websites, apps, and other digital products.
The UX component focuses on designing the overall user experience. It begins with a user problem and then seeks to design a solution for that problem, creating a product (or service) that is easy and enjoyable to use. This includes mapping out the structure and organisation of the product in a way that’s accessible and easy to navigate for the end user.
You can learn more in our Complete Guide to UX/UI Design.
The UI aspect focuses on designing the product’s digital interface. When you use a website or app, the interface is the ‘surface’ level that you interact with—it’s the images, colours, and other visual aspects you encounter, the buttons you click, and the interactions and actions that occur when you click those buttons (and other UI elements). In very simple terms, the UI designer fills in the visual details of the product skeleton, which has been mapped out by the UX designer.
UX and UI design are often combined to denote the entire digital product design process—and the UX/UI designer role covers the full spectrum of UX and UI design tasks. Here is an article that discusses the differences and similarities between UX and UI design.
If you’re already comfortable with the concepts of UX and UI design, let’s move on to explore the most important UI/UX designer skills.
8 Essential technical skills for UI/UX designers
The UI/UX designer role is creative, technical, user-focused, and collaborative. When hiring UX/UI designers, employers look for a variety of different skills, ranging from soft and interpersonal skills to job-specific know-how.
Here are the most important technical skills for UI/UX designers to demonstrate:
i. Research and analysis
At the start of the UX/UI design process, it’s essential to conduct user research in order to understand your target users and identify the problem they need you to solve. And, when designing a solution, competitor research will help you to understand what’s already on the market.
UI/UX designers must be familiar with a range of different user research methods (such as card sorting, user interviews, surveys, tree testing, and focus groups) and be able to select the most appropriate method for each project. They must also possess analytical skills; that is, the ability to make sense of the data gathered during user research.
ii. Wireframing and prototyping
Both of these deliverables make up a critical part of the UX/UI design process. A wireframe is a visual representation of how a webpage or app screen will be laid out and structured. It shows where different UI elements (such as buttons, images, menu items, text, etc) will be located on the page.
A prototype is a model of how the final design/product will look and function, typically created as the next step after wireframing. Prototypes can be basic, low-fidelity models or interactive, high-fidelity samples which look just like a live product.
Wireframing and prototyping to varying levels of fidelity, and being proficient in the most common wireframing tools (such as Figma and Sketch), are a crucial part of the UI/UX designer skill set.
iii. Creativity and visual design skills
These are important skills both for the problem-solving aspect of UX, and for creating user-friendly, visually-pleasing interfaces.
Creativity is necessary when it comes to finding innovative solutions to user problems. Visual design skills enable you to guide the user with visual cues, minimising the need for written instructions. They include expertise in colour theory, typography, visual hierarchy, and the design of icons and imagery. They also go hand-in-hand with the overarching visual brand.
iv. Interaction design
This is a broad concept which considers all the different elements that shape how a user interacts with (i.e. uses) a digital product. This includes:
- Visual design (images, icons, buttons, scrollbars, etc.)
- Motion (how does one screen transition to the next? What happens when you click a button?)
- Sound
- Space
- Behaviour (how do users go about completing certain tasks or performing certain actions?)
Both UX and UI designers must be well-versed in interaction design principles and use them to inform their own designs.
v. Knowledge of accessible design principles
Accessible design is about creating products and services which can be accessed and used by everybody in a variety of situations and contexts. It’s primarily focused on ensuring an accessible user experience for people with disabilities (for e.g. visually impaired users), but also considers temporary barriers to accessibility (for e.g. a user accessing a website on their phone in bright light conditions).
If you want to design great user experiences, you need to make them accessible to as many people as possible. Understanding the principles of accessible design is essential.
vi. Information architecture
This is the process of organising and structuring information in a way that’s logical for the end user, enabling them to easily find what they need. Think about a library and how the books are organised and labelled to help you find what you’re looking for. The same principle applies to digital products.
UX designers especially must master the skill of designing a product’s information architecture to promote usability and create a smooth user experience.
vii. Knowledge of UX writing
UX writing is the skill of writing copy for digital product interfaces. It involves designing all the messaging and wording that a user comes across when they use a website or app. Examples include the labels on menus and buttons, the text that welcomes you when you open an app for the first time, and the copy that guides you through the checkout process when you order something online.
As a UI/UX designer, you don’t need to be skilled at UX writing yourself. That’s usually the role of a specialist UX writer. However, you do need an understanding of how UX copy shapes the user experience, and where UX writing comes into the overall UX/UI design process.
viii. Proficiency in UX/UI design tools
Last but not least, employers will look for proficiency in UX and UI design tools. In fact, as a UX/UI designer, you can’t do without them: you need tools for conducting and analysing user research, workshopping and gathering ideas, wireframing, prototyping, running usability tests—and much more.
Scroll down to learn more about the most important UX/UI design tools.
7 Must-have soft skills for UI/UX designers
In addition to technical skills, UX/UI designers need a variety of soft and interpersonal skills to thrive in the role. These include:
i. Communication and presentation skills
Whether it’s explaining your ideas to others, interviewing users during user research, taking part in an ideation session, or presenting research findings to business stakeholders—you’ll need to be able to do so articulately and with confidence. Don’t worry if this doesn’t come entirely naturally to you; it’s something you can improve with practice and time.
ii. Collaboration and teamwork
UX/UI designers work closely with other designers as well as experts from other departments, like developers, product managers, and business stakeholders. To succeed in your job, it’s important to navigate different team dynamics, incorporate other people’s input, and work collaboratively towards the best solution.
iii. Problem-solving
Problem-solving comes in handy throughout the UX/UI design process, but it’s especially important for the UX aspect. Designing a successful product ultimately involves identifying a user problem and creating a solution. As such, UX/UI designers need to be skilled at picking out the most crucial problem to solve and coming up with viable solutions.
iv. Empathy
If you want to create products that resonate with your users, you must practise empathy. By definition, empathy describes the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing—ultimately, to be able to place yourself in their shoes. You’ll develop this skill as you conduct user research and develop user-centric solutions and ideas.
v. Curiosity
Given that UX/UI design is a people-focused discipline, it’s important to possess a certain degree of curiosity about how human behaviour works and what makes people tick. With curiosity, you’ll naturally find yourself digging deeper into your users’ needs, wants, and goals, which in turn will help you to develop empathy (another top UI/UX designer skill on our list) and come up with smart solutions.
vi. Business smarts
You’ll often hear about the user-centric side of UX/UI design, but you may not realise that it also requires some business insight.
You’ll rarely be designing products purely for the user’s sake; you’re also doing it on behalf of a business, organisation, or brand. That means you need to understand the importance of good design for business, how it ties in with the overall business strategy and, on a day-to-day level, be able to make decisions that are not only good for the end user, but also for the business.
vii. Giving and receiving feedback
We mentioned how collaborative the UI/UX designer role is. A significant aspect of that revolves around giving and receiving feedback.
There might be times when your ideas and designs don’t receive the positive feedback you had hoped for—either from other internal stakeholders or from users themselves. Equally, you might be required to give constructive feedback on someone else’s work. Learning how to give and receive feedback professionally will go a long way in the design world. You’ll find some useful tips on how to give and receive design feedback in this article.
5 Tools and programs all UI/UX designers should learn
UI/UX designers must be proficient in certain tools. Some of the most important programs to master are:
i. Figma
Figma is a multi-faceted design tool used for brainstorming, wireframing and prototyping, gathering feedback, facilitating developer handoff, and more. This in-browser tool is a must for anyone involved in the product design process—and it’s free for personal users, so you can start learning it right away.
ii. Sketch
Sketch is a household name in the design world. It contains all the tools you need for a collaborative design process, most commonly used for prototyping, real-time collaboration, developer handoff, and building and scaling design systems. Sketch works exclusively with macOS and costs $9 per user per month.
iii. InVision Studio
InVision Studio proclaims to be the world’s most powerful screen design tool, built to enable frictionless rapid prototyping and advanced animation. Like most UI/UX tools, it’s designed with collaboration in mind, allowing you to create and manage shared design libraries and gather feedback on your prototypes. You can try InVision for free with one project.
iv. Balsamiq
Balsamiq is a firm favourite among UX and UI designers for creating simple, low-fidelity wireframes. It reproduces the experience of sketching on a notepad or whiteboard, but using a computer. Balsamiq’s USP is its simplicity: it has been purposely designed to force you to focus on structure and content without being distracted by the finer details.
v. Proto.io
Proto.io is an accessible prototyping tool with a drag-and-drop interface, expansive libraries of UI components, and over a thousand customisable templates. UI/UX designers use Proto.io for everything from basic wireframes to interactive, life-like prototypes. You can try it for free for 15 days.
Do UI/UX designers need coding skills?
The UI/UX design process does not involve coding, so technically, UI/UX designers do not need coding skills.
It’s up to the developers to write the code and ‘program’ the product to life. UI/UX designers are responsible for executing the design-to-development handoff—making sure the designs are ready with everything the engineering team needs in order to develop them.
Although coding skills are not strictly part of the UI/UX designer’s job description, bear in mind that knowledge of fundamentals like HTML, CSS and JavaScript may give you a competitive advantage in the job market.
Perhaps the biggest advantage of being able to code (or at least understanding some of the concepts behind it) is improved collaboration with the development team. The deeper your technical understanding of how digital products are developed, the easier it will be to create your designs accordingly—and to communicate with engineers.
In short: UI/UX designers do not need coding skills, but there is no harm in adding them to your skill set (and it may even prove advantageous) if you’re interested in doing so.
How to develop the essential UI/UX designer skills (and keep improving them)
That’s a vast and varied skill set that UX/UI designers need to develop! Fortunately, there are plenty of great resources to help you learn them—and continue improving as you progress through your career.
Here are some tips for developing and improving your UI/UX designer skills.
Take a UX/UI design course
This is an excellent option for covering all bases. You’ll learn all the fundamental principles, practices, and processes of UX/UI design and gain exposure to industry tools. You may also be paired with a mentor or have access to a teacher, which will noticeably enhance the learning experience.
Consult our guide to find the best UX/UI design course for you.
Attend meetups and workshops
Meetups and workshops, whether in-person or virtual, will immerse you in key UX/UI design topics and provide an opportunity to network. By joining relevant conversations and connecting with others, you’ll learn a lot about the industry and have the chance to ask questions and seek advice. Other designers are one of the richest sources of learning and inspiration you can ask for.
Take a practical approach to learning
UX/UI design is an extremely hands-on job, so don’t get too lost in the theory. Practise applying what you learn as you go. For example, once you’ve learned all about user research, practice planning and running your own user research session. As you get to grips with wireframing and prototyping, open up a design tool like Figma or Sketch and create some real wireframes and prototypes of your own. This is the best way to learn and improve.
And one final tip: Don’t be afraid to get out of your comfort zone. The best UX/UI designers are constantly learning and growing, and they’re not scared of making mistakes. Mistakes are just another opportunity to learn!
What next?
For more advice on learning essential UX/UI skills, follow our complete step-by-step guide on how to become a UX/UI designer , or do one of the following:
1. Watch this session by Shiva Viswanathan, Design Head of Ogilvy Pennywise, and Naman Singh, Product Experience Designer at RED.
2. Talk to a course advisor to discuss how you can transform your career with one of our courses.
3. Pursue our UX UI Design course, which is taught through live, interactive classes by industry experts, and comes with a Job Guarantee.
4. Take advantage of our scholarship and funding options to overcome any financial hurdle on the path of your career transformation.
