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To land a job as a designer, the minimum requirement is to learn design skills and showcase them through a portfolio. Getting hired means exchanging your design skills and value to solve the employer's business problems and create profits as a designer. While it may seem straightforward, learning design skills takes time.
Having been self-taught throughout my designer career, I've accumulated seven years of experience and contributed to products ranging from zero to seven billion in value. This unique journey has afforded me the opportunity to collaborate with numerous designers and work on diverse projects, providing insights that few Korean designers may have at a senior level.
In this article, I aim to provide a comprehensive guide on becoming a UI/UX Product designer, to achieve a higher salary and position. Additionally, I'll delve into the intricacies of creating a portfolio based on these skills in an upcoming article. Assembling a strong portfolio hinges on possessing solid design skills, which I will elaborate on in detail.
Design skills
Design skills can be categorized into three main areas: craft, problem solving(thinking), and business skills. While many online courses tend to separate UI, UX, and interaction design, they are inherently interconnected. As a digital product designer or UI/UX designer, your focus is on designing for digital screens, typically for websites or applications, which consist of numerous user interfaces.
User interfaces play a crucial role in digital design, as they need to be usable, accessible, interactive, and functional. While these aspects are often emphasized in UX design, they should not be treated as separate from UI design. In reality, UI and UX are intertwined, and both need to be considered holistically when designing digital products. This integrated approach ensures that the user experience is seamless and cohesive across all interfaces, ultimately leading to a better product.
Crafts ⎯ everything about crafting your design solution with pride
Have you seen the craftsmen of pottery, scissors, and knives in Japan? These artisans hone their skills over many years to create high-quality products. Similarly, we must focus on what we design and create designs with a sense of pride and responsibility. As designers of digital screens, mastering UI design skills and relevant web technologies is essential to creating high-quality products. However, this journey cannot be rushed or shortcutted by a few online courses promising instant results. Instead, it requires continuous learning, hands-on experience, and collaboration with other talented designers. Through ongoing projects and collaborations, we can refine our skills, expand our knowledge, and ultimately, deliver better design solutions.
Design fundamentals: Starting a career in UI/UX/Product design often involves focusing on UI/UX-related topics. However, as I progressed in my role, even as a Senior Product Designer, I recognized the importance of mastering fundamental design skills such as grid systems, layout principles, whitespace management, color theory, and typography. These foundational elements form the backbone of every successful design and should never be underestimated.
User interface & Design system: Congratulations if you've just learned how to create a button in Figma! However, designing a button goes beyond simply placing a box and text. It requires consideration of various states across different digital platforms to ensure usability, accessibility, consistency, and scalability. Studying design systems from industry leaders like Apple, Carbon, and others can provide valuable insights into best practices.
HTML & CSS & Web Responsiveness: The debate over whether designers should code often arises. While complex coding may not be necessary, understanding HTML and CSS is essential for designing interfaces. Familiarity with concepts like the box model, margin and padding systems, and layout principles greatly enhances a designer's ability to create effective digital experiences. I took a long daunting goverment provided course for 5 months, I highly recommend learning this topic within 1-2 months. Aware that this is not a difficult to topic to learn.
iOS, Android, and Desktop Apps: While the principles of designing for mobile and desktop applications remain similar, there are nuances to consider. Each platform has its unique guidelines and requirements that designers should adapt to ensure optimal user experiences.
Prototyping: Prototypes serve as invaluable tools for visualizing the user journey and interaction flows before handing off designs to developers. Utilizing prototyping tools enables designers to iterate quickly and refine their designs based on user feedback.
Usability & accessibility: Designing user with usability and accessibility in mind is paramount. Ensuring that interfaces are intuitive and inclusive enhances the overall user experience for all individuals, regardless of their abilities or limitations.
Design file organization & developer hand off: Efficient organization of design files and clear communication during the handoff process are essential for seamless collaboration between designers and developers. Establishing standardized practices streamlines the transition from design to development, minimizing errors and discrepancies along the way.
Design principles and understanding psychology: A deep understanding of design principles and human psychology is invaluable for creating designs that resonate with users on an emotional level. By incorporating principles such as visual hierarchy, gestalt principles, and cognitive psychology, designers can craft experiences that engage and delight users. Understanding how users perceive and interact with design elements enables designers to create intuitive and user-centric products.
User research: Research is a crucial aspect of the design process, often overlooked in some UX courses but considered under the crafting category here. Understanding user pain points and needs is essential for devising effective design solutions. Through user research, designers gain valuable insights into user behaviors, preferences, and pain points. By comprehending the needs and motivations of their target audience, designers can develop solutions that effectively address real-world problems. Methods such as surveys, interviews, and usability testing enable designers to validate design decisions and refine their designs based on user feedback.
Problem solving(Thinking)
This aspect of design may often be overlooked in the Korean design environment. Thinking to solve problems and consciousness are what differentiate humans from animals. Once you establish your thinking process and tools, you become an irreplaceable designer. Starting from design thinking, which many of you will encounter at the beginning of your career, to learning and applying different thinking methods in projects. This includes critical thinking, analytical thinking, logical thinking, strategic thinking, systems thinking, and many others. You can draw inspiration not only from UI/UX and digital design but also from everything around you. As I mentioned in the video, you can start with design thinking or the double diamond process, but through your career, you can adopt various ways of thinking.
Design Thinking: A human-centered approach to problem-solving that emphasizes empathy, ideation, and experimentation to generate innovative solutions. It allows designers to approach problems from a user-centric perspective, ensuring that their solutions address real user needs and pain points effectively.
Critical Thinking: The ability to objectively analyze and evaluate information to form well-reasoned judgments or decisions. Designers need to critically assess design solutions, evaluate their effectiveness, and make informed decisions throughout the design process.
Systems Thinking: Understanding how individual components within a system interact with one another and influence the system as a whole. Understanding how different components of a design ecosystem interact helps designers create holistic and integrated solutions that consider the broader context.
Logical Thinking: The capacity to reason soundly and make well-founded conclusions based on evidence and principles of logic. Designers must apply logic and reasoning to solve complex design problems, ensuring that their solutions are coherent and rational.
Lateral Thinking: Approaching problems from unconventional angles or perspectives to find creative solutions. Encourages designers to think creatively and explore unconventional solutions, leading to innovative and unique design outcomes.
Mental Models: Internal frameworks that shape our perception and understanding of the world, influencing how we interpret information and make decisions. By understanding users' mental models, designers can create intuitive and user-friendly designs that align with users' expectations and behaviors.
Jobs to Be Done: A framework for understanding customer needs by focusing on the "jobs" or tasks they are trying to accomplish. Helps designers gain insights into users' underlying needs and motivations, guiding the development of solutions that effectively address these needs.
Visionary Thinking: Envisioning future possibilities and opportunities, guiding long-term strategic planning and innovation efforts. Enables designers to anticipate future trends, technologies, and user needs, allowing them to design products that remain relevant and competitive in the long term.
Business skills
Product designers should learn business skills to ensure that their design decisions align with company objectives, effectively communicate their designs to stakeholders, and contribute to the overall success of the product and the organization. Additionally, as the barrier to entry for designers has lowered with the abundance of online courses and information, possessing a combination of business and technical skills can make candidates more competitive in the job market.
Leadership & ownership: are vital for product designers as they drive design vision, foster team collaboration, take initiative, demonstrate accountability, make informed decisions, influence stakeholders, promote innovation, and advocate for the end user.
Strategic Thinking: crucial for product designers as it enables them to align design decisions with broader business goals, anticipate future trends, identify opportunities for innovation, navigate complex challenges, make informed choices, and drive the long-term success of products and organizations.
Communication: Effectively articulating design concepts, rationale, and insights to stakeholders with varying levels of design knowledge. Effective communication is crucial for product designers to convey their design concepts, ideas, and rationale to various stakeholders, including developers, product managers, marketers, and executives.
Collaboration: Product designers often work closely with cross-functional teams throughout the product development lifecycle. Collaboration skills are essential for fostering teamwork, resolving conflicts, and ensuring that everyone is aligned towards achieving common goals.
Project Management: Product designers are responsible for managing their design projects, which involves organizing tasks, setting priorities, and ensuring that deadlines are met. Strong project management skills are essential for delivering high-quality designs on time and within budget.
Data Analysis: Product designers need to analyze both quantitative and qualitative data to gain insights into user behavior, preferences, and pain points. Data-driven design decisions help designers create products that meet user needs and deliver tangible business value.
Business understanding: Having a good understanding of the market landscape, business models, competition, and industry trends enables product designers to make informed design decisions that drive business success. Business sense helps designers identify opportunities, mitigate risks, and stay ahead of the competition.
Presentation & Negotiation Skills: Product designers often need to present their design concepts and ideas to stakeholders to gain buy-in and support for their designs. Strong presentation skills are essential for effectively communicating the value of design solutions and persuading stakeholders to adopt them. Advocating for design decisions and persuading stakeholders to align with the user-centered design approach.
Adaptability: Being open to feedback, iteration, and evolving design strategies based on changing business needs and user feedback.
Learning design is quite the journey, isn't it? You've probably seen those folks claiming they're UX designers after a quick online course or boot camp. But let's be real, that's just scratching the surface. Sure, those courses are a starting point, but real design chops? They're like fine wine—they get better with time and experience. So, keep at it, embrace the journey, and remember, every step forward is a step toward mastering your craft. Cheers to that!
