My Journey as UX designer.. 7 Key Learnings!
My journey in UX design hasn’t been a long one, since I’ve only started just a year ago. But I would love to share some key learnings alongside some mistakes.
7 key learnings during the 1st year as UX designer.
01. Talk about the design
One of the top key learnings, I have experienced recently with my team.
Since you have got familiar with it, you can communicate your thoughts sufficiently with your team or the client.
Absolutely, this skill needs practice and time. & it looks like a muscle to train on since you don’t talk about your design in every day.
One time, I read a nice tip that said, you can get prepared to pitch your work by writing down what you gonna talk about. It helps to prioritize your thoughts well.
Lastly, you can’t stop the practice on how to talk about your work. as you sell it at the end.
02. Relate the principles with the work
In the beginning, I wasn’t getting used to relate what I learned with the actual work I have to do. So if you faced it one day… So no worries about that. It happens to each one of us.
To overcome it, I used to attend different meetings even I didn’t work on that particular project. I grasped some words, helped me a little bit later on
Also, I got used to having some ideas out of the scope, not related to the business or the niche I was working on.
Focusing on the competitors, trying to understand the behind scenes, and looking at different patterns and understand them were the key to solve
this problem.
03. Think over the approaches
At first, when I received a task and got started to sketch or wireframe my ideas. I didn’t get the concept of trying to think over and figure out the pros and cons of the solutions I have.
One time, I talked to my senior about an issue we received from a client, I had to solve it since it was my task. I found myself telling him about the pros and cons of each solution I have.
This skill helped me a lot to make design decisions, respecting the deadlines and pace of work.
04. Incorporate the business with design
What I missed out on at the early phase of my career, how to reflect the business requirements on the design. Those requirements usually range from simple to more complex ones. Break them down into simpler chunks to reflect those requirements or findings you’ve found while studying the market were the key for you to get the optimal design for the business as well as the users.
05. Understand the behind of the client’s concerns
This point is closely related to the previous one. Receiving client concerns and seeing how they will affect the flow or figuring out it affects the whole experience, defining the capability of doing it, all these aspects, every designer have to be aware of them. It comes to you since you work on many projects as much as you have the opportunity alongside a team.
06. Taking notes
I never had that skill at all since I was a student. But as part of our work, we usually have many rounds of reviews and client meetings, so writing down what others said and used it later to refer or remember if you need to recall something has been said in the meetings.
It is a simple tip, but honestly, some meetings or reviews need to write the comments down since it could be long ones.
07. Never stop to explore
Discovering what others say or do helps me a lot to widen my mind. Figuring out your capabilities inside me, working on my skillset, and trying to add a new one to my pocket is an aim. I wish to do it all the time.
My Journey along the last year was so freaking; many failures and frustrations and hopes. But in the end, I tried to achieve nice progress in my career. Hopefully, to learn more and achieve more progress as we are living for that.