A person who creates interactive interfaces or UIs (also known as user interface) of websites or mobile apps is known as UI designer. Being a UI designer, it is his job to create designs in such a way that give users a good experience and provide them what they look for. To take care of quality of user interface, choosing right color, typography, layout, etc. is an important part of his daily work.
With UX design we mean user experience. Let me make this point clear to you UI is actually a subsection of UX.
In this blog, we will find out what qualities you need to become a successful UI designer along with some magical tips.
So, let’s get started.
Top Qualities to have as a UI Designer
1.) Continuous Learning and Adaptability
As a UI designer, you need to be ready to learn new things regularly.
A designer needs to be adept in variety of tools, methods, rules to be able to come up with creative ideas. She/he must be able to adapt himself to changes. Depending on the requirement of a project, one tool may be good for a particular type but may not be for another. Different tools may have different working environments. She/he must be able to adjust himself according to the demand.
Continuous learning and becoming up to date with the industry trends is needed. Since, we all can see how rapidly things are changing around us. Falling behind others or losing your guards is not an option here, so always stay updated to avoid becoming less relevant.
2.) User Empathy
User interface is all about people. A UI designer works for users. He needs to have empathy towards them.
He cannot just consider himself to be the only one using the product/ website/app. He needs to put himself in the shoes of his audience or users while designing. Since, the main thing to consider is providing a good interface to the users by keeping in mind what they actually want and looking for. Understanding the needs of users is an essential skill and can get you a long way in this industry.
3.) Aesthetics
A UI designer must be careful about the look and feel of the design. Let’s take a quick example: using white on a bright background. What do you think, will it be easy to read or difficult. Well it will certainly be difficult to read a light text written on a bright background. Another example may be a text too small or too big, or using multiple colours that may deviate the designer from following a proper theme.
Apart from this, designers must be careful about the typography. Fancy texts don’t appeal the users any more. Always remember to KEEP IT SIMPLE AND CLEAR.
Avoid using lengthy texts as an alert. For example, instead of writing a long phrase like “Sorry! You have entered the wrong password, Please Try again”, you may write a short one like “Wrong Password”. That will make things short as well as clear to the users.
4.) Develop an eye for design
Train your eyes for design. The UI designer’s life is surrounded with colours. Picking a wrong colour may have a negative impact on the success of a product/website/app. Try to surround yourself with inspiring designs. This will give you a new energy and motivation to broaden your design horizons.
Train yourself to use the design elements properly. See the use of white spaces, colours, typography in the user interfaces created by other.
Try to recreate the websites/apps made by famous designers. The only mantra for all this to happen is PRACTICE!
5.) Interaction with other designers
If you are a beginner, try to follow other designers. You may use different collaborative tools like Figma, or websites like Behance or Dribble to share your work with others.
This way will help you to share views on common issues and get useful tips and tricks that will consequently improve your design skills and enhance your personality as a UI expert. With interactions and networking, you can get to know about what types of challenges other UI designers face and how they overcome them.
Networking might help you get a variety of ideas that you can use to implement in your project. You can also get feedback from others and improve your skills.
6.) Get Your Hands on Coding
Some might feel coding is not necessary to succeed in the field of UI. But in my opinion, a UI designer must have at least the basic knowledge of coding languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery.
Knowing these languages will help you to recognize how programming languages like JavaScript and HTML work together to form the front end. This will also give you a glance of what is possible to create from the perspective of web programming. This will bridge the gap between a designer and a developer and help in better communication between both of them.
So, these are a few skills that are important to possess if you really want to be an elite UI designer.
Let’s take a look at some quick tips and tricks to go from a beginner to a successful UI/UX designer.
5 Quick Tips and Tricks to go from a beginner to a Successful UI/UX Designer
1.) Understand the problem before you pick up a pen & paper
To begin with UX designing, we must first know “why” the problem has occurred before knowing “how” the problem can be solved. It is really important to understand the problem first. Before solving problem on the pen and paper, consider doing research first. We need to ask deeper questions to understand the problem in depth.
2.) Understand what UX designers actually do
Solving problems is the main focus of UX design. There is a specific procedure that a designer must follow for finding creative, innovative solutions to design problems. This is called a design thinking process. This includes 5 phases as follows:
Empathise -> Define -> Ideate -> Prototype -> Test
From understanding the users’ needs to planning and testing, every important step is covered in the above-mentioned 5 phases.
3.) Train yourself to figure out the designs
Along with knowing design principles, you also have to train yourself to differentiate between a good and a bad design. With this, you can easily identify what strengths and weaknesses a particular design has. You can improve this by getting inspiration.
Finding inspiration lets you polish your own ideas in the beginning. You can follow some popular artists on sites like behance.net to find tons of designs that inspire you. Inspirations from sites like behance will keep you up to date with the current trends in the company. Always go for research before opening your blank canvas.
4.) Learn UX design tools
UX/UI designers heavily rely on tools. So making yourself familiar with the UX/UI tools is going to help you a lot.
The toolset may vary from designer to designer but there are some tools that you must be familiar with:
- To perform user research, you can use platforms like SurveyMonkey or Typeform.
- For wireframing and prototyping, Adobe XD, Sketch, Figma, and Zeplin are recommended software to learn. These are the industry’s popular and most preferred tools.
5.) Start building a portfolio of work
This is one of the most crucial steps to follow to take your skills to the next level. Building a portfolio is crucial for UI/UX designers. A portfolio is the mirror of the works that you have done. The interviewer can analyze a designer entirely at a glance of your portfolio.
Building a portfolio as a beginner may be difficult but to begin with, you can follow the given steps:
- Start working on made-up projects.
- Pretend that you are a client to unleash your limits and set yourself a design challenge. You can even pick up a random website or and app and redesign it.
- You must never forget to document each stage of the process so you can clearly demonstrate how you reached the final design solution.
With this, I’m wrapping up today’s topic.
Author Introduction
Hi all, this is Juhi Shrivastava. I’m a student at ADMEC Multimedia Institute which offers qualitative UI UX Design Training Courses in Delhi. The course I’m pursuing here is UI/UX Design Standard which is a diploma program covering all essential software, UX planning, visual grammar, and web design classes.
That’s all for today, just stay focused and keeps learning!
