5 skills that make a good designer

My previous article 5 UI and UX mistakes that destroy interface, performs really well:

Thank you all!

I decided to share with you some thoughts on 5 skills, that make a good designer.

Skill 1: Experiment with an interface

A good designer is like a good writer: writes 300 hundred words each day.

A good designer doesn’t have creative burnout. Of course, some of your designs are better than the other, but if you experiment on your design, mixing elements and components you will always find the solution.

Skill 2: Test interface to validate decisions

Interface design is based on your assumptions. The better the designer the better her ability to make assumptions about the interface. We call it expertise.

But every good designer validates assumptions on real data: user testing, app analytics, eye-tracking research.

The idea of design is to solve a problem. So it’s better to check whether you solved the problem, rather than cherish your design ego that everything is ok.

Skill 3: Communicates well

Interface Design’s goal is to ease up an understanding of information.

We, humans, understand information with the brain. And our brain percepts information in the form of stories.

So when you build an interface you build the way you communicate interface to the user. In voice interfaces (like Alexa) you could understand it literally :)

Skill 4: Build deliverable interfaces

Dream big, dream bold, but dream deliverable. You can craft some sort of motion graphics magiс, but the harsh reality is that you can destroy your interface performance when it is launched in the browser.

A good designer always communicates its interface with the product manager to address business and user issues and with the front-end team to address the performance and building time of the UI.

In Vectorly we see UI Development as a single process. The Product of UI Development is not a Figma or Sketch file, but a working UI in the browser.

Skill 5: Knows the principles

Yes, that’s it.

You should know the principles of good design, some of them are described in my previous article: 5 UI and UX mistakes that destroy interface.

I plan to write a new article on UI design principles next week.

Stay tuned.