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What makes good UX designers ?

By Laure Gabrielle Chatenet

The UX Designer's role is to create an effective and satisfying User eXperience. His/her mission is to achieve a user-centered design in order to create a digital product/service that is useful, easy to use and offers a pleasant interaction. 

To this end, he performs important tasks, such as user research, UX testing, UX audit… to understand user behaviors and constantly optimize the product according to their needs.

 What is the role of a UX designer?  

The role of the UX designer is to optimize the user experience of a digital product, with the aim of increasing its efficiency, accessibility and usability. Since the human-user interface is the point of contact between the user and the interactive system, it must ensure an intuitive and user-friendly dialogue, in order to guarantee a pleasant user experience.

With the objective of improving the performance of a user interface, the UX designer must inspect certain elements, such as graphic consistency, information architecture, content readability, and the relevance of the system's

functionality, through the UX audit (or UX evaluation). The UX audit consists of a more detailed evaluation of all the aspects mentioned above, in order to detect usability problems, based on ergonomic criteria, such as the Bastien & Scapin criteria and Nielsen heuristics. These defects generate a feeling of frustration in the user and degrade the efficiency of the system.

UX evaluation informs the UX designer on the most relevant design choices to adapt the HMI interface to user requirements. This interface inspection method has many advantages to the UX designer, such as : 

  • Quick implementation: The UX audit is an easy
  • application operation and takes only a few days to review the system interfaces.
  • Reliable analytics: Through the interface audit, the UX
  • designer can identify the sticking points that hinder the fluidity of the UX journey.
  • Optimization paths To improve the usability of the digital interface.

Auditing is a delicate operation that requires rigor. To this end, the UX designer must be equipped with certain skills to effectively perform the interface review.

The working tools of a UX designer

There are a myriad of useful tools to optimize and simplify the tasks of a UX designer, such as : 

  • graphic design tools: illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Sketch,

Figma, Adobe XD …

  • agile project management tools: RedPen, Trello, Slack, … 

  • prototyping and wireframing tools: Balsamiq, Invision App, Marvel, Axure…

  • Benchmark tools: keynote, PowerPoint, …
  • online survey tools: typeform, full story…
  • tools for analyzing data from UX research: uxpressia, smaply,
  • ideation tools: gamestorming, mural, …
  • user flow creation tools: lucidchart, whimsical, gliffy, …
  • testing tools: treejack, lookback, usabilla, hotjar, …

 UX Designer specialties : 

The UX designer is a versatile profile who can take on different UX-oriented missions and thus take on the role of : 

  • UX researcher: This UX professional is responsible for

observing the behavior of users as they interact with the digital product. This is with the aim of understanding the habits, intentions, uses and needs of the user. This helps to identify the points of friction that hinder its proper course.

  • Interaction Designer (IXD): he defines how to interact with a digital product, with the goal of providing a more user-friendly dialogue with a digital interface.

  • UX Architect: it is the guarantor of a good hierarchy of

information. His mission is to create a harmonious architecture of the content of the man-machine interface in order to ensure a flexible path for the user. 

  • UX Leadership: his or her primary mission is to evangelize the UX culture throughout the company and build motivation and cohesion among UX team members.

 Outlets for a UX Designer :

UX design is progressively gaining traction in both B2B and B2C sectors. Many companies are looking to hire UX designers or strengthen their existing UX team, with the goal of delivering a great experience to their customers.

In particular,banks, insurance, e-commerce, SaaS software publishers, are among the most promising sectors for the UX designer profession. This discipline is also solicited by UX agencies, startups, webmarketing agencies, etc.

What makes a good UX designer? 

The qualities of a good UX designer  

The right UX designer profile has the following skills:

  • He has good synthesis, conceptualization, reflection and analysis

skills to take advantage of the psychology of the users and fully understand their requirements and needs, as well as the project problematic.

These qualities are essential to be able to identify the right design strategies, and the most appropriate solutions to implement. These qualities are also required to succeed in translating the detected needs into effective design solutions and shape powerful user interfaces.

  • He must have good team management skills, in order to master the UX issues of the project and succeed in establishing a healthy and motivating work atmosphere. 

  • An excellent ability to formalize, to visually diagram one's ideas, especially in the form of diagrams, prototypes, user flows, etc. This facilitates communication between the designer and the various stakeholders: customers, colleagues, product owner, etc.

  • He must be rigorous in faithfully applying design conventions and ensuring the good quality of the deliverables developed.

  •  It favors a culture of sharing: of ideas, information, knowledge and experience. This is essential for the success of the project. 

  • He must demonstrate empathy to enhance motivation and communication among his collaborators. Empathetic communication helps the UX designer better manage conflicts and misunderstandings as well as decipher the unspoken things that cause tension within the team.

  • He is a good team player. The UX designer works closely with an extended team that brings together various disciplines: UI designers, web developers, marketing, UX writers, etc. So, he must have good interpersonal skills in order to properly circulate information and involve all these actors in the project.

  • He must ensure active listening to better assimilate customer feedback and complaints from colleagues. Indeed, a good sense of listening allows to understand the thoughts and emotions of the interlocutor. This helps the UX designer to detect a badly expressed need. In addition, this allows him to optimize communication between all stakeholders and helps to move forward more quickly in the project.

  •  He has a good sense of creativity allowing him to propose a design solution that is both innovative and effective and that adequately meets the needs of the users.

  • He must have a good ability to adapt to changes in the design project and to the evolution of technology.

 Best practices for becoming a good UX designer :

Here are some helpful tips for strengthening your UX designer profile : 

  • Always be on the lookout for design news to strengthen your skills and enrich your knowledge. In particular, it's worthwhile to draw inspiration from the experiences and achievements of other UX designers, to firm up your design strategy and discover new trends in the field. 

  • Invest in continuing or professional education. Several online and face-to-face training courses are provided for this purpose, such as: Maisonneuve, Openclassrooms, Udemy, …
  • Arm yourself with useful references that are most recommended by UX professionals. These are relevant sources of information to solidify your UX design culture.

Here are some examples of UX blogs:

nngroup, UX Collective, smashingmagazine, uxplanet, etc.

Examples of UX books include Don't Make Me Think, The Design of Everyday Things, Emotional Design, etc.

  • Perform internships and field experiences to introduce you to the business.

  • Practice and practice again, because practice is the only way to become a good UX designer.

  • Subscribe to UX youtube channels, such as: AJ&Smart, Selfstudy Space, etc. Also subscribe to UX design newsletters, such as: uxdesignweekly, UX Collective Newsletter, ….

  • Listen to UX podcasts, here are some examples: uxpodcast, Beyond Users, healthredesigned, …

  • Continually explore and test new apps hosted on the App Store and Google Play Store. This provides you with the latest UX tools to help you do your job more easily.

  • Find a mentor in a UX community (UX Meetups, Designer Hangout, LinkedIn User Experience Group) to guide and direct you on your journey, especially if you are a beginner. Follow their activity on their social networks and online trainings, to build your repository of information.

After a while, you will master the craft and you can become a mentor yourself. Don't hesitate to maintain contacts with your mentors, trainers, or speakers and build stronger relationships with them. Building friendships with these professionals serves as a great support to constantly feed your experience with broader and more advanced knowledge.

  • Share your creations on dedicated platforms, like: Behance, Adobe Portfolio, Fabrik, etc. These sites propel your career by showcasing your skills and building your online reputation.

The majority of these platforms offer its members the opportunity to recommend and comment on the work of other subscribers. This is very useful to be able to determine the flaws that need to be corrected and the improvements that need to be put in place to make your portfolio more attractive or to optimize your design strategy.

  • Knowing how to say "no" in a subtle way, when the need arises, while clearly justifying the reasons for refusal. Indeed, transparency in attitudes maintains more effective communication with all involved. 

  • Strengthen collective thinking that helps foster creativity, innovation and a sense of initiative among all team members.

  • Know how to negotiate using the right arguments and tone to successfully convince the other person of your point of view.

  • Adapt your attitude and reactions to the context of the speech. This flexibility is highly recommended to ensure better management of changes that may arise during the design process.

How does Capian optimize the work of UX designers?  

Capian is an online collaborative tool that allows you to effectively evaluate a digital interface. It offers a complete toolbox to perform several types of investigations: ergonomic audit, heuristic or expert evaluations.

The benefits of the Capian tool for optimizing the work of UX designers  

The capian tool optimizes the coordination between the UX designer and all the members of his or her team, to achieve the same goal, that of achieving the most positive user experience possible. To this end, it offers these services:

  • a centralized exchange space to federate all actors involved around the UX evaluation of a user interface.

  • easy features to review, annotate, take screenshots, edit, create and share a UX audit report quickly and efficiently.

  • more transparent and fluid communication, through the real-time feedback system. It is the best alternative to discuss directly with your partners, colleagues and customers and instantly decide what adjustments to make to optimize the usability and ergonomics of an HMI.

  • saving time and efficiency. Thanks to Capian's centralized space you save time wasted on long meetings and training. Indeed, Capian is an easy tool to set up, through the chrome extension and requires no software installation.

Also, it is easy to handle and does not require much time to learn how it works. Capian also offers innovative and flexible features to facilitate the assessor's work and optimize communication with relevant members, such as customized assessment criteria and exporting the assessment report to PDF. This ensures better team profitability and customer satisfaction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlGTsE8EAPU&list=PLZX9-QrsaW1H-5pF6JBmpjj-LPrPr9PTb

Conclusion

UX design is an essential skill in any user-centered design project. It employs various quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods, such as questionnaires, interviews, A/B testing, with the goal of achieving usercentered design. The goal of this approach is to align the product with the end user's expectations, while referring to their feelings and needs.

The UX audit complements and reinforces the results of the user tests, with the aim of having a more global vision of the performance of the system and the quality of interaction with this device: does it succeed or not in creating an impactful user experience?

Don't hesitate to contact us!

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