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Here are some qualities I've noticed in great UX/UI designers: - Deeply understands the technology involved and how people want to use that technology - Looks

Here are some qualities I've noticed in great UX/UI designers: - Deeply understands the technology involved and how people want to use that technology - Looks at UI the way users do and is disgusted by pain points (ala Steve Jobs) - Empathizes with users who use technology differently than they do (or anyone else on the team), and is able to build out UI specifically for their use cases - Wrangles the development team to do everything possible to make life easier for the user; set-up that auto-detects your rig, Mint's on-boarding process where all you have to do is enter your username and password from your bank website log-in, etc. - Concepts and implements things like emotional hooks, look-and-feel, embedded tutorial, etc. These things are "seen" and not "done" like playing the piano or other activities which require 10k hours to master. Some people have excellent product experience vision and give themselves permission to use it in a business context. Other designers will push pixels their whole careers. Some people think deeply about why they do things, others don't. I think that's the critical skill in UX design and cannot be trained.

scott_s 15y ago
Thinking deeply about why you do things a particular way is critical for being good at anything. You can replace "UX design" with "programming," "writing," or even "salsa dancing."
sbisker 15y ago
Speaking from experience, becoming a "good" UX designer has definitely taken me at least 5,000 hours already. In that time, I did plenty - specifically, I made a whole bunch of UIs that, for one reason or another, sucked. In time, the more designs I made, the more I started to develop an intuition for things that worked or didn't work. Not to mention that before I learned how to design, I had to learn how to listen to my users - and before I could do that, I needed to learn to check my ego at the door and realize that even as the "designer", it didn't mean I knew a darn thing about what my design should look like until I talked to them (and sometimes, not designing what I originally "wanted" to design as a result). Yes, there are definitely skills involved in "doing" things that are hard to train, and there's a sense of "natural" talent - but with enough effort, even a computer science major like myself can pick up those skills. And conversely, the hours you spend doing design are hours that are necessarily taken away from other things you want to be an expert on. Like NoSQL databases, or sleep. :)

scott_s 15y ago

Thinking deeply about why you do things a particular way is critical for being good at anything. You can replace "UX design" with "programming," "writing," or even "salsa dancing."

sbisker 15y ago

Speaking from experience, becoming a "good" UX designer has definitely taken me at least 5,000 hours already. In that time, I did plenty - specifically, I made a whole bunch of UIs that, for one reason or another, sucked. In time, the more designs I made, the more I started to develop an intuition for things that worked or didn't work. Not to mention that before I learned how to design, I had to learn how to listen to my users - and before I could do that, I needed to learn to check my ego at the door and realize that even as the "designer", it didn't mean I knew a darn thing about what my design should look like until I talked to them (and sometimes, not designing what I originally "wanted" to design as a result). Yes, there are definitely skills involved in "doing" things that are hard to train, and there's a sense of "natural" talent - but with enough effort, even a computer science major like myself can pick up those skills. And conversely, the hours you spend doing design are hours that are necessarily taken away from other things you want to be an expert on. Like NoSQL databases, or sleep. :)