Are you satisfied with your current achievements in this industry? Have you ever tried your best to improve your design skills? Have you ever felt overwhelmed by this highly competitive design industry? Well, even the top designer like Don Norman (one of the world’s most famous UX designers) is working harder than you, how could you be left behind? As a UX designer, I often look for the way to enhance my design skills, but how to improve UX skills? Here I listed 7 best UX tips which are recommended by leading designers in this industry and will help you to improve your UX design skills.

1. Do more sketching

Sketching is not for beautiful looking but for retaining the ideas of the designer’s head.With more sketching, you will clarify your ideas and design thinking. Pen and paper or whiteboard can do the low-fidelity prototype.

2. Reprocess your design

To be honest, your product will never be perfect. People always find the problems to criticize your design. Reprocessing your design can help you to find more issues that you may not find in the first place, and you can organize these issues and start to fix them before reaching the final stage.

3. Test your design

Your design needs to be tested. If you have enough time, then the A / B testing would be the most recommended way for testing your design. But when the time is limited, you can send your design to your team member or your target user group to test the design problems. They will find some issues that you can’t find easily by yourself. Once got the feedback, you can review it immediately so as to improve the design and work efficiency.

4. Try some new design tools

Tools are essential in the design process. It will be the causes of low levels of productivity and waste more time without using tools. Learning more tools will help you to improve working efficiency and performance. Here I have listed some best design tools that will help you to improve UX design skills:

UX Prototyping Tools:

Mockplus

A simple and easy-to-use prototyping tool with built-in 3000 icons and 200 components. With simple drag and drop, you can achieve an interaction easily. In version 3.2, Mokcplus supports exporting sketch files, UI flowcharts, “repeater” and many other new features. The “repeater” is my favorite function. With the repeater, we only need to adjust one of the cells which can automatically adjust other cells synchronously. More details: 3.2 new features

UXPin

UXPin is designed for people who are not good at UX design. The experienced UX designers in UXPin provide a complete set of practical design elements and patterns for UX beginners.

Invision

InVision can quickly create impressive high-fidelity prototypes. By using this tool, users can link their UX sketches, designs, and block diagrams and share them with other people among the team.

Usability testing tools:

Concept Feedback

It provides quick feedback on website design, usability, and marketing through online professional teams. For public comments, the professionals will give you a holistic view. For private feedback, you can invite specific experts to provide feedback and organize graphical results. Professional feedback comes from experts in the field of design, usability, and marketing.

User Echo

It is used to help collect feedback from customers, listening to the customer’s opinions to improve the products and services.

Verify

It’s used to collect user feedback on the design or prototype, the formation of statistical data collected to guide and improve the design.

Silverback

A software for designers and developers to perform usability testing by capturing screen activity, and it can record testers’ faces and sounds. What is the best of the software is it can export the data of volume, and can indicate any noteworthy moments.

UserTesting

It’s used to observe the activities of users in their own environment, listen to their ideas, and then form a conclusion. The official introduction to this tool is to find the answer that why users are leaving your site with the fastest and most cost-effective way.

Mind map tool:

Mindnode

It has simple and cozy style. Its infinite extension function can be regarded as one of best mind map tools, and you can make a different connection point in the link. MindNode supports the latest operating version of iOS and Mac.

MindMap

It is the first mind map product in the use of 3D display mode, with 3D perspective to display your thinking all-around.

Xmind

It has a professional spelling checker, search, encryption and even audio notes feature that supports exporting to PPT directly.

5. Exchange the ideas and experience with the industry designers

Regularly exchange and share your own learning experiences or design ideas with the industrial designers. Quora and UX design forum are good places to expand your own professional UX circle, Facebook and LinkedIn groups are your best channel to expand your social contacts.

6. Learning new design concept and keep pace with the latest design trends

As a UX designer, it is essential to keep abreast of the latest design trends and news. If you are not familiar with the industry and the market, then the product that you design will not be used by users. The following UX design websites and blogs are my favourites:

Smashing magazine

This site always provides rich design resources and high-quality articles. I think most of the designers are familiar with this site and every UX designer should bookmark this site, you will gain a lot from it.

Medium

Medium is a comprehensive blog platform where the design section has been providing rich design resources and news. This website is my favorite one, I usually spend 2 hours each day on this site to learn other designers experience and industry trends. Everyone will benefit from it.

Here are more UX design resources: UI / UX Design Resources Learning Website

7. Improving your communication skill

Intelligence, knowledge or experience are important and might get you a job, but strong communication skills are what will get you promoted-by Mireille Guiliano

Every UX designer should become a multifaceted communication master. They are not only can talk about the design, but also have the ability to convince people. They should have the ability to use the industry language to communicate with other designers smoothly, and can use simple coding language to explain the design process to developers; However, for customers or users, they also can communicate with them through using simple language rather than technical terms.

The takeaway:

You can follow the top UX designers on Twitter to learn their design thinking. If you can find one of the top mentors that are willing to guide you in the UX design industry, you will get twice the result with half the effort.

Conclusion:

The design is a long way. There are many ways to improve user experience, but learning is the only way to help you become an excellent UX designer. How to improve UX skills? I know you must get your answers after reading this post.