Skills of a successful Product Designer

Being a Product Designer in today’s world is so much more than being able to use and understand UX and UI principals. Of course, developing your core UX and UI skills — whether that be using cognitive psychology, Interface Design or your user interview process — should never be forgotten. However, it’s your soft skills make the difference between winning the client or not.

That’s why I decided to go through 3 soft skills that separate a designer from the competition in 2020 and things I look for in new team members.

Communication

Excelling in both remote and face to face communication

Communication has been on this list for so many years however some designers still put developing other skills above communication. When I look at potential candidates to join the design team this is the primary soft skill I am looking for.

Communication affects the entire product lifecycle, how depends on how good you are at it.

It can affect all parts of the product lifecycle from pitching for work, explaining your complex reasoning and system decisions during presentations. To internal communication between you, the Product Manager and the Developer highlighting the user flow, planned micro interactions or how you expect the interface to behave.

Business Acumen

Using business objectives to maximise ROI for your clients

Product designers understand how to use user objectives to form the UI and UX decisions. However taking it a step further and thinking like a CEO enables me to maximise the return through the decisions I make in the experience and interface.

Think like a CEO to maximise return, progress your career and create better products for your clients.

Being able to have this conversation with the client also helps them to pin point exactly what they want to get out of it. This gives you a measurable metric for success and allows you to make the right decisions throughout your design.

Stress Management

Understanding how to deal with stress

We work in a deadline rich environment, that inevitably results in high stress periods. The ability to understand when you are stressed, admit it and have mechanisms in place to help you destress is a must.

Your mental health is just as important as your physical, find your way to stay healthy.

Everyone is different when it comes to their mental health. During high stress times, I exercise — it helps me clear my mind and get things in perspective.

Highlight it to your line manager, they may be able to help you by breaking tasks down or spreading some of the tasks throughout the team. If you don’t feel comfortable speaking to your line manager, find a friend or colleague you are comfortable talking to.

This is so incredibly important, it will ward off burnout and help you be happy at work and healthier overall.

Takeaways

Being an amazing Interface designer or Experience designer is great, but if you can’t handle the stress that goes with the environment then you will burn out.

We’re here to either make our clients money or save our clients money, understanding how businesses work will help you help your client.

‘Miscommunication’ is never an excuse, you should be able to communicate your vision no matter how complex the strategy behind it is.