Good designers are highly sought out and can be immediately hired or promoted on the spot. Whether you still applying for UX design roles or are a UX designer looking to move up to a more senior role, understanding what makes a good designer can be crucial to achieving your goals. Personally, I initially struggled with getting my first UX role despite sending out tons of applications. I also struggled to move up from a senior role to managing my own team of designers. You end up not only feeling inadequate but despondent about future prospects. It’s easy to think that just doing your job or submitting a portfolio would be good enough but our field is a competitive one and demonstrating any combination of these traits may be enough to set you apart.

It is worth mentioning that all of the following these traits require demonstrating and can’t be assumed by people evaluating you. Let’s begin.

1. Be a really good communicator

Being a good communicator is absolutely critical to success in a UX design role. In user testing, one needs to able to make participants feel comfortable so they are more willing to share their feedback. In a team, one needs the ability to work with people, convince them and deal with internal politics. With clients, one needs to be able to communicate a coherent argument and rationale for the design approach or strategy to several different stakeholders.

“Something else that’s crucial is to be able to communicate effectively across different functional teams. You’ve got to cultivate a mutual understanding between your team and another to get things done and to put out a great product. In a design team, we all rely on each other’s expertise.”
– Frank Yoo, director of product design at Lyft

“Having great communication skills is fundamental for designers. Not only how you communicate your designs to your users, but what you’re trying to do as a designer to the rest of the company, including engineering and marketing, as well as all the other stakeholders in the process.”
– David Anderson, UX Designer at Houzz

2. Pay attention to detail

They say design is in the details but detailed work is not easy. It takes reverts, reviews and concentration. Detail-oriented strengths give you the ability to work better, to be more effective and to minimize the risk of making major mistakes. Some people naturally have a higher attention to detail but through practice one can also develop a very good eye for good design.

“The best designers are tuned in to the minutiae of their work. There is this stereotype that designers are flakey and have their heads in the clouds and are just off in their own world, but I feel like some of the best designers are very Type-A and are focused on those little details.

Design is about creating a visual system – That’s a very methodical process that has to happen. It’s all about creating a language that carries across everything you’re working on: Something robust, that doesn’t break apart when you create a new project. This isn’t always something the end user is fully aware of, but when something is off, they definitely know.”
– Laura Lozano, Sprout Social

To quote Joe Sparano, “Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent.” A great designer knows the right questions to ask in order to drill down to the core of the problem, and how to communicate that solution in ways that are deceptively simple.
– Serena Ngai, Lead Designer at Shopify

3. Collaborative in producing great work

Designers tend to want to go away, put their head down, go through a messy design process alone then reappear with a solution that will wow everyone. This is usually the wrong way to go about creating good work. We each have biases and blind spots in how we approach our work. Working with cross functional teams, users and clients makes the design process much easier to execute.

“A good designer is somebody who can easily make trade-offs. You want to make a design that is like the Picasso of design, but you have a week to do it and it doesn’t work like that. So you have to know how to make something that is great. A good designer learns to work within their limits – take the goals and translate those into the work you’re doing. A designer is ultimately someone who knows how to make trade-offs and do it elegantly.”
– Jason Lang, Visual Designer at Yammer

As a designer, you can’t be afraid to completely start over when something isn’t working. Sometimes to get to the right solution you have to throw out things you thought were really important but at the end of the day were becoming a roadblock.
– Jason Dziak, Design Director at Happy Cog,

Great designers are curious. Ask a lot of questions and find out the why.The best designers embrace trial and error in their design approach. They don’t get embarrassed or defensive about failure.
 – Jennifer Hogan, Manager of User Experience and Design at Getty Images

4. Actually care about users

As designers it’s our responsibility to be shepherds of the user experience. It’s crucial that we empathise with our users, and understand their needs. The approach is more of an art than a science, but you have to keep putting yourself in your users’ shoes – You can’t lose sight of that.

“A great designer is someone who is passionate about art and enjoying different cultures. A great designer doesn’t close themselves off to new ideas and cultures. It’s about being open and trying to experience everyone’s different points of view, take it all in and then add it to your own point of view. In product terms that means trying to understand the different users. In more general terms: try to understand people on the street, have empathy for them, create something important to them. It’s not about yourself, it’s about others.”
– Amir Hadjihabib, Product Designer at Zendesk

A great designer has tremendous empathy: It’s the only way you’ll ever truly understand the problem you’re designing a solution for. Art school actually gave me a big ego, it’s one of the key differences between art and design that I’ve had to overcome to do my best work in both disciplines. Then again, art can teach you to think radically, and solve problems differently. As an artist I have to be willing to say “Hey, it’s been done this way before, but let’s think about it from another perspective.” The best designers think outside of what’s been done, and solve problems in exciting new ways.
– Jeremy Bailey, Creative director at FreshBooks

5. Have the Big picture in mind

A core trait that every UX designer should have is big picture thinking. It’s not enough to be concerned about just the design layout and colors. One needs to be have a holistic understanding of strategy, business requirements, users needs and their impact on project delivery.

“Our job as UX experts is a balancing act. We’re always trying to figure out the right combination for all our ingredients: UI, UX, graphics, marketing and other business goals. I sometimes get frustrated when, in order to achieve optimal UX results on complex products, I need to sacrifice some of the cooler design elements.”
– Nir Yuz

“It’s not easy to be in a room full of stakeholders and have to tell people what they don’t necessarily want to hear. The best designers know what details matter and are worth fighting for and when to say no. Ask a lot of questions and find out the why.”
– Jennifer Hogan, Manager of User Experience and Design at Getty Images

“Great design comes from balance. There are a lot of things to keep in mind: different audiences, different devices, different abilities. You have to make sure there’s a balance between all of those. You also have to keep design principles in mind: space, colour, typography, hierarchy, the grid, etc. The fundamentals of design were around long before we were born and will stay around long after. If you can understand the basics – make them a part of you and be holistic with your approach – you will be a great designer.”
– Dan Leon Krause, Art Director at Razorfish

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In conclusion, always seek to improve yourself and go the extra mile. This will truly set you apart when crafting a portfolio application, starting a new UX job, or when you are looking to be promoted to a more senior role.

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