Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

When I first entered the field of UX design, I thought that mastering design thinking was the key to becoming a successful designer.

As I’ve gained more experience, I’ve learned and observed some key qualities and skills that make a designer successful.

Many of these things aren’t taught in design school or even a UX bootcamp.

After working on several different teams and having many insightful conversations with my mentors, here are a few things that successful UX designers don’t do.

1. They don’t work in silos

Working in silos is caused by a lack of collaboration and communication across teams or departments.

Each silo works in isolation and fails to share information across teams, leading to inefficiencies in workflow, such as:

• duplicated or inconsistent work,
• misaligned priorities, and
• lack of direction towards achieving the business objectives.

Some proven ways for teams to escape the silo mentality include:

• Nurturing a unified vision so that teams can adopt a big-picture view of the company’s overall objectives
• Creating cross-functional teams so that departments can support each other while encouraging different perspectives
• Using collaboration tools so that remote teams can foster better communications and more efficient workflows

(Source: Dan Hughes)

Designers should be aware of what projects other departments are working on or have planned for the future.

Collaboration across teams creates opportunities to share knowledge and build efficiency into their workflow.

Designers should also leverage and contribute to a design system.

The design system acts as a single source of truth for the organization so that designers across teams can use common components and patterns to deliver more consistent experiences.

2. They don’t worry about getting things perfect

I am guilty of trying to perfect my designs time and time again.

When I was a junior designer, I used to focus on the nitty-gritty details for far too long, wanting to deliver a pixel-perfect, polished piece of work.

After I left my job and joined a faster growing company, there was no time to worry about getting things perfect. The team moved with a sense of urgency.

Get the product shipped, worry about the details later.

Designers need to move away from the idea of “one big launch”. In agile, the concept of continuous delivery can lead to faster time to market and efficiency in making changes, including implementing new features or bug fixes.

(Source: Scaled Agile — Continuous Delivery Pipeline)

Time is valuable, especially when competitors are working just as hard to deliver quality products. Just get the product out the door and into the hands of your customers.

Design is an iterative process; it isn’t finished once it’s delivered.

Successful designers understand the importance of measuring outcomes through methods like user interviews, diary studies, A/B testing, or instrumentation.

Data and research drives decisions, which allow designers to incrementally improve their designs, one sprint at a time.

3. They don’t fall in love with their solution

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned as a UX designer is to never fall in love with your designs.

Just like in relationships, it can lead to heartbreak.

A big mistake that designers often make is being unaware of confirmation bias, which is the tendency to look for, or interpret, information to back up their own beliefs.

(Source: NN/g — Confirmation Bias in UX)

Confirmation bias can be dangerous in UX as it can lead to poor or incorrect decisions based on validating false assumptions or personal preferences.

Asking biased questions while conducting research can lead to users focusing on the wrong thing and unintentionally confirming your own thoughts.

This results in designing experiences that may not accurately address the users’ needs or provide any value.

A great UX designer has the willingness and ability to let go of an idea.

Designers should be receptive to feedback and critique about their designs.

Work with researchers to ask open-ended questions without leading the users into validating your assumptions.

Learn to let go of a solution if the data and feedback support a different direction.

Being a designer isn’t about designing whatever you feel like is right, but rather grounding your designs in research and insights to deliver an experience that addresses real user needs.

4. They don’t only focus on designing

As UX designers gain more influence in their organization, they tend to take a step back from designing and become more involved in product strategy and envisioning the future.

Senior designers collaborate closely with product leaders to define the roadmap, breaking down larger initiatives into milestones and sprints.

(Source: IBM Enterprise Design Thinking Toolkit — Experience-based Roadmap)

It’s important to understand how design as a function contributes to the overall product strategy in order to convince stakeholders and influence design. Designers should explore ideas and communicate the tradeoffs to back up their decisions.

It can also help to understand code so that you can work better with engineering teams to realize your vision. Being able to speak the same language as your cross-functional partners will help strengthen teams and deliver better outcomes for users.

Growing your T-shaped skillset as a UX designer will help you gain the knowledge and expertise required to level up in your career.

An example of how a UX designer can grow their T-shape skillset over time by deepening their core discipline and broadening their wing disciplines.

“If good UX design is the result of very careful consideration, I’d suggest that a good UX designer is one who has carefully gathered all of the information they need to fully understand the needs of both user and brand in relation to whatever issue they are trying to solve. With these thorough understandings, the most appropriate UX solution will pretty much present itself.”

— Dan Rodrigues, Senior UX Designer, Missguided Ltd