Creative Thinking
It is the process of seeing a problem in a very unique and innovative way with a fresh mind and suggesting solutions for the given scenario or the problem. This process of Creative thinking also involves understanding the root cause of the problem and analyzing all the other causes due to which the problem is occurred and providing the right solution. In each and every step of creative thinking, you have to also think in terms of the target audience (i.e the User). This Skill is not at the same level for all the designers and it varies from person to person.
Communication
Communication is one of the most important skills for every career path but its more crucial in the career of a designer. This is the role that involves building good user Experiences with appealing user interfaces. As a designer, you have to understand the needs and pain points of the users and communicate it in an understandable way to Stakeholders, developers, and other designers. So as a designer one must be able to accurately explain each and every concept and implement it in the product. This skill is very important in the UX process where you are understanding the needs of Product owners and target audience.
Time Management
This skill plays a major role as every project has a deadline and as a designer, you need to cope up with the deadline so that you have enough time in the end for iterating designs and finishing touches of the design. It's not about being more creative and works on a small work for a long time but to allocate time based on the priority of the Project and its timeline.
Research
Many designers make this mistake of designing screens for applications directly without groundwork or Learning about the root causes of the problem. So the most needed skill to build a successful product is research so as a Designer when you are gonna start the projects you need to research about the market, target audience, and the purpose of the product or the problem that the design is gonna solve. The ability to do research about the problem and applying the findings in your design is crucial for the success of the product. So having a detailed knowledge of the target market you are designing for will help the final solution to be successful.
Drawing
Drawing is one of the skill that helps you to bring your thoughts in the paper which you can use it to brainstorm at the initial stage of designing to avoid mistakes at the start itself. Before you start designing the screens you can sketch it on a piece of the paper show into stakeholders or other designers and get their feedback and start making it with the help of software like Adobe XD or Figma. This helps you to avoid rework and saves a lot of time and resources. Communicate your thoughts easily with quick and accurate sketches that permit you to explain your ideas with no loss of time and resources.
Aesthetics
The look and feel of the product are referred to as Aesthetics. Many customers by seeing them(Look) not by using them. So it's a very important responsibility of the designer to improve the aesthetic outcome of the product by using attractive colors, fonts, images, illustrations, animations, and much more. So aesthetics acts as a major driving factor as the product appearance is the first thing that the customer notices knowing what makes a design eye-catching and attractive which creates a more appealing design that provides a good experience to the customer.
Branding
Branding is the ability of a designer to design the products that visually fit into a brand's identity, this may be his own personal brand or the companies that he works for. This also means a lot about the consistency in the design of the product i.e all the screens in the product give the same look and feel like the brand identity(Ex Logo). This is not only about the software product but also about physical things like the showroom where our product is being sold, the marketing materials and the advertisements should include our brand colors, fonts to bring the same feel in the mind of our customers.
Photography
Photography is one of the needed skills as the ability to visualize things plays a major role in designing it. So as a designer one should be aware of what kind of image will fit into the page or the product to convey the things visually and enhance the user experience. Also taking appealing photos of your design, surrounding and work can assist in visualizing your designing process more easily. So as visualizing skills improves, One will able to build a product with an awesome look and feel for their target audience.
Design Principles
Design is a combination of design principles and theory. So only when a product is designed by following the design principles it will be able to communicate the message we wanted to consume to our product users. Some of the principles include Information architecture, balance, alignment, consistency, contrast, and other visual design principles.
Design tools
Tools play a major role in conveying our idea by building clickable prototypes. There are many tools available for a UI/UX designer and some of them are Adobe XD, Figma, Illustrator, Sketch, and Fluid UI.
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