3 Personalities to become a better UX designer.
Recently, thanks to Clubhouse, I had the opportunity of getting to know a lot of UX/UI designers in Hong Kong. As the industry is still young in Hong Kong, a lot of people has been seeking advice for their move to the UX field. So besides talking about skill set, we were discussing what characteristics or personalities a UX designer should have.
Today, I picked a few that came up quite often in our conversation, which I would argue are the most valuable characteristics UX designers have and guess what? It is rather easy and absolutely free to acquire.
1. Be curious
In my previous blog, we mentioned as a UX designer, we have to treat everything in the world as a designed experience. Everything you use, you eat, you drink every day, are experiences designed by someone. By having that mindset, the whole world is your playground. When you are outside, maybe stop looking at your phone for a bit but pay attention to your surrounding. Just like casually using the AEIOU framework, be curious about people and their relationship with artefacts, observe how people interact, how people struggle, how people achieve what they want to do. And it doesn’t have to be a big and trendy artefact analysis like AI or Crypto, even with our ordinary everyday behaviour, we could discover a lot more than you might think. Design opportunities are everywhere when you start being curious.
Ever think of how people navigate their fridge? How are children climbing up the staircase of a double-decker bus? Being curious allows you to explore different design opportunities, get your creativity running and keep you sensitive and reflective with people’s ever-changing behaviour.
Hint: Always start from what you’re interested in. Maybe sports, food or shopping. Then the world will become more interesting while unfolding.
2. Be weird
Surprisingly, one of the biggest takeaway from my master course is the ability to be weird and explore every creative opportunity. We want to act cool, especially at school or at work while the last thing we want to do is role-playing a plant surviving a thunderstorm. But to be a UX designer or a creative person, we have to embrace the weirdness. Doing weird experimental research, crazy bodystorming help us think outside of the box, help us experience the world in a different way, not the usual “be cool” way.
Next time, when you think of a weird idea, no matter what it is, try to do something with it. Sketch it out, make a paper prototype, use simple methods to explore and demonstrate those ideas. You will never know what would come up if you never try it. Everything is part of the process.
Remember, even it looks stupid doesn’t mean it is useless. See yourself as an artist, they don’t succeed by doing ordinary stuff.
3. Be critical
But at the end of the day, no matter how artistic we want to be, we are UX designers where user is our first priority. Looking back to many design feedback or critic sessions I have done, the most frequent question is always:
“Why would they want that?”
(“they” refers to target audience here)
Simply but direct. That’s a question constantly come up throughout the entire design process, also the ultimate purpose to do all sort of design research before brainstorming the idea. As UX designer, we start from users, not from “we think that”. Instead, we observe people’s behaviour, identify their problems, where we can say “From doing ______ research, we found out people would benefit from using the new design.”
No matter how good you think your design is, the world is a cruel place for the design outcome, especially as a product. In the real world, product success does not only rely on the effort of the design or the idea but also affected by lots of other factors (Branding, growth, marketing etc). At the end of the day, nobody is gonna buy/ use/ stay with your design if it doesn’t benefit the users. Take in every feedback you can gather, don’t let your own bias blind you from the truth. A reality check could save time from making useless design. No one wants to waste all the resource building for nothing.
Being critical with your design/ when you give design feedback to others.
Summary of 3 personalities I value most in UX designer:
1. Be Curious
2. Be Weird
3. Be Critical
Hi, I’m TszHoi and I write to explore, reflect and document my design journey. We should not stop writing after leaving school.
Working on the startup project Jupitrr. Interested in design, product, startup and networking, feel free to hit me up with ideas and feedback. Full story in www.tszhoileedesign.com. Connect at www.linkedin.com/in/leetszhoi
