Top skills that make a great UX'er

1. Observing the world

Observes and studies the world: Full mode on in exploring the interesting world of different people and things is a great skill to develop. Learning how to notice little things, seeing what repeats itself is a plus in the skillset that makes a good UX'er.

2. Communication

Communicates well: Knowing how to express ideas and concepts clearly, being kind in words and body language, being able to read other's feelings and their feedback is an amazing skill.

3. Solving problems

Solves problems for people: first, it's about people. A good UX Designer seeks to solve people's problems, and understands that the rest will follow. The business, the revenue, the happy stakeholders.

4. Knowing the principles

Knows the design principles and patterns: design has a lot of rules and best practices. Learning these will help you in growing the success rate in building great projects.

5. Having empathy

Has empathy: "fake" empathy is as good as real empathy. Having empathy for others doesn't necessarily mean feeling everything, but most of the time it is about learning about people's problems and needs. It is about trying to get out of your comfort zone to be of help and make people's lives better.

6. Validation of assumptions

Validates assumptions: be clear on what you want to test, and why. At the same time explain why you chose a method over others and for what purpose?

7. Knowing what to prioritize

Knows how to prioritize: this is a very important skill. People will often lose a lot of time and money in wiggling around and solving the wrong problems or prioritize things that have very little impact on the big picture.

Exercise: Observing the world

For this exercise let's play a fun game and observe anyone's behavior in your home. Pay close attention to what they do, and if anything repeats itself. I live with my partner and I've noticed a new thing happened the past week, our home is full of hair ties.

I started to gather more "pieces of evidence".

Then I went and asked her why she keeps leaving hair ties around the home? "Because I always untie my hair when I go to a team meeting."

Yes, but something had changed. This is new behavior. Why? This didn't happen before. So I started to analyze one of the hair ties. I observed that the elastic was pretty stiff and doesn't stretch so well. I remembered she always put her hair ties around her wrist before. I've put it on my hand and it just squeezes my hand.

I went and got another hair tie that I've never seen around the house and put it around my wrist. It was pretty comfortable.

I went to my partner again and asked her why she doesn't put the new ones around her wrist. She told me that they are too tight. She couldn't tell me this before because I didn't ask the right questions, and she wasn't even aware of her behavior.

You can do this with anything, it's a great exercise that helps you train your attention and observation. This will help you in developing products around people's needs and learn more about how people do things, and use things in general.

Conclusion

Whatever your top skills are in your UX journey, if you are passionate about it and love it, it will be enough for you to become great in this field.