UX Energy: It's time to skill up folks! - Issue #7
Skill up as a UX Designer, get mentored and keep your Figma files tidy!
So what does a UX Designer do?
A few weeks back my manager and I discussed what growing a design team would look like. We discussed what skills an ideal designer would have.
There's a lot of soft skills required: such as critical thinking & emotional intelligence. But how do you structure competencies? How do you create career progression?
This is an on-going subject we brought into the podcast with Darren Hood & Debbie Levitt who have built teams. We understand that juniors aren't expect to have full experience of UX. But what about when we want to level them up?
Mei Zhang's medium article from 2020 is an awesome read as it gives a helpful overview of the various areas of design expertise. She presents this format in 5 steps:
Understand. Methods of discovery for users, tech and the business.
Define. Summarising research based on the 'problem'.
Ideate. Investigate solutions (the minimum viable product)
Execute. Design features of the solution
Validate. Iterate on the solution through experimentation.
With each section she splits these competencies into four colour codes:
UX
business
technology
communication
You should definitely check out the Miro board she shares.
It presents a great learning path for designers who need to set themselves targets for the future. What are your targets? What would you like to learn next?
Here's a question, have you got any experience of these items? Why not get some mentoring to help you build a career plan to focus on these areas?
Resources you should check out:
😇 Angel List shares top digital Companies that are fully remote. Live the dream.
🍞 Feeling Hungry? Awesome blogpost about the history of UI terms we use everyday. Breadcrumbs or Toast anyone?
🍅 Struggle to stay productive? Here's a great 25min style Pomodoro timer. It's pretty swish & free.
Coming soon! Power-up your UX journey — vip.ux.energy
UX Energy is a low-cost mentoring platform dedicated for UX juniors, equipping them to get their first role. Launching August 1st 2022. Get 10% off your first 3 months. Use code: NEWSLETTER10