Last weekend, I spent my Saturday at a tech recruitment fair, Silicon Milkroundabout, meeting and talking to UX and UI designers who were searching for their next role. It was absolutely fantastic to meet so many talented designers, with bags of hustle and initiative.
BUT! There’s something that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about ever since. Here it is:
On January 3rd, 2017, I wrote on Instagram;
My New Years resolution this year is to help make getting into UX and Design more accessible and easier than ever before. So, tell me one thing you want to work on this year or one thing that you’d like me to post more about that would help you reach your design goals
Picture the scene. There I am, living my best life, and my phone buzzes with a social media notification. Someone has sent me a direct message! However, I’m sad to admit that my initial reaction to seeing this is usually a groan.
Why? It’s not because I don’t like hearing from people. Rather, the opposite is true. I love to hear from people and find out how they are practicing design wherever they are in the world, and to help them if I can.
I groan because it seems to be an unfortunate epidemic on Instagram and other social media that many of the messages I receive are quite frankly, a complete waste of everyone’s time.
I imagine if this is happening to me, it’s probably happening to other people. I’m picturing a sea of people who really want to ask design questions and a bunch of designers who would love to help, but wires getting crossed thanks to shoddy messaging structure! Argh!
So, to help us all out, I’m going to talk about the types of messages that won’t get you a response and how to instead optimise your approach for a better chance of hearing back!
Collaboration.
User-centred focus.
Being a whizz on Adobe Creative Suite.
Being incredibly passionate about design.
We all know that there are some key skills to push when we are talking about being a good designer. Thats why every time I read a summary at the top of a CV I see the same few skills repeated over and over again.
Whilst these skills can be important, there are also plenty of other characteristics that deserve to be recognised as key attributes of a good designer. These are the types of talents that I rarely hear people shouting about on their CV’s or during interviews, but more importantly, that I just don’t hear people talk about improving in their design practise.
This post is going to focus on three of these skills that I believe are under-utilised and under-appreciated by designers and include some tips to help you kickstart your development in each area. Let’s dive in!