| > What helped you increase your UX skills? Disclosure: not a professional designer/UX person but have learned a lot over the years. Honestly, building things that were terrible (not on purpose) and going back later and trying to pick apart what I did wrong. User feedback is really important here. Things like "how do I do..." or "where is the button to..." are signals that your UX needs improvement. I think it's useful to be able to look at your work with a critical eye. Of course, if you have the ability, show the things you build to a designer and ask them for honest critique. Put yourself into the shoes of a user and work backwards from there. When I first started doing UI/UX, I put myself in the shoes of a programmer and worked towards the design. This will not ever work. Come at it from the perspective of "if I were to use this app, what are the most useful features and how do I access them?" Work backwards from there and have your UI/UX inform your architecture. Not the other way around. Also, one thing that has helped me is to not get too wrapped up in design trends. It's a distraction from developing a solid foundation. You can have a great UX that people like without having to do the LATEST thing. One last thing: it can be good UX without being beautiful. To me, UX is about discovery: can people figure out how to use it without consulting the manual? If so, it's good UX. The design might be trashy and look 90s but that's less important than having something people are comfortable using. |