What Skills Do You Need To Become a UX Designer?

Our UX Career Guide Series:

• UX Overview
• User Experience (UX) Skills & Tools <– You Are Here
• UX Training & Education
• UX Career Path & Salary
• UX Portfolio & Resume
• UX Interviewing

As the name implies, user experience design—often shortened to UX design—is all about the people who will be engaging with your products. So the first step is to take a look at your existing skills—whether problem-solving, communication, visual design, or human empathy—and start to imagine how they can form the perfect foundation for an exciting UX design career change. Whether you’ve worked in a field like graphic design, marketing, teaching, or psychology, reflecting on your ability to understand and address user needs is a powerful step forward. 

That’s because, unlike tech careers that focus on coding or data analysis, UX design revolves around understanding human behavior and crafting intuitive interfaces that solve real business challenges.

In UX design roles, you’ll master design methodologies and tools that power the digital world we live in, from how we connect with one another to how we work, play, shop, search, and learn. You’ll develop a design-driven mindset, learn wireframing and prototyping basics, and use tools like Figma and Sketch to bring your ideas to life. And through collaboration and communication, you’ll ensure your solutions are always user-centric and impactful.

Whether you’re upskilling, completely changing careers, or enhancing your tech expertise, a UX design bootcamp will fast-track you toward a meaningful career journey.

Ready to dive in? Let’s explore the specific tools and skills UX designers need today.

Key UX design technical skills 

Technical skills are crucial for demonstrating your ability to translate ideas into user-centered designs. During interviews, you might be tested on your proficiency with tools and methodologies that enable you to create functional, intuitive solutions that meet user needs.

Core UX design technical skills include:

• Information architecture: Design sitemaps and user flows to structure content effectively, guiding users to the information they need.

• Wireframing and prototyping: Create interactive visualizations and user flow tests, mapping out ideas and iterating in Figma or Sketch prior to final development.
  
• Responsive design: Adapt your designs for various devices and screen sizes to ensure a seamless user experience across all platforms.

• User research and testing: Conduct usability tests and gather feedback to refine your designs based on real user interactions with tools like UserTesting and Lookback.

Essential UX design soft skills

Once UX design training helps you establish your technical UX design skills, innate soft skills like empathy, communication, and problem-solving will help you excel. Recent surveys reveal 92% of companies believe durable soft skills matter even more than technical skills in today’s business climate. Why? It’s these innate characteristics that allow you understand user needs, collaborate effectively with stakeholders, and creatively navigate complex design challenges.

Before you interview, consider how you might demonstrate UX designer soft skills like: 

• Empathy: Show your ability to understand and relate to users’ experiences and needs, which drives user-centered design solutions.

• Communication: Highlight your skill in clearly articulating design ideas, rationale, and feedback to both technical and non-technical team members.

• Problem-solving: Illustrate how you approach and resolve design challenges with innovative and practical solutions.

• Collaboration: Provide examples of how you’ve worked effectively with cross-functional teams or incorporated diverse perspectives into your design process.

• Adaptability: Discuss how you’ve adjusted your designs based on feedback or changing project requirements, demonstrating flexibility and resilience.

6 steps to level up your UX design skills

To advance your UX skills, blend practical experience with continuous learning and industry engagement:

1. Get inspired. Check out Behance and Dribbble for portfolio showcases and design inspiration. Follow UX Collective for the latest industry trends and opinions.
   
2. Gather tools. Attend General Assembly workshops and Smashing Magazine webinars  to familiarize yourself with essential UX tools and methodologies.
   
3. Go online. Join UX communities on UX Stack Exchange, Reddit’s r/UserExperience, Designer Hangout, and UX Mastery to discuss challenges, seek advice, and network.
   
4. Greet others. Stay current by attending UX design conferences such as UXPA International or Interaction Design Association (IxDA) events.
   
5. Gain experience. Engage in real-world projects through internships, UX design bootcamps, freelance work, or personal projects to apply theoretical concepts to practical problems.
   
6. Grow continuously. Commit to a mindset of continuous learning, regularly seeking feedback on your work and identifying areas for growth to remain relevant. 

By combining practical experience with ongoing education and engagement with the UX community, you’ll build a strong foundation in UX design and position yourself for a successful career in this dynamic UX design field.

A (partial) list of in-demand UX design tools

In the fast-evolving world of UX design, you’ll rely on a diverse set of tools to boost creativity, streamline collaboration, and enhance user experiences. Here’s a breakdown of some essential UX design tools and what they empower you to do.

1. Mapping and planning

Before jumping into design, you’ll need to organize the project’s overall structure and flow.

• Lucidchart
  Design intuitive information architectures, user flows, and sitemaps that help organize content and guide users through digital experiences.
  
• MURAL
  Collaborate on UX mapping, brainstorming sessions, and journey mapping, visualizing your design process with an interactive and flexible digital workspace.
  

2. Wireframing

The next step is creating basic, low-fidelity layouts of your ideas.

• Axure RP
  Design interactive wireframes and prototypes with dynamic content, conditional logic, and animations to communicate complex user interactions.
  
• Balsamiq
  Quickly create low-fidelity wireframes that capture the core layout and functionality of your design, making it easy to iterate and gather feedback early in the process.
  

3. Prototyping

With wireframes in place, you’ll develop high-fidelity prototypes that simulate user experiences.

• Adobe XD
  Design and prototype visually-engaging user interfaces and experiences, integrating seamlessly with Adobe Creative Cloud.
  
• InVision
  Create interactive, clickable prototypes that simulate real user experiences and gather feedback from stakeholders.
  

4. Designing

After prototyping, you’ll collaborate with your team to refine and finalize your designs.

• Figma
  Collaborate in real-time—creating wireframes, prototypes, and designs, and sharing your work with team members—all within a cloud-based platform.
  
• Sketch
  Design sleek, high-fidelity interfaces and prototypes, and easily manage reusable components and style libraries to maintain design consistency across projects.
  

5. Systematizing

For a more professional UX design process, you’ll use design libraries to create a consistent look and feel.

• Material Design
  Leverage Google’s Material Design system to create consistent, user-friendly interfaces based on predefined components and design guidelines.
  
• Storybook
  Create a shared library of reusable UI components, ensuring design consistency across projects and making it easier to scale your design system.
  
• Zeplin
  Bridge the gap between designers and developers by exporting design specs, assets, and code snippets, ensuring seamless handoff and collaboration.
  

6. Researching

User feedback helps you refine your designs to meet unique audience specifications.

• Lookback
  Conduct moderated or unmoderated usability testing, record user sessions, and analyze feedback to meet user needs effectively.
  
• UserTesting
  Gather valuable insights by conducting remote user testing, capturing real-time feedback, and analyzing user behaviors to refine your designs.
  

7. Collaborating

When you want to make an impactful design, teamwork makes the dream work.

• Miro
  Collaborate with your team on a digital whiteboard—brainstorming design ideas, mapping user journeys, and refining workflows—in real time.
  
• Slack
  Stay in sync with your team, share design files, gather feedback, and manage projects, through one central platform.
  

8. Templatizing

Work with pre-built UI components and templates that enable faster prototyping and design.

• Bootstrap
  Access pre-built UI components and templates that speed up the design process while you create visually appealing and functionally sound interfaces.
  
• Foundation
  Build accessible and mobile-friendly interfaces, focusing on usability and performance.
  

9. Analyzing

Finally, monitor and analyze how users interact with your design to refine and optimize UX.

• Google Analytics
  Track user behavior, engagement, and conversion rates on your website, helping you refine your designs based on real-world data.
  
• Hotjar
  Understand how users interact with your designs through heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys, identifying areas to improve user experience.

Helpful resources for your UX design career

UX designer responsibilities require a unique blend of creativity, technical proficiency, and human empathy—skills that can be developed over time. 

For further reading, check out our articles on:

• What is UX design?
• 4 key elements of the UX design process: fundamentals
• Have you considered exploring a UX design career?
• Your degree + real world tech skills = a recipe for career success
• User experience jobs: 7 options & how to choose a UX design career you love
• Starting a career in UX design

And when you’re ready to take your first step into the exciting world of UX design, there’s no better place to start than General Assembly.

1. Explore our free events (like this Figma workshop) to get a taste of what it’s like to work in UX.
   
2. Delve deeper with a UX design short course, which builds a foundational understanding of UX design principles, tools, and methodologies.
   
3. Go all in by enrolling in our part-time UX Design Bootcamp to build the essential skills for UX design while balancing work or other commitments.
   
4. Or choose our full-time UX Design Bootcamp to get yourself completely career-ready in as little as 12 weeks.

No matter which path you choose, General Assembly’s UX design training programs teach you the most relevant UX design tools, equip you with the most in-demand UX design skills, and give you valuable, hands-on UX design experience. You’ll graduate with a portfolio of work that’s ready to shop around to employers and alumni connections to get you started.
There’s no time like the present to invest in yourself and pursue a UX design career path. Sign up for our next info session and get started.