as a UX designer, it is essential to have a balance of both hard and soft skills.

Over the years, the recognition of the importance of soft skills has spread to various other areas of life, such as business, education, and healthcare.

Today, soft skills are considered a crucial aspect of personal and professional growth, and individuals who possess them are often highly sought after by employers and organisations.

In the late 1960s, the United States Army came up with a new term to describe a set of abilities deemed highly valuable in various areas of life, including the military.

These abilities were later named “soft skills” and described as attributes that did not require the use of machinery.

These skills comprised of important qualities such as leadership, motivation, communication, strategic planning, and many others that were essential for the success of an individual or an organisation.

The military quickly realised the significance of these skills and took the initiative to study and categorise them extensively.

While the hard skills pertain to technical know-how and design proficiency, the soft skills involve communication and empathy towards the users. As you work in UX design, the content of your work is usually structured and follows a logical approach.

However, your soft skills help you connect with your team and clients, understand their needs and perspectives, and ultimately deliver a satisfying user experience.

According to the renowned psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, the human species is heavily influenced and moulded by their social intelligence – the capacity to comprehend and appropriately navigate various social situations.

This implies that our achievements and accomplishments are not solely dependent on our cognitive intelligence but also on our aptitude to interact and communicate effectively with our surroundings and the people in it.

By definition, soft, standard, or core skills are desirable in all professions.

Some essential skills highly valued in various disciplines include critical thinking, problem-solving, public speaking, professional writing, teamwork, digital literacy, leadership, a professional attitude, work ethic, career management, and intercultural fluency.

We use many communication skills daily for more than just the UX field.

• I was connecting with the people around you.
• I am building rapport with new colleagues and customers.
• I felt comfortable with small talk.
• Basic survival skills in the business environment are also necessary: explaining your arguments.
• Listen to others.
• Find consensus and convince people.

What are the soft skills of UX designers?

Soft skills are indispensable for UX designers. These skills are the basis needed for functioning in a team. User experience is as many of your soft skills as your hard skills.

Facilitating sprints or workshops

Designers are an integral part of any organization, as they are responsible for overseeing all design-related aspects of a project.

Their job is to manage multiple ideas, input, opinions, and technical limitations and bring them together in a cohesive and visually appealing manner.

One of their key skills is their ability to work effectively with a wide range of personalities, roles, and hidden agendas within the organisation.

They must also spend significant time demonstrating their design process, collaborating with others, keeping everyone informed about the project’s status, and managing their expectations.

Despite the critical nature of their work, designers must also recognize that their projects may not always be the top priority for stakeholders.

Therefore, they must communicate effectively with their colleagues, providing the right information at the right time and level of detail, while also ensuring that everyone feels involved and heard.

Facilitating sprints or workshops is an example of the kind of “people skills” that designers need to have. They must use facilitator tools to help them read and adapt to group dynamics, listen to what is unsaid, and foster productive dialogue.

Ultimately, designers must be aware that teamwork is essential to the success of any project, and their excellent communication skills make it possible to achieve.

Your vulnerability only makes you more powerful.

Your personal qualities make you a better colleague and a better professional. Kristin Neff and Brené Brown have researched vulnerability, happiness, and relationships. One of their conclusions:

Being allowed to make mistakes, to let yourself be convinced, to admit that you do not know something, to dare give and receive feedback — this requires enormous personal growth.

But you get better professional relationships and better results in return.

“The only failed experiment is the one you didn’t learn from“. Making mistakes or experimenting and trying new things is at the core of design thinking.

And yet, it is sometimes difficult to accept when it comes to your errors outside the “fail fast” mentality of a design sprint. It is essential to see your mistakes as learning opportunities and to move on.

“We are trying to make it better together” instead of “I have to win this conversation.”

We spent several days working on the design and put a lot of time, endeavour, and investigation into it. We know best what needs to be corrected and what is best.

Yet, we have never experienced a design presentation where there was no objection to the preferences and judgments we made. So, it is challenging not to react defensively and let go of the idea that we must be correct.

We would have achieved more satisfactory results quicker if we had changed our perspective to unexpected findings from user research and assisted in developing the right attitude and letting go of the passionate devotion to our ideas.

As designers, we have to deal with multiple standpoints of the project and work with different professionals. This sometimes gives you an unjustified feeling that you need to know more than required.

It doesn’t make sense intuitively, but acknowledging that you need to have all the solutions makes you a better professional. In addition, it shows your associates that you have a pragmatic view of the project and are humble and open to new input.

Setting ego aside, accepting that you are not always right or do not have all the explanations and that someone else may have a better idea than you requires emotional maturity. Still, you also get a lot of satisfaction and strength in the project there in return.

People in the same room mean dealing with politics.

In their book ‘Survival of the Savvy: high integrity political tactics‘ Rick Brandon and Marty Seldman give a definition of politics that is not judgmental:

Organizational politics entails using unofficial methods and manoeuvres to advance concepts, acquire sway, augment authority, or accomplish particular targets within a company, typically transpiring in secrecy.

As a UX professional, you are entangled in comprehending what drives people and their goals and frustrations. Understanding their motives and goals also gives you the tools to impact people and make better products in the grand scheme of things.

Politics is something you already do every day. But don’t worry, participating in politics doesn’t necessarily make you a ‘dirty politician’. Impacting only becomes manipulation if you conceal your purposes or don’t put all the knowledge on the table.

The higher you climb in the corps “food chain“, the more vital it becomes to be able to express well, be socially qualified, and be able to “read” the room.

Unfortunately, these are also the most difficult skills to develop; they have no course. But you will get there faster if you open up to feedback and converse with your customers, colleagues, and friends.

As a designer, you spend more than half of your time on soft skills than pushing pixels and making screens.

• For more knowledge read here.

Read more articles exploring the dynamic interplay between design, user experience, artificial intelligence, and technology here.