4 Soft Skills Every Designer Should Aspire to Learn

For example, every project includes a feedback cycle with the client—whether an external or an internal client. Each side must make compromises to create a satisfying product that meets both user and business needs. Being able to interpret the client’s feedback and understand exactly what the client is demanding—as well as the reasons behind their demands—can help you to devise a better solution, without cutting corners.

Another example in which feedback is an essential part of the design process is when lead designers working with large teams provide feedback to their collaborators. They must be able to phrase their feedback in a positive manner and explain the motivations behind it. Being able to deliver feedback effectively can reduce the number of iterations necessary to make design changes—as can other designers’ ability to receive and understand the lead designer’s feedback.

Having Both Flexibility and Consistency

Being flexible is one of the most important soft skills a designer can possess. Plus, the essential nature of the designer’s work requires this ability. Whether designers are conceptualizing design systems or creating products, there must always be room for improvement and expansion, which makes flexibility a key factor in their success. To build on the feedback they’ve previously received from their clients, designers must be adaptable enough to sacrifice their own vision and better align with that of their clients. In some cases, they must even make wholesale changes to appease the client for whom they’re doing their work and successfully complete a project.

Because design is an ever-evolving field, designers must also be flexible enough to adopt new design trends, abandon old ones, and regularly question whether their designs are sufficiently modern or relics of the past. However, there is such a thing as too flexible. This is where consistency comes in. A certain degree of consistency is necessary to create cohesive designs that have the space to expand organically. It is essential for designers to find a balance between their own consistent brand of design and the flexibility that is necessary to adapt to the collective design consciousness of their design team or their clients’ design standards.

Learning Time Management

Every designer on the planet is aware that design does not exist in isolation, but is bookended by other processes and workflows, all of which contribute to the final product. For example, UX designers may need to accommodate the reality that, after their design responsibilities are complete, a user-interface (UI) designer might have responsibility for designing the visual elements of the design solution. Furthermore, once the UI designers have finished their work, they must hand the design off to developers, who build the final product. Therefore, taking responsibility for one’s own time dictates respecting that of others, who are collaborating on the project.

Often, designers must work on multiple projects at once, making time management an even more important soft skill. What makes working on multiple projects so difficult is that the projects may be progressing on different timelines, at different paces. For example, one project might be in its UX research phase, while another is in information architecture, and a third is in prototyping. Designers must divide their time and attention between the projects, adjusting to the needs of each product, which is another reason why time management is an essential soft skill for designers.

Conclusion

It is a common misconception that the designer’s toolkit depends entirely on hard, experiential skills that the designer has honed over years of working in their field. But the fact is that, while these hard skills are essential, they have little value unless designers can use them in conjunction with their soft skills.

As I mentioned earlier, soft skills are what separate great designers from merely good ones. While designers can pick up some soft skills simply by being more mindful about the situations in which they are necessary, many of these skills develop only through accruing more and more design experience. Thus, many of these soft skills evolve over the years as designers interact with more and more clients, stakeholders, and teammates. But the most important soft skills, such as empathy, are the most difficult to learn and developing them requires a conscious, mental effort. They require developing one’s design mind.