The 1 skill you need to develop as a UX designer

Hayden Slaughter
Prototypr
Published in
2 min readOct 19, 2017

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Q – Non-UX things to learn if you want to be a successful UX Designer?

I could go into detail about all the things you could learn that would make you a better UX designer. Soft skills around how you communicate and present yourself or areas further afield such as management and production processes. But if I’m honest there’s only 1 skill I believe truely matters if you want to become a great professional and two rules to apply that skill.

The skill = Learning

Learn how you, as an individual, learn. How do you best take in new skills, develop them, apply them and hone them. Refine the right way for you. At school they teach us one way of learning and it’s not for everyone. It wasn’t for me. It didn’t work for me. It wasn’t until I left education that I worked out how I best learnt and began applying it in a way that made learning enjoyable and beneficial.

The 2 rules:

Once you’ve learnt how you learn you need to know how to apply it. In my view there are two important rules to follow:

  1. Learn about stuff that interests you and that you are passionate about. It all becomes useful and plays a role in how you approach problems and situations.
  2. Take control of your learning. No one else is going to do it for you. Nobody else’s syllabus will be right for you.

If you develop this seemingly simple skill then you will develop an instinct for the other skills that will aid your development and guide your career in the direction that is right for you.

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