Expanding your online digital skills

If you’re stuck somewhere in the web of web design from graphics to architecture, it’s always useful to know more about other parts of the picture and the skills that could take you further. One area attracting a range of designers is UX or User Experience.

Mastering UX with UX Mastery

To get a good view of User Xperience and its digital disciplines, take a look at an engaging creative video with the reassuring line ‘The world needs more UX designers’.  The video is on the US site, UX Mastery, along with others video guides on starting a career in UX, building a portfolio and making a career change. The site also has a list of recommended tools covering accessibility testing, evaluating design and information architecture.

Moving into User Xperience

UX designers can come from backgrounds in research, visual design, graphic design – many of whom have widened their skill set to include knowledge and experience of the right software, applications and tools.

Elsewhere, other sources in the industry talk about the characteristics of a good UX designer. Most importantly you need to be endlessly interested about how a consumer interacts with a website, mobile device or app.

On the BBC site, as part of a discussion in their UX design department, a good UX designer is described as someone who is ‘almost indecently curious’ about a user’s needs. Their UX design team can have interests as wide as ‘wireframes, user flows, layout, colour or typography…or a love of building prototypes, illustration or motion graphic design.’

Whether you’d describe yourself as ‘indecently curious’ or simply quite interested in broadening your digital design and development skills, the UX mastery site could be a good first step.