It doesn't matter how good you are today. What really matters is how to progress and what steps you take every day to improve your skills.
Let's discuss the ways you can improve your skills
Try different actions and routines regularly in order to become a better designer and person.
Every artist was first an amateur
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To immerse yourself in an area is one of the best ways to improve in it. Just like deadpool says it "maximum effort." This way you will keep up with the latest and upcoming design trends. Nonetheless, repetition improves learning.
Pick a specialty early
Whether web design, mobile or logo design, stake your claim. Deciding on a specialty early in your design career helps you spend more time developing relevant technique.
Learn to identify good design
If you want to create great designs, first you need to learn to recognize a good design from a bad one. It usually comes with experience.
The rule is simple: browse design projects every day. Go through the most recent design showcases and examining the work of other talented and experienced designers.
Also, look around – there are great designs everywhere around you, wether you're passing by storefront signs or billboards on your morning commute, walking down the aisles at the grocery store, reading magazines in the waiting room at the doctor's office, or scrolling through the internet.
Anyone can decipher good design from bad design, but not everyone could tell you what separates the two.
A list of great sources of beautiful design and inspirations:
Provide accessibility for color blind users
It is always the small things that matter the most.
Understand the core elements of UX
You will start to see the connections between the essential UX elements.
- Mental Models
How your brain is trained to expect things to work.
You know how to set and start a microwave. The problem is when it doesn't work the way you expect it.
- Affordance
What the properties of a product allow us to do based on our own capabilities.
You fit the top and bottom of a moka pot together because the pieces afford this action.
- Signifiers
Visible indicators given to guide you to the correct behaivor with the product.
You know which knob on the stove will ignite the left front burner becuase there is probably a diagram somewhere on the stove to point you in the right direction.
- Constraints
Properties or features that limit the number of options you have for what to do with the product.
You can push start on your washing machine all day, but if the door isn't closed, it isn't likely to work. Close the door, and the constraint is removed.
- Feedback
Information given about the effect or status of the action you've taken with the product.
You push the button on the electric kettle and a light comes on, telling you that your action was successful and hot tea is in your near future.
Now think of a digital product you've interacted with recently, and identify these finve elements at work in that experience!
Let us know in the comments!
Where do you see thses elements at work around you?
What do you do to imporve your designs?