How to measure UX design skills

How To Measure Your UX Design Skills?

How to measure UX design skills

Stepping into the UX career does not require a lot of experience or knowledge of the field. You can become a UX designer if you have relevant education, you are interested in design thinking, you want to study human behavior, you are a good problem solver, or you do love creativity and innovation.

If you possess any of the above, you can start your career as a UX designer. At the start of your career, it is easier to learn about the required skills either from your senior colleagues/mentors or you can also become a self-taught UX designer. However, becoming an expert in the field requires a lot of effort and time.

“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice, and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.” — Pele

An important question that comes into your mind is how you can evaluate yourself as a UX designer. How can you know that your skills are continuously improving? 

Below are different ways to measure your UX design skillset. They will help you find out the improvement areas for yourself.

By Chamon

If you do not read the content and want a quick visual, see the video below.

Measure your expertise

UX design requires several soft and hard skills to learn and practice. The first way to measure your skills is to evaluate them against your level of expertise.

1. List down the UX design skillset.

Soft skills required for UX designers include Communication, Empathy, Organization, and Collaboration.

Hard skills that a UX designer should possess are User research, Information Architecture, Wireframing and Prototyping, and UX Writing.

2. Assign each skill a level of expertise that you think you are currently at:

Level 01: Novice — You have studied the skill but haven’t practiced it.

Level 02: Beginner — You have done around 100 hours of practical work with the skill and made coordination with others.

Level 03: Intermediate — You have practiced this skill professionally.

Level 04: Advanced — You have practiced the skill professionally as well as you are able to teach others about the skill. 

Level 05: Expert — You are a well known person with the skill. You can make or teach courses about the skill and share your own experience with others.

3. Evaluate yourself for each skill as per defined levels. Try your best estimate of your expertise.

4. Analyze the result and set a target for you to achieve in the next 3–4 months. Do this exercise again after the set date and see the difference.

If you are able to see improvements in different skills, you are going well. Keep on practicing this exercise.

“Practice the philosophy of continuous improvement. Get a little bit better every single day.” —  Brian Tracy

measure UX skills
By Jezovic

Compare your current work with yesterday’s version

Do not compare your work with others, however, don’t be afraid to learn by looking at others’ work.

“Improvement begins with I.”– Arnold H. Glasow

1. Make a comparison of your yesterday’s work with today’s work. Can you see any improvement in your work? What are these improvements? Are you more satisfied with today’s work?

2. Open your previous design and try to find out flaws in it. How many concepts you didn’t know about UX design yesterday that you are aware of today?

This exercise will help you to list down things that you have learned over a certain period. Repeat this exercise every 2 months and you will see how quickly things are changing.

“The only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday.”― Tony Robbins

compare your UX work
By DarkCube

Get feedback 

Be open to getting feedback on your work. Share your work with the world and hear what they like and dislike. 

1. Make a public portfolio and upload your design artifacts. 

2. Join public forums and share your work and concepts there. 

3. Get feedback from other designers. The feedback will tell you about the required improvements. 

4. Work on these improvements. Compare the feedback that you received yesterday with the feedback you are getting today.

You will get an increase in the number of fans and followers of your work each day.

We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.”– Bill Gates

Feedback reactions
By Amiri

Analyze client satisfaction

Get to know if your client is happy with your work or not by asking these questions to yourself.

1. Are you adding any value to their business? 

2. Is your design work helping them to move towards growth and success? 

3. Are you helping to solve their problems? 

The level of happiness and satisfaction that you receive from your client is a good way to evaluate your skills.

“Unless you have 100% customer satisfaction, you must improve.” — Horst Schulze

relationship with client
By Livi

Want to Learn UX Design?

Try Interaction Design Foundation. IxDF offers online design courses that cover the entire spectrum of UX design, from foundational to advanced level. As a UX Design World reader, you get 25% off your first year of membership with the IxDF.


Thanks for reading.

Subscribe for more related articles at UX World.

If you have any questions, contact here: Facebook | YouTube | Twitter Instagram | Linkedin

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *