The mindset of a UI/UX designer.
Mindset is key to being a good product UI/UX designer.
You are not the user!
You are not the customer!
As humans, we tend to get into the trap of many cognitive biases, to the point where we can imagine things were never mentioned or said!
As Daniel Kahneman in his book Think fast & slow” explained that we tend to like or hate things based on is based on the halo effect, not facts or stat!
It is extremely dangerous to start your career as a UI/UX designer without having the tools to understand other humans to help you design useful, enjoyable, equitable and usable experiences for them. In the end, we humans sometimes don't know what we really want! Therefore as UI/UX designers, in my opinion, have a responsibility to understand the root cause of the problems and have an agile methodology to come up with a solution to launch and track based on the user's feedback.
Design thinking as a lifestyle:
In my honest opinion, product designers can have a tremendous success if they applied the design thinking concept in their day-to-day activities if you're going to really digest the steps of the design thinking which goes from empathy, definite, ideate, prototype and testing and if they use this concept in their daily activities it might increase the odds of coming up with real solutions to real problems.
Empathy:
UI/UX designers should have empathy in the way they see things, otherwise, the solution might not provide the users/people with the experience they deserve
Put the ego aside:
The UI/UX designer is going to face multiple challenges every single day you don't know if the design you are doing is going to really solve the problem so it is a matter of time before you get a slap on the face from the reality telling you that your design is not solving the problem, therefore, you have to have the ability to get rid of that design and do it again.
Passion:
As a product designer, you should have the passion to go that extra mile to have the empathy so you can love what you are doing repeat the research polish the details and even listen to the users over and over again you have to have the passion in order for you to provide an immersive experience.
Problem solver
As UI/UX you should play the game as a problem solver, you are trying to connect the dots, solve the puzzle, understand the problem and find the pain points of the user and come up with decisions based on facts from the users to solve the problems.
Tomorrow, I’ll go through the second step and it is about the “Craft & Execution”.
Stay healthy 😃✌️
