A designer breaks down the hard skills you need in 2024: sketching, color theory, composition, research, prototyping, testing, and ergonomics. This is part one of 101 skills for product and UI/UX designers.
Skills are the most important thing for a designer. In that there are a lot of confusions students, freshers and even experienced people have in design. What skills should I learn? What skills should I learn first? What skills should I learn after a year? So do I have to be prepared all the skills and then I'll apply for internships or jobs. What about the deep of the skill? How much hours I have to spend? I'm going to answer this in this particular video. Skills are divided into two parts. Let me give you hard skills and soft skills. When you take hard skills, it's only contributing to 20 percentage. Soft skills is very important. We'll come to it. Okay, very first thing is in hard skill is you need to be a very good person in terms of sketching. You need to be good in terms of rendering, you need to be good in terms of sketching it out. Lines, circles, everything. Second is you need to have a good clarity on your color theory and knowledge about it. Okay? Then comes composition. Composition is little tricky. You need to be very good in terms of understanding the grid, spacing, balance, arrangement. So I've given you a little explanation. But when you go deep, it goes on like anything. Okay? So the configuration, the placements, the rhythm, harmony, symmetric asymmetric balance. So all these things are very important. When you take particularly laws of psychology, gestalt law, aesthetics, law, all these things will matter a lot. Okay, so this is about composition. When you take research methodology, this is another skill which a designer needs to inherently learn. You can do a primary research, you can do a secondary research, you can do a tertiary research. You can do user interviews, you can do surveys, you can use virtual interview tools. So all these things could be made available for people who are learning this particular skill. Okay? And secondary research, you can do online research. You can do a website research, you can do online general research, you can do a website specific research. You can use AI chat GPT and then you can use Miro assist. You can use figjam AI. So all these tools will help you out to collect more information. Go to the particular data sites, go to the website, go to the source of the information and se segregating it out. This is the secondary level of research which you need to have. Tertiary is all about interpolating and mixing it up. Okay, this is the research methodology skill. Next comes data visualization. You need to be good in terms of creative visualization of this data. Okay? If there is a stump, if there is a ball available, okay, Understand this. If you wanted to go and penetrate the stump you need to have a clarity where you are aiming. Okay. The ball is like a data. With that data only you can penetrate and hit the wicket stump and the ball. Imagine if you're generically going and hitting the stump, will you be able to do it? You will be doing it in a more generic way. But if you have a ball which is exactly going to hit in the middle stump, data is like that. Your data will pierce through the research and show what is the reality and solve the problem intrinsically. Okay, next is rendering skills. Next is 3D modeling skills. Whether you are using Rhino, AutoCAD, whether you're using Pro E, Creo, AutoCAD, alias, anything. Okay, Blender, any other 3D modeling softwares. Okay. And you can use rendering softwares like Keynote, the Keyshot and then you can use Grasshopper. Lot of plugins are available. You can use inbuilt softwares are there in Rhino itself to render all these things. Next is a workshop skills. You need to be good in sheet metal, you need to be good in woodworking. If you are a physical ID designer, these skills will be good. Okay, prototyping again, in prototyping there are hard prototyping and soft prototyping available. Okay, you need to be proficient in that. And next comes testing. If you're making prototypes, you need to know how to do a user testing, how to do a usability testing, how to do a software testing. Okay, you need to be a part of software testing. But you don't have to learn much. I'll tell you the difference between user testing and usability. If I'm using this particular cup, what is the feedback about this cup? I'll tell something. If it's about usability, how easy it is to hold the cup, how accessible is the cup to hold, how easy it is to carry, how is it easy to pour the water. This is the difference between user testing and usability testing. Okay. So you need to understand this very carefully. Second is systems knowledge. You need to be proficient in using the computers, software, tools, tablet, any device which is required for your project to be learned. You need to be good. Next is the problem solving ability. Inherently a designer needs to learn problem solving ability. Okay, Then comes creative and ideation skills. You need to be good in divergent thinking, conversion thinking. Again, I take deep classes in my program for teaching students do this as an activity three to four hours I spend with them live in order to do that. Because this is not a skill which you can just learn by theory multiple times, practice multiple times, mistakes and then you become a master at this particular skills. Okay, next comes divergent thinking. I told you, next is the most important skill, ergonomics. You need to know how to really make the person comfortably use it. Heuristics laws use UX principles, WCAG website content accessibility guidelines. Website accessibility content guidelines. And you need to know standards. If you are a medical designer, like these standards, we use HE75 ISO 62366. But if you are a product designer, consumer designer, whatever standards is required, please make sure you follow that so that you are adhering the safety, adhering the guidelines and also adhering the usability part of it. Okay? Guidelines regulatory. Because government will not allow you to launch your product once if you're not following this. Okay, so this is all about ergonomic skills. So now we had enough of what is hard skills which is all contributing to 20 percentage. Okay, 56 skills are there. But let me come to the soft skills which is most most important. In fact, this is the 80 percentage of your whole career structures. Guys. No matter how much sketching skills you have. But when you don't have a soft skills, your life will go in spirals. You will not be able to achieve. You will not be able to achieve big and you will not be able to see the big light. I'll tell you why, okay?
