Top Soft Skills Every Product & UI/UX Designer Must Master in 2024 | Boost Your Career Now

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 success 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 be ach. 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.

Learning to communicate easily. This is one of the important skill. Understanding and empathizing. Presentation skills. You need to be good in ppt. You need to be good in talking in your phone. When you're presenting something, you need to be virtually presenting. We need to be conversant with the tools. How to share in zoom team, Skype, Google Meet, etc so all these things needs to be improved. Next comes leadership skills. One is like how you can manage the whole project. Next is how you can handle the people. This is most important. People handling is one of the highly paid skill. You need to be good in follow up. You need to good in following up with the people. In fact this is one of the skill which I remember follow up skill. My mentor used to say always money is there in follow ups. So people who do follow ups properly, meticulously, artfully, not torturing the people.

Okay?

So this will be really really superb for you.

Okay.

Next comes forecasting. Next comes forecasting. You need to forecast the risk. You need to be very conversant on. What are the risk you're going to address in your projects? What are the which is going to come. You need to be prepared and proactive and make a project plan. Next is conflict resolution. How you can able to interact with the different teams. Your boss, your top management, your client and interface and resolve the conflict whenever it comes.

Okay.

See each of the skills takes a lot of time to learn, make mistakes, practice, try, master and become expert of it. But all I'm giving you is a start. Because a lot of people have a reason why they wanted to become designers. Motivation is there. That's what we have seen so far. How to learn that skill and become a master of it is what we are seeing in this video.

Okay?

And also you need to be interfacing with a lot of teams like let's say sales, marketing, testing, software engineering, research team. So all these teams, CEO, top management. Every time you'll be having interface with these people, you need to be more conversant of it.

Okay.

Next comes listening skill. This is the most most important skills, guys. Let me tell you why. If you're not listening, your understanding will not come. 80% of the understanding comes from active listening. You need to be very careful while you're listening. You need to listen with your blood. You need to listen very carefully of the people, what they talk of the body language, what they make of the actions, what they do and what they not do. And then you create a picture of what this person is really doing. When you're doing an open, when you're doing a research, when you're doing a field study, you know what happens. You need to observe all these things and listen very carefully. And then you will see the hidden patterns. You will see the real problem. You will see why people are miserably failing, why people are having this problem on first place, how as a designer, I can go and solve it. So that clarity will only come when you are using listening skill. In that listening, you need to ask questions, guys. Questioning is the biggest form of listening. You can ask open ended questions, you can ask close ended questions. You can make it more qualitative. So this is called qualitative. Okay, like sorry, this is called qualitative. Qualitative questions and then closed ended will be called quantitative. Like you can ask, hey, how often do you use this drop down? 2 times, 3 times answer could be one, right? How do you think about what do you think about? Or app, they can diverge on this answer. So you need to ask two kind of a questions. This objective, subjective, all these things.

Okay.

And then when you ask a question, 3 4th of our brain thinks about answering this. You know why when you ask a question to a person evolutionary, we are trained in a way, even you, even me, everybody, if a question is asked, we'll always be in an impulsive, intuitive mode to go and answer it. Hey, are you having this problem? No. Hey, what do you think about this? Okay. If a question is being asked, people will be eager to answer that. When you ask a question, people will feel very honored, very appreciated, very empathetic. The moment when you ask a question, people will be more happy because they are valued more. And you know what? This is an evolutionary trait. As I told you, it's a response of anybody.

Okay?

So use that as an advantage when you, when you ask questions and then when you listen carefully, people will become so happy and haunted because you're making them important, right?

Important.

You're making them super happy. Their entire organs starts functioning in high level. I learned it from one of my mentor that listening is the most, most underrated skill. And this is more powerful when you ask this. Much of psychological things happens inside your brain, but when you're talking it's only one fourth of your brain works. But when you are asking a question, you make people 3 4th of their brain work. And because of that only people are giving you super answers and everything. But it's up to you as a designer to go and understand and make them really, really comfortable. Okay, Most most important skill. And then comes socializing and networking. You need to be having in social media presence. You need to have a LinkedIn account. LinkedIn is the best tool I would recommend. You can start joining in groups, you can start talking with people. You can start start engaging in post. You can start an Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. But use it in a very wise way. Don't use it in an unproductive way. Because networking and socializing, if you're not able to do it, I will tell you what happens. You will not be able to get a bigger results in your career.

Okay?

So you can, you can attend some kind of events, events, webinars, seminars, exhibitions. So these are all the things where you can go and understand people better, particularly talking to colleagues. This is most, most important. I'll tell you why. Because if you're not talking with colleagues properly, if you're not socializing with your own people, whoever you are associating with, like the testing people, or maybe engineering people, or sales or marketing, I will tell you what, you will not be able to have a big growth in your career.

Okay?

So I hope you would have understood the importance of 80 percentage soft skill and 20 percentage hard skill. If somebody who is not understanding this, I will tell you guys, you will be putting lot of efforts. You will be putting lot of hard work. You will not know where it is going. You will not be able to present it and tell it to the people. You will be not able to project it to the clients and get the feedback and appreciation and move forward. You will be not able to close a deal with a project or a client. If you're a freelancer or designer or somebody, you'll be putting efforts, but you will not grow in your career. 80 percentage is soft skill. 80 percentage is soft skill. 20 percentage is hard skill. Hard skills could be learned. Soft skill cannot be learned very quickly. It takes little time. It takes a mindset. It takes a little mentoring and accountability and a focus to learn. That and particularly each skill takes 8,000 to 10,000 hours to master it that's the study which was done by University of Chicago. If you wanted to do a brain surgery, you want to become a neurosurgeon. If you spend 8,000 to 10,000 hours learning that, you will become a master. But each of the skills, like let's say 56 plus 53, 109 skills, it would take hell a lot of two years of your lifetime to learn it. But that's not the case. I'm concluding this information by saying it all takes a particular information in your particular problem solving of your projects to go. Step back and learn the skills. A designer needs to learn it on the go. It's not like I became a 109 skills as a designer and then I will go and work on an industry that is never going to happen. You'll be waiting for your lifetime. You learn on the go, you learn on the problem solving ability, you learn on the company's problem statement, whatever, you're going to work. And then if you need research skill, deeply go and learn it. If you need research, if you need sketching skills, deeply go and learn it. If you need prototyping skills deeply go and learn it. Use quality tools, use quality softwares, don't use any crack materials, use even sketch pens. If you're using even ballpoint and even laptops, use high quality materials. Don't do any kind of a shortcuts. Because when you're learning skill, when you're learning time, when you're doing that process, you need to invest on quality things. Then your life will start getting quality output. When I talk about skills, I need to talk about quality also. Same like that. Have your health proper, have your fitness proper, have your food regime proper, have your relationships proper. Because these are all also the skill which you need to learn and master. If you're not doing all these things, your family, your health, nothing will allow you to come and learn all the skills. I've seen a lot of my people, lot of my designers, lot of my students because of the health, relationship and challenges, they are not even coming to the classes. I know they damn interested. But your family, your health will not allow you to come and learn the skill in order to become a great designer. Okay, I hope this video would have made a lot of sense for you. Thank you so much. If you feel if you want to challenge something, I would highly recommend you to comment in this particular video. All the best. See you in another video.