10 important soft skills for designers
Designing is rarely only about design
Design can be a challenging profession to master as it involves a multitude of skills, both soft and technical. In design, technical skills or hard skills as they are also known, are most often talked about. Sketching, understanding of software such as Adobe suite, design principles, elements, and yet what’s usually in the shadows is the importance of soft skills.
Soft skills often include characteristics that cannot be measured but are needed to make a well-rounded person. Some soft skills can be picked up through the years, while others require active effort.
It ensures you can work and interact with others, and considering collaboration is prominent in the design workplace, developing soft skills should be a high priority on any designer’s list.
Let’s take a look at some of the valuable soft skills designers should develop.
1. Communicating Design to Non-Designers
An essential part of being a designer is communicating your thought process to the team. This team may contain non-designers; hence it is vital to share your ideas clearly and concisely.
One image says 1000 words. Visual communication is just as, if not more, important than oral communication. A combination of verbal and visual communication will ensure every teammate is on the same page.
Designers shouldn’t assume their clients know what they are talking about. Sometimes over communication avoids confusion. It is a skill to lay out your thoughts to non-designers and have them understand complex ideas; however, it is one of the main components of the job.
“Good communication is the bridge between confusion and clarity.” -Nat Turner
2. Empathy
Empathy is a personality trait, yet, designers are required to learn how to tap into it. Empathy is necessary to create human-centred products. It helps designers step into users’ shoes and identify what they need. More often than not, consumers can’t clearly articulate what they need; thus, it’s the designer’s job to observe and use empathy as a tool to solve problems people didn’t know they had.
People say emotion does not belong at work, but it does in design. As a designer, products or services that evoke emotion result in a positive user experience. Companies that have a meaningful story that consumers can connect to tend to do well. Design is about uniting people, and emotions help us develop that connection.
“When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.” -Susan Sarandon
3. Time management
Designers have plenty of deadlines to manage, and more often than not, they are handling several projects at once. Since these projects are most likely in different stages of the design process, it can be challenging to keep track of. Nevertheless, it is vital to have a clear mind while working, so time is not wasted looking for necessary research or documentation.
“Time is what we want most and what we use worst.” -William Penn
4. Listening, Thoroughly
We have established that communication is essential, but active listening is just as critical. As a designer, listening to your client talk about their brand values and vision for the company is part of what designers need to consider when designing. If designers are all talk, they may not represent the brand no matter how good the designs are.
“The world is giving you answers all day, learn to listen.” -Atul Yadev
5. Giving and receiving feedback
Designing requires several rounds of feedback and back and forth iterations. This step is crucial as it ensures the product is the best it could be.
The collaboration within design teams comes from critiques and constructive criticism. Critiques are only helpful if all designers can give and receive constructive criticism. Designers lean on each other, grow together, and learn from each other every single day.
“Learners need endless feedback more than they need endless teaching.” -Grant Wiggins
6. Presentation
A crucial part of design is the ability to present your ideas. Presentations are usually more formal than communication amongst the team. A presentation is not only about giving information in a visually appealing way, but it’s organizing information to show the entire thought process. This requires a mixture of images, graphs, and small amounts of text. People only remember three points after someone’s presentation, so important facts need to be reiterated making sure that is what is remembered.
“It takes one hour of preparation for each minute of presentation time.” -Wayne Burgraff
7. Teamwork
Design entails extensive collaboration because each individual person has something different to offer. This creates a strong team and a motivating environment to learn from each other’s skills. Every member has a role in the project allowing the project to move along quicker and create a productive environment.
“Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” -Helen Keller
8. Question everything
A method used by many designers to get down to the root cause of any problem is asking the simple question ‘Why?’ several times. This helps designers dive deeper and ask themselves the purpose of solving this problem and who it will benefit. Being a designer requires curiosity. They should be dissecting products they frequently use and asking questions like how was this manufactured? And why was it designed this way? Critical thinking helps designers dig deeper and solve problems to make life more efficient for the common good.
“Curiosity and questions will get you further than confidence and answers.” -Maxime Lagacé
9. Flexibility
Every day is very different when you’re a designer. Projects get moved around, deadlines get changed and stress levels may increase. Being a flexible employee means adapting to change and upcoming challenges calmly. As stressful as it can be, that energy in the workplace needs to maintain at a tranquil level to avoid chaos.
“Be clear about your goal, but be flexible in the process of achieving it.” -Brian Tracy
10. Persistence
Ideas change, things get scrapped, and sometimes plans don’t go as intended; but, failure cannot cope with persistence. The more you try, the more chances there are to succeed. Success is inevitable as long as designers constantly change their perspective and approach to the ‘failures.’
“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”-Winston S. Churchill
Becoming a designer is tough, but worth it.
Becoming a designer can be tricky. They need the technical skills that designers put endless effort into learning, but design also requires soft skills that are usually developed through practice.
Similar to how practice and theory go hand in hand, technical and soft skills are a perfect match. But this is not to discourage you from becoming a designer if you have chosen that path. Designing is extremely rewarding in terms of the people you get to help.
It’s an ever-changing field, and thus, it never gets boring (but that’s subjective, of course).
The Canvs Editorial team comprises of: Editorial Writer and Researcher- Paridhi Agrawal and Anjali Baliga, the Editor’s Desk- Aalhad Joshi and Debprotim Roy, and Content Operations- Abin Rajan
Follow Canvs on Instagram and LinkedIn. Don’t forget to follow us here on Medium as well for more design-related content.
