Business: Soft Skills

This article was inspired by a discussion at last week’s Silicon Valley IxDA meeting, where Daniel Szuc and Josephine Wong spoke on the topic “Sleepwalking + Designing for a Healthy Future,” which got me thinking about what qualities one must have to be an effective UX professional. So much of success derives from mindset rather than skillsets, and mindset takes a lifetime to develop—or, for those of us who believe in reincarnation, multiple lifetimes. Your mindset derives from your life experiences and the way you respond to them, as well as what you learn from those who influence you greatly—such as your parents, mentors, and spiritual teachers. Read More

During the season of New Year’s resolutions, you might already have lined up several self-improvement goals. Hopefully, you’re succeeding in building consistent habits and systems, but perhaps you’re already losing momentum. Whether you’re thriving, struggling, or feeling stuck, I invite you to consider this new resolution: Be bored more often.

Boredom is actually a skill you can learn that is surprisingly valuable and can even help you discover more profound insights. In this column, I’ll share why embracing boredom is important; how it can boost creativity, especially for those of us in the UX design community; and what you can do to foster boredom by exploring

• the drawbacks of overstimulation
• why boredom can be a superpower
• how to be bored more often Read More

In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our experts discuss what skills are essential and desirable for a UX Designer.

Each month in Ask UXmatters, our panel of UX experts answers our readers’ questions about a broad range of user experience matters. To get answers to your own questions about UX strategy, design, user research, or any other topic of interest to UX professionals in an upcoming edition of Ask UXmatters, please send your question to us at: [email protected].

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