What abilities do UI designers need to have?

The abilities that a UI designer should have at the same time

If you examine the ability and quality model of a UI designer, then he should have abilities in 4 dimensions at the same time: communication and document writing abilities ; Excellent technical ability; graphic design ability and prototype development; human factors theory and cognitive psychology.

1. Communication and document writing ability: If UI is the bridge and link between human and machine interaction , then the UI designer is the bridge and link between software design developers and end users. If the UI designer cannot have good communication and understanding skills, and cannot write excellent guiding principles and specifications, then he will not be able to Reflecting his dual value to developers and customers, he is unable to complete his job.

2. Excellent technical ability: You may not be able to write Java, but you must not not know what Java is and what it can achieve. Even if you can't write code, you must at least know how to "implement" it. For example, if you want to make a Grid control, first of all, you should know what data formats there are and how they are stored: you can get data through HTML Mark, you can also use JSON objects or Array, or Is it XML or even a string. Secondly, you need to know which one is more suitable for the current environment, implementation on the server side or implementation on the client side. These all rely on strong technical skills and rich experience. UI designers who do not understand technology can neither make reasonable designs nor communicate effectively with developers. In short, UI designers must at least be proficient in mainstream presentation layer development technologies (if they are doing Web presentation layer, they generally need to be proficient in HTML, CSS, Javascript, XML technology, and even JSP and Java must reach the working layer). For the mainstream in the market You must have a sufficient understanding of design patterns, technical routes and open source frameworks. It can be said that UI designers should strive as much as possible in the direction of "presentation layer architect" in terms of technical quality and ability.

3. Graphic design capabilities and prototype development: The most common work that UI designers do in their lives should be graphics and prototype design. So, first of all, let’s talk about what prototype design is. The prototype method is a commonly used method in the design phase of iterative development. Prototype design should run through the three stages of requirements, outline design and detailed design. The purpose of developing a prototype is to convert the design into an "interface language" that users can understand, and it also serves as a guide for developers (it can even be used as part of development). The value of user interface prototypes is that they can help software designers discover defects at various stages of design early, solve these potential problems before development, and significantly reduce the risks and costs of software development. This is essentially different from the traditional waterfall development. At present, most domestic companies still adopt the waterfall development method and place UI design in the later stage of the development stage. This not only prevents UI designers from giving full play to their strengths and can only do "beautification work" to make up for it, but also makes the products developed often have fatal design flaws and fail to meet customer needs. Therefore, the "artists" in various companies are caused by the backwardness and imperfection of software development methods, not the profession of "artists" or UI designers themselves. Let’s talk about graphic design capabilities. In fact, UI designer is just a general term. Within the UI design industry, it is roughly divided into the following roles: usability and interaction designers, visual planning, user experience researchers, and graphical user interface designers. Teacher etc. The UI designer that everyone usually understands is actually a GUI designer (such as Rokey in China, who is a very good GUI designer and currently works for Microsoft). The main job of a GUI designer is visual positioning and creation. Later chapters will detail the responsibilities and daily work of GUI designers. If the UI designer does not have excellent graphic creation skills, then he will not be able to express the beauty in his mind, and there will be no way to talk about "communication". Graphic design ability is the initial and most basic ability that every UI designer possesses.

It is also the part that best measures the ability level of a UI designer.