Soft Skills: The Secret to Success for Top UX Designers
Effectively communicating ideas is a crucial skill for experienced UX designers. A member of our Stride XL team, business designer & product strategist Dominik Michna shares his insights on this topic. Why are soft skills important for a designer's success? How can storytelling transform your design presentations? And why is empathy crucial not only with users, but also with colleagues? Discover what sets senior UX designers apart.
How would you describe yourself as a designer, your focus, and specialization?
I've always been driven to create products that make sense and that users love. I came from a frontend background, but as a frontend developer, I often received design requests that didn't make sense to me. That's why I wanted to move into the role of a designer to be able to influence this. Only to find out, surprisingly, that as a designer, I still receive assignments that don't make sense to me :) Which led me to expand into product management and business.
You describe yourself as more of a generalist. Did that lead you to Stride XL?
In a way, yes. I came to Stride XL to learn more about business design, which is less about user flows and user interfaces and more about the value proposition of the product itself. We consider whether a given product makes sense, has added value, and whether it is something the target group will be willing to pay for. In reality, this means that I help clients get to know their target group better, help with the business model, and setting up what makes their product or service unique. At the same time, I teach or mentor product managers in other companies on these same topics, which we call Product Discovery. I try to share and train on how to better interact with users and customers.
Why did you become interested in the topic of soft skills for designers?
Soft skills are an integral part of a designer's work, and I think this is what distinguishes senior designers from mid-level designers. There are designers who are strong in their craft, have skills and experience. They know what good design should look like. But if they don't have developed soft skills, I have a problem classifying them as senior designers. A senior designer must be able to accept feedback and criticism on their design. They must not take feedback personally. They know that criticism is beneficial and helps improve the final design. They are able to detach themselves from their solution. They know it's not about them, but the broader context of the entire team and product. They don't get upset as soon as someone wants a change. They know how to ask the right questions. They can present their work well…
How important are presentation skills, for example?
Presentation skills should be one of the key skills of a designer – to be able to convey an idea and explain why they came up with a given solution. You can have a super polished and pixel-perfect design, but if you can't sell how you arrived at the solution, you'll be unhappy that others dictate what the solution should look like.
Can you give another example of using soft skills in a designer's work?
Nowadays, many IT companies try to operate in what's known as an agile environment. Teams work across departments and roles, and as a designer, you need to be able to communicate and collaborate within this framework. You need to be able to explain what you need and reach a common agreement on the next action steps. The further you are in your career, the more often you start meeting more and more important people, which can then also involve negotiation. In design management, you learn to sense the company's politics, navigate it, and you need to know how to communicate with management.
To what extent will soft skills make me a successful designer?
Personally, this is an important criterion for me when I have to recommend or approve a promotion to a senior position. I don't just look at whether a person does good work and delivers good designs, but also at how they are doing with soft skills.
Can you briefly describe the main content of your soft skills training for designers?
There can be many topics and the content can be broad; it depends on the assignment. We recently tailored a half-day training session for the betting company Tipsport. Thanks to an initial assessment, we were able to take into account the skills and experience of the individual designers who signed up for the training and adapt the training to provide them with maximum value. The main topics were ultimately storytelling and negotiation.
You mentioned the importance of storytelling; can you elaborate? What is it, and why do designers use it in their work?
Storytelling is about telling stories. During the training, we showed how the three-act structure in films works, which guides the hero through specific phases of the story, presents him with various challenges to lead him to the climax of the story. Storytelling is important for a designer when presenting their work. It can significantly influence whether they convey what they want to convey and how the subsequent discussion will proceed.
How did you apply this during the training?
In the training, I had the participants choose a project they had worked on and briefly describe what the project was about. At that point, gaps in the presentation were already apparent; a poorly presented design can cause the interested party to take nothing away from it. It goes in one ear and out the other. Storytelling helps to clearly and effectively present who the design is for, what problem it solves, and how your proposal is a better solution than the existing one. The participants in the training tried out this change in presenting their designs.
When did you first encounter storytelling?
Even as a frontend developer, within the framework of agile project management, where at the end of each sprint you present what was achieved in the so-called demo. The scrum master at the time taught me to tell a story, instead of just showing what we had programmed. For example: “Honza's apartment had a leak from his neighbors and he needs to find a painter to repaint it. But he's not sure how much a painter costs and which one to choose. Now, on our website, he can choose a category of painters, mark the painters who seem acceptable to him, and request quotes from them all.” During the presentation, we didn't just show the programmed form, but presented the entire flow with a story so that the benefit and value of the new functionality were clearly visible.
Do you think everyone can learn soft skills?
Tricky question. I think that ultimately, yes, but it's not so much about soft skills themselves as it is about learning in general. When you have an open mind and want to learn new things, I think you can learn soft skills as well. It also greatly depends on the people around you. I've been lucky in life to have great people around me from whom I've learned a lot in terms of mindset.
What feedback have you received on the training?
The feedback was largely positive, and we also received public kudos from one of the designers who participated in the training.
What are other important qualities of a good designer?
Besides soft skills, I have to mention empathy. I've learned that empathy is important not only towards your users and customers, but also towards colleagues and during teamwork, especially when working with product managers. A designer receives a design request, creates the design, and the product manager starts wanting changes – micromanaging: “Couldn't we put it somewhere else? Couldn't that button look more green?” And the designer is frustrated because someone is interfering with the design when they are supposed to be responsible for it. But when I look at it from the product manager's perspective, they're actually aiming for the same thing – to deliver the best possible product. They're not trying to upset or belittle me as a designer. But we all approach things from our own perspective. And this is again about soft skills – being able to clarify things, explain, and agree on the best possible solution.
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