Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?

Exposure. Try a lot of software, like everything you can possibly get your hands on to play with. Start with your area of interest, or focus of work, but don't limit yourself to your space. Try as many applications from as broad of fields as you can. Try to find something you like about everything you try. Try to articulate exactly what you like about it. Try to find something you hate about it. How would you improve that thing you hate? Practice thinking critically.

You'll start to collect ideas and make connections of interesting interaction patterns. Maybe the way they handle a mini-map in a random GIS software you tried would be perfect for an unrelated music composing app you are trying to build. Maybe you see a great settings config in an a 3d texturing program, or a video game, but it has exactly the range of features you need.

When I worked for a company selling aircraft spares, I was talking to my users every day. Everyone: from MD, though the call center, all the way to the warehouse.

Seeing how they want to work and listening to what issues they had helped me "get into their shoes", thus make the software work the way they wanted it to work.

Zafka seems to be recommending "The Design of Everyday Things" here, from that link which appears mangled to me. (looks like there are many books with similar names!)

Honestly, I'd work in customer service. I learned so so so much from interacting with real people.

Waaaay-back, I got my start ay The New York Times as a customer service rep (2003?) for the website. I walked people through password resets, duplicate crossword subscriptions, cancellations, and even helping them search for articles. Lots of random interactions.

It opened my eyes to the ways that UX helps and hinders people, and sends too easily them in the wrong direction.

That to me was the best and biggest starting point in UX design; the first-hand perspectives of others, and empathy.

The rest can follow after that.

Ooh, I’ve been doing nothing but this for 30 years. There’s other good advice in this thread, but my main advice is to pay close attention to people. UX is just applied psychology. If you understand humans well enough then you can create good solutions for them. It’s not surprising — you won’t create a good cat toy if you don’t understand cats.

1. Keep learning how humans use software. This is rooted in our physiology, psychology, and culture. It’s remarkably sticky across different contexts, and it’s learnable. Watch people using software; get them to talk about what they’re doing. You can do this in a lightweight way with coworkers — “Will you show me how you do X?” Then pay close attention and ask questions.

2. Prioritize task context and workflow. For the most part, UI design is not nearly as important as workflow. How does a user get from where they are to a solution? Whatever solution you design must meet the user where they are, where they have the problem. So be very sensitive to user context — as you watch people use software, pay attention to where they start, and what expectations they bring with them.

3. Document and maintain concrete goals for all design work. Before you design, write down a small list of goals in the user’s own language. “User stories,” we often call these. As you work, keep going back to that list to make sure that you’re staying focused on what users really need, rather than what you think is cool. As you use new software, try to reverse engineer this list of goals — “What were the designers thinking? What did they expect me to do here?”

4. Check your ego, and learn to love being wrong. Put unfinished work in front of people. Cheerfully accept all feedback without explaining or defending. Always expect that your design solutions are not good enough, and can only be improved by testing them with real humans. You are not your user; you must position yourself to be surprised by them, and to react well to that surprise.