Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?

I think the best way to increase your user experience skills is to be comfortable using design patterns. By learning how to use them, you will be able to create a consistent experience for your users, which can make a big difference in their overall satisfaction.

Another thing that helped me was studying designers who inspire me. Just looking at their work and seeing what they've done gave me ideas for new features and ways of improving my own designs.

I also invested in my education by taking classes and seminars about UX design. By doing this, I learned more about industry best practices and how other people were solving problems similar to those I encountered at work.

Deciding on your concentration was an important part of my education because it helped me focus on what kind of designer I wanted to become—web UI designer or UX researcher? Once I knew what type of designer I wanted to be, it helped me set goals for myself that would help me achieve my dream career goal (e.g., get hired by Google).

Implementing your learning is very important as well because if you don't practice daily then nothing will change! So, after reading articles about UX design patterns and techniques on

In the past 2 years I learned to conduct and analyse in-depth interviews in the health-care sector.

My goal was 100 interviews. To get a hang of it. I finished my 300th interview recently.

For me, as a software developer, there is nothing harder and more valuable than those conversations.

> What helped you increase your UX skills?

Disclosure: not a professional designer/UX person but have learned a lot over the years.

Honestly, building things that were terrible (not on purpose) and going back later and trying to pick apart what I did wrong. User feedback is really important here. Things like "how do I do..." or "where is the button to..." are signals that your UX needs improvement. I think it's useful to be able to look at your work with a critical eye. Of course, if you have the ability, show the things you build to a designer and ask them for honest critique.

Put yourself into the shoes of a user and work backwards from there. When I first started doing UI/UX, I put myself in the shoes of a programmer and worked towards the design. This will not ever work. Come at it from the perspective of "if I were to use this app, what are the most useful features and how do I access them?" Work backwards from there and have your UI/UX inform your architecture. Not the other way around.

Also, one thing that has helped me is to not get too wrapped up in design trends. It's a distraction from developing a solid foundation. You can have a great UX that people like without having to do the LATEST thing.

One last thing: it can be good UX without being beautiful. To me, UX is about discovery: can people figure out how to use it without consulting the manual? If so, it's good UX. The design might be trashy and look 90s but that's less important than having something people are comfortable using.

Good tools help a lot, by that I mean frameworks and libraries, e.g. for CSS.

> Watch other people using, and improve.

This is the critical bit. Build-what-you-like only gets you so far.