1. They are empathetic

The ability to understand another person’s experiences and emotions is core to user-centered design. A UI/UX designer’s job is to predict human behavior and anticipate needs before the user even knows they exist. UI/UX designers are tasked with thoroughly examining every use case and continuously revisiting how a product can be more intuitive, seamless, and frictionless.

Take a recommendation app, for example: a UI/UX designer should consider the app as a tool aligned with the user’s needs, desires, and behaviors. So while it is evident that the app should provide recommendations in a useful and practical way, a designer must also understand the full story around a human experience in order to bring users exactly what they need with minimal interaction.

2. They cover their brush strokes

There is a clever line in the wonderfully crafted television series Mad Men, where 1950s housewife Betty Draper comments, “You’re painting a masterpiece; make sure to hide the brush strokes.” That is a UI/UX designer’s process in a nutshell. While designers are constantly creating original concepts, many of their ideas and inspirations are derived from observing and refining other design work.

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When an app is launched to the App Store, the user just sees the final product – the masterpiece, if you will. It is the job of the designer to make the end product so intuitive that it barely seems designed at all. Take Instagram, for example: the end-user generally finds the flow so simple and visceral that the countless hours of trial and error that went into the creative process seem hard to imagine. The end-user only sees the result, not the process.

3. They are solution-driven

Mobile apps are designed and developed for a variety of reasons –  to solve certain business challenges, alleviate specific end-user pain points or to simplify a cumbersome process (like finding a nearby restaurant with Yelp). Consequently, mobile design work usually begins with defining a problem.

Through methodical planning and lateral thinking, a UI/UX designer must strategise more generally about how to solve whichever challenge a project presents. Once this thought process is complete, executing the design component tends to come more naturally and fluidly. In short, plenty of mobile design work takes place outside of a computer programme.

Sourced from Ashish Toshniwal, CEO, Y Media Labs