Who are you really, UI Designers? - Part II | 'All the shapes of UI' Series

This is the second part of the 'All the shapes of UI' series conducted by Mihai Radu, Art Director at Linnify. The series aims to educate anyone on how the UI design process should look like, do's and don'ts, and help you find the right resources for inspiration and tips&tricks.

1. What do UI Designers actually do?

They ‘who’ create and execute the appearance of an app or website.

They determine the aesthetics of all the various elements of the UI and they are the ones who communicate the brand to the user.

They are responsible for the artistic side of an app or website, always keeping in mind the interests of attracting users, communicating with users, and driving affinity among users.
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2. What makes UI Designers good UI Designers?

And if we are talking about what kind of skills a UI designer should have, I believe creativity (so that you don’t create the same things over and over again) and knowing how to organize your work (the components, the files) are essential.

What I also think is crucial to have is patience.

'You cannot design anything if you’re not patient.'

I stand by that. You also need to be calm and try to detach yourself from the design you’re creating. This way, when the client says that he doesn’t resonate with your design, you won’t take it personally.

'Design is a long process and each failure can teach you a lot of things.'

In UI, every day, each task is different from what you’ve worked on in the previous days. Only the design system and how you create the components stay the same. Other than that, everything that is visual or the way you bring the brand to life in an app or website, all of these are different each and every single day.

Consider this honest UX/UI designer advice.

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3. What makes the creative UI Designers even more creative?

'Research is essential.'

Now more than ever, you need to know as many things as possible, (preferably the smartest ways) about:

• interactions and animations,
• how you manage to animate a button,
• how to make a section,
• where from should the text pop when you scroll down, and so many more.
  

If you dedicate time for design research and spend time on different websites in an exploring state of mind, you will start noticing the improvements in your workflow sooner than you’d think.

My lucky seven sources:

1. Awwwards.com, or the Oscars for websites

Here you can see some of the best websites in the world as the platform recognises and promotes “the talent and effort of the best developers, designers, and web agencies in the world.”

I sometimes lose myself scrolling through the website to find inspiration for UI. (oops)

2. Fellow designers’ projects

Being part of the design community has its perks. You can even check some of the projects I worked on with my team if you’re curious to see how others did their projects and how they managed to get from the brand to the website 1:1.

3. Behance, also known as 'the world's largest creative network for showcasing and discovering creative work'

4. The good old Pinterest

5. Dribble, or the self-proclaimed 'leading destination to find & showcase creative work and home to the world's best design professionals'

6. producthunt.com makes 'a curation of the best new products, every day', and that simplifies the whole process of finding better tools

It helps you *cough* *cough* save some valuable time from researching.

Keeping up with the latest trends and various tools that appear on the market each year is pretty much indisputable if you want to stand out from the crowd as a UI Designer. (or anything really, do your research)
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7. Articles on medium.com

My colleagues, Andrada Farcaș and Adrian Miclăuș have joined their forces to create a design white paper to help individuals from all kinds of backgrounds to simplify their customers' experience, create a design that matters, and set a product successfully on the market. It’s called “Unleash your UX/UI design superpowers - Your essential handbook for generating the design that matters”and you should definitely check it out. It will cost you less to read it than it will if not.