UX Design Tools // What A UX DESIGNER NEEDS
There's so many tools out there for UX design. I cover the general tool areas I've used in my career and give a few examples of each.
I've been in the UX design field for about 20 years. That's a long time with a lot of UX design tools.
UX Design tools come and go but there are a few staples that you need to be a UX designer.
I'll break down the tools in two ways: the general category and then a few specific tools in each category.
A Visual Design Tool
Ok nothing too surprising here. You need a tool to mock up and design the actual visuals of what you design. Something that gives you complete control and freedom in designing the layout, the type, the colors, the components of the app. It should allow you to design all the different pages and states of your app.
Today that app is Figma and that's my go to choice. A few other options that work quite well include Adobe XD, and Sketch. All three are great options with their own pros and cons.
A Prototyping Tool
Prototyping is a weird place. It's one of those things where everyone agrees is a good thing but it's an often overlooked or skipped step.
Prototyping goes beyond building out the static states of your app. Instead it allows you to build what looks like working app but isn't. It simulates the experience the user would have without having to quite build out the app yet.
Prototypes are great for user testing to validate ideas.
A User Research Tool
When you think of UX design tools the typical design tools come to mind. But a big part of being a UX designer is research and testing. Often UX design is thought of as simply UI design. But to be a UX designer you're responsible for the user experience. A big part of nailing that is doing research.
When it comes to user research there's many forms and it mostly involves talking to users. You don't need to much but it helps to have ux design tools to support your the research process.
User Research is its own field and there's a number of tools and techniques. Even though it's technically separate , it overlaps with design. UX designers should be familiar with research tools as they are part of the overall ux design tools kit.
In my experience, User Research always involves moderated user interviews and usability testing. Usertesting.com is one of the more popular ux design tools for both of these activities. I've used it in the past and found it works quite well.
UX Design Tools For Collaboration
When you think of a UX designer often the image that comes to mind is a designer in a neatly design room at a minimalistic desk, tweaking button gradients. But so much of a designer work is collaboration. Product partners, engineering, marketing, business, and many others are all teams that collaborate with UX designers.
There's some general tools used for collaboration of course - your emails, slacks, and zoom calls. But for the more design centric activities like sketch sessions there's additional tools you'll need.
For in person, I find a white board, markers and sticky notes go along way. Of course, printer paper and sharpies for getting ideas out on paper.
For online, I'm a big Miro fan though FigJam works quite well also.
Analytics Tools
Research and designing isn't where it end for a UX designer. When work is shipped and out in the wild, ux designer should look at how it's performing. Analytics help a lot with this.
Using date from analytics helps inform future design changes.
In my experience, the analytics tools used it determined by another department (engineering or analytics for example). I've used Amplitude and MixPanel in the past and they both worked well. In my freelance and entrepreneurial experience it was HotJar, Google Analytics, and Shopify Analytics. All great options.
UX Design Tools Don’t Make The Designer
Above are the general areas where you'll need UX design tools to be a UX designer. But being a UX designer is much more than the tools. The tools help for sure, but it's much more about the skills. Problem solving, empathy, understanding the product process, communication and collaboration are all major keys to the UX puzzle.
Whatever tools you land on and decide to use, focus on the fundamentals of UX design to be a great UX designer.
// Coleman
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