Knowledge
- Pattern knowledge
- Trend knowledge
- A desire to learn more
- A desire to explore good design
Experience
- A sense of where to start/what will work
- Good taste
- Good judge of your own design and others’
- Comfortable working in many styles
- Willing to have a strong opinion
Creativity
- Novel ideas
- Exhaustive exploration of options/approaches
- Exhaustive iteration
Quality
- A preference for quality
- A preference to test designs
- Open to feedback
- Able to balance classical and expressive aesthetics
- Able to balance aesthetics and usability
- Obsessed with details
- Rigorous
Technical skills
- Good typography
- Good composition/layout
- Good colour choices
- Good at some associated skills (e.g. prototyping, animation, imagery, writing)
- Tool expertise
Wider picture
- Informed by understanding of the product (e.g. research)
- System thinking (how the work is connected to other things)
- Product thinking (what makes a successful product)
- Development thinking (how a design might be implemented)
- Practical mindset when necessary
- Believes in importance of accessibility
Communication
- Able to articulate your design “feelings”
- Able to explain design principles to others
- Can clearly document/explain the design (e.g. specifications, mockups)
- Good relationship-building, especially with developers
- Able to “sell” a design idea
Read more about Anthony Hobday.