Soft skills: Average vs Excellent Designers
I’ve been in design for a long time and have worked with everyone under the sun—brilliant designers, average ones, and some that struggled. Over the years, I’ve realized that what separates a good designer from a great one isn’t just technical skill—it’s soft skills.
Mastering soft skills takes time. If you’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, you might be familiar with the idea that it takes roughly 10,000 hours to truly master something. Breaking that down:
8 hours per day → 1,250 days (~3.4 years)
5 hours per day → 2,000 days (~5.5 years)
3 hours per day → 3,333 days (~9.1 years)
1 hour per day → 10,000 days (~27.4 years)
Developing strong soft skills can take years, and that’s okay. But to make it easier, I’ve broken down four key soft skill areas where I see designers struggle the most: communication, impactfulness, curiosity, and passion.
Communication
Excellent designers have developed a solid vocabulary around design. They don’t just explain their choices based on user needs or pain points—they can also back them up with design theory and principles. There’s nothing wrong with the first approach—it’s just simple and doesn’t offer much detail. This can lead to a lot of questions from people who aren’t familiar with the design process. The second example, though, shows that the designer explored different options and made thoughtful, rational decisions. It gives more context and demonstrates a deeper understanding of design. By simply developing a vocabulary around design principles you can go from an average communicator to an excellent communicator in a short amount of time.
Impactful
Selling design ideas is hard, but here's the trick: Sell the impact, not the process. I've seen countless designers go on and on with long, boring research presentations. Don’t do this—people get bored. Instead, give them the punchline upfront and then back it up with a relevant image.
A lot of designers feel like they need to back up everything they say with endless evidence, but that’s not necessary. Link to the full research at the end of your deck. If someone really wants to dig deeper, they’ll ask.
Curiousity
Good designers are strategic, even with the smallest decisions. They validate everything, even when it’s not required. The average designer often ends up wasting development time on one stakeholder’s issue, while the excellent designer digs deeper to uncover the real problem. By asking the right questions and truly understanding the pain point, they avoid wasting everyone’s time. I’ve seen too many designers—non-strategic ones—fail to ask these questions, only to roll back features later. Don’t be that person. Be strategic with these requests, or you'll waste everyone’s time. Let’s look at two approaches:
Passion
This might be a little controversial because there’s definitely a spectrum when it comes to passion and how it’s expressed. Passion doesn’t have to mean jumping up and down with excitement—trust me, I’ve known introverted designers whose passion showed in how they sketched ideas, not in how much energy they had. But I’ve also been around people who are extremely excited about everything they work on. Personally, I fall somewhere in the middle. There are things I can really rally behind, and there are things I will work on but am not extremely passionate about.
I don’t think passion is something you can just pick up overnight, but I do think there are a few characteristics you can work on and develop. If you’re in the “average designer” camp, maybe try focusing on some of these to build more passion. For example, if you don’t like feedback, ask yourself: What exactly about feedback bothers you? It could be that you’re afraid of rejection—and that’s something you can work on to build more confidence. I might write another blog post about a few of these skills and how to develop them, but for now, it’s great to have them here for reference.
