Don’t stop designing.

You’re going through classes and teachers are giving you an incredible education. You start to learn about how important usability is to the experience a user has on your website, app, or concept. You’re falling in love with inventing personas and finding your core user types to understand their needs, behaviours, and goals. You have fallen in love with Post-it Notes^® and you’re furiously organizing them on whiteboards. You’re learning how to work in functional teams. You’re learning about sprints and stories and features and requirements. Workflows. Wireframes. Information architecture and navigation. Storyboarding. Rapid prototyping…

That’s all fantastic stuff. It scratches the human-behaviour itch that might have gotten you into the user experience field to begin with. Those are integral parts of the approach and process any UX Designer should embrace.

But, if you’re looking for a job in digital product design and want to make yourself the most marketable, please – for the love of all people looking to hire a good UX Designer – don’t stop there.

Designing is hard. Really, really hard. Getting something ready for turnover to a development team that’s production-ready requires the most unique combinations of technological, psychological, and pragmatic thought and exercise.

Don’t forget about the design part of being a Designer.