Member-only story

Why Visual Design Skills are a Must-Have for Good UX

Why aesthetic craft is a vital skill for UX designers looking to produce the best possible work.

Sean Dexter
6 min readApr 5, 2020

It’s not all that hard to come across these ideas in the UX industry:

UX and visual/UI design are mutually exclusive skill-sets best handled by entirely different types of practitioners.

A good UX designer doesn’t need to be skilled in visual design.

Companies looking for “hybrid” UI/UX designers have unrealistic expectations and should give up on finding such “unicorns”.

But this sort of thinking seems to be on the decline. Seeing as it isn’t entirely gone, I think it’s still worth laying out a few counterpoints.

So where did these beliefs come from?

IIt’s no secret that user experience design has historically struggled to avoid being seen as focused only on “look and feel”. This makes sense, and unfortunately there are plenty of practicing interface designers out there who optimize only for their own visual preferences.

To avoid this, the industry has explained emphatically (and reasonably successfully) that UX is more than just visuals — it extends into information architecture, usability…

Create an account to read the full story.

The author made this story available to Medium members only.
If you’re new to Medium, create a new account to read this story on us.

Or, continue in mobile web

Already have an account? Sign in

Sean Dexter
Sean Dexter

Written by Sean Dexter

Staff Product Designer @ Walmart Data Ventures. Prev: Meta, HubSpot & Cigna. I write about UX, agile, & product. linkedin.com/in/seandexter1/

Responses (5)

Write a response

Actually it was never optional for me since I’m working as Designer. The key is to work and think interdisciplinary. Designers should be able to think about the business model, the user experience, the visual design, the possibility for development…

and unfortunately there are plenty of practicing interface designers out there who optimize only for their own visual preferences

Aka alot of designers on Dribbble

I believe this point of view is the most accurate, but I don’t think it change the statement of the start. (Companies looking for “hybrid” UI/UX designers have unrealistic expectations and should give up on finding such “unicorns”.)
Just because I…