UX Designer Skills for a Resume
Companies hire UX designers who understand users, design clear experiences and prove they work. Show your process and tools, and results from research and testing: completion rates, errors reduced or adoption.
Updated
14 skills at a glance
Hard skills
What the work takes, how a hiring manager judges each skill, and a bullet point that shows it.
User research and interviews
Show how many people you studied and what you learned.
Example bullet pointInterviewed 15 small-business owners to understand how they keep track of invoices.
Interaction design
Show the flows you designed and how they performed.
Example bullet pointRedesigned a sign-up flow from five steps to three, raising completion by 18%.
Wireframing and prototyping
Show how your prototypes helped teams decide.
Example bullet pointBuilt clickable Figma prototypes that let the team test two navigation ideas in a week.
Visual and interface design
Show polished interfaces you shipped.
Example bullet pointDesigned the dashboard of a scheduling app used by 20,000 clinics.
Design systems
Show the components you built and how widely they were used.
Example bullet pointBuilt 40 reusable components in Figma that cut design time for new screens.
Usability testing
Show your tests and the changes they led to.
Example bullet pointRan usability tests with eight users and fixed the three issues that blocked most of them.
Accessibility (WCAG)
Name the standard and show what you designed or fixed.
Example bullet pointDesigned color contrast and focus states that met WCAG 2.2 AA across the product.
Design tools (Figma, FigJam)
Name the tools and how you used them with the team.
Example bullet pointRan remote workshops in FigJam to map user journeys with product and engineering.
Information architecture
Show navigation or content you restructured, and the result.
Example bullet pointReorganized help center content after a card sort, cutting support tickets about finding things.
Soft skills
Shown through what you did, never claimed as adjectives.
Empathy
Show how understanding users changed a design.
Example bullet pointRewrote a settings page after watching users struggle, removing jargon they did not understand.
Storytelling
Show how you presented research or designs to win support.
Example bullet pointPresented research findings as user stories that convinced leaders to fund a redesign.
Collaboration with engineers
Show work with developers to ship designs well.
Example bullet pointPaired with engineers during the build, keeping the shipped product true to the design.
Taking feedback
Show how feedback improved your work.
Example bullet pointRevised designs after critiques and tests, keeping a record of what changed and why.
Curiosity
Show questions you explored that improved the product.
Example bullet pointLooked into why trial users dropped off and found a confusing pricing screen.
Licenses and certifications
Give them a section of their own, with who issued each one and the year or expiry date.
- Google UX Design Certificate
- Nielsen Norman Group UX Certification
Keywords from UX designer job postings
Use the ones that are true for you, in your bullet points as well as your skills list.
- onboarding
- user interviews
- usability
- design system
- Figma
- prototypes
- WCAG
- product
- mobile
Each posting has its own words. Our guide to tailoring your resume to a job description shows how to find them and where to put them.
Where to put your skills
- In a skills section: a short list of the hard skills the posting names, in its words.
- In your bullet points: every skill that matters should show up in something you did, with a result. That is where a hiring manager believes it.
- In your summary: two or three of the skills the job asks for most.
More on choosing them in how to choose and prove the skills on your resume.
Questions
What skills should a UX designer put on a resume?
Research, interaction design, wireframing and prototyping, interface design, design systems, usability testing, accessibility, design tools and information architecture, plus empathy and storytelling.
Do I need a portfolio?
Yes. Link to case studies that show your process and results; your resume should point to them.
How do I show UX results?
Use measures such as task completion, conversion, error rates or support tickets before and after your work.
Put them to work
Start from a UX designer resume that already uses these skills, for an invented person, and make it yours in the builder.