Being a junior designer I made plenty of mistakes. I believed false assumptions mostly because I did not have the experience yet to know better. I still don’t know it all. But, I am always eager to learn new things about design and to see which preconceived notions are accurate or a complete myth. That’s how this post came about. I want to address seven common design myths which I still see influencing design decisions. Unfortunately, false design myths like these to lead to poorer quality design and poorer experiences for end users. We can avoid this by making smarter design decisions to improve the quality of our designs.

I know we’ve all dreamt about working for big brands. Microsoft, Google, Apple, McDonalds, Coca-Cola…they all have one thing in common; they’re household names. But getting their attention can be tricky. Many of them hire thousands of employees and have offices all over the world. They probably hear the same pitch a hundred times from the same potential freelancer hoping to get that lucky break to create something millions of people will see, rather than just a few. So how do you get their attention? What are the major brands looking for from a potential employee or freelancer? We’re going to look at some practical suggestions to get noticed by major brands and what to do once you have been noticed. Whilst these may not work for everyone, they are tried and tested methods that have been known to catch the attention of some of the biggest companies in the world.

Right now we’re in the midst of a digital renaissance. With the rise of startups and transformative tech companies like Apple and Google, the user’s experience has never been more important. That means that the humble designer is suddenly essential to the experiences of billions of people. And we designers have risen to the challenge. As a young designer, I delighted in exploring new tools, developing my processes, and working with cohesive design teams. I spent hours crafting my skills, from wireframing to sketching, and even attempting to master Photoshop’s innumerable keyboard shortcuts. I figured the more skills I had, the more techniques I knew, the better designer I’d become, right? Wrong. As I got older and gained experience, I realized that none of these things were the main contributing factors to great UX design. Despite the rapid rise of fancy new tools, it became more and more clear to me that the secret to creating great user experiences lies in something more fundamental: the ability to listen. After all, the foundation of great design doesn’t start on an art board; it starts with a problem.

Usability testing is sometimes one of those things that designers conveniently ‘forget’ about. Why? Well do a search for it. Usability testing, as it is generally practiced, costs money. There are interviews to perform, a variety of tests to create for each and every project, services to pay for… and what if your client’s in another country? Or what if they’re a small business with a small budget, or a brand-new startup? What if the only reason you learned web design in the first place was to build your own site? Check your wallet. Can you pay for classic usability testing? It’s not uncommon for advice written about usability testing to assume that you’re working on a “big project” for a client that can afford the fancy stuff. Even the articles that talk about testing on a budget will often refer you to paid services. Simply put, there are times when any kind of paid service, on top of every other expense, is not an option. This, is usability testing for the rest of us…

Now just when we were starting to get used to the tools, frameworks and methodologies needed to design good mobile apps, we find the device landscape is changing again: smartwatches and other connected wearables, sensors and everything under the “Internet of Things” umbrella are bringing new complexity to our field, and makes it very difficult to tell where “mobile” or an “app” really starts and ends. And we designers are having a hard time getting used to it. Given that many of us first approached mobile design through responsive web design, it’s been much easier to approach mobile design as if it were some kind of “smaller web with touch support and camera access”. But the upcoming products and services are meant to live fluidly across a range of devices, sensors and network connections. So I believe that mobility, rather than mobile, defines much better the kind of environment we will have to design for. Rather than a focus on a specific device, designing for mobility is a broader approach to design; one that delivers value because it can be transmitted by any combination of devices. Mobility forces us to think broadly and zoom out from specific devices to look at the ecosystem in which we will be designing.

Building trust occurs when our physical, emotional and logical responses combine into one confident, positive intuitive feeling. When we trust companies or brands, the feeling—or “experience”—is often carefully cultivated and consumers uphold a level of expectation when visiting the business. This remains true online, as there are a number of cues that can reaffirm trust, or completely ruin visitors’ experiences; and their reaction will no doubt be reflected in the company’s revenue and customer retention.If your website gives visitors confidence in their security, is designed with a clear hierarchy, and visitors are able to navigate with ease to find the answers or solutions for their problems, you are reinforcing and creating trust. The same set of standards that creates an ideal customer experience holds true for visitors to your company’s website.

Now You spend weeks, months, maybe years, creating a product with an amazing UX. Doesn’t matter if it’s an app, a website, a client project, or something else. You’ve put all this time and effort into creating something awesome. So why aren’t you giving any thought to the UX of the emails you’re sending about that product? You just throw some copy into an email and send it out. Sure, maybe you hired a copywriter to write the perfect copy, but content alone does not make a good user experience. Peter Morville’s famous user experience honeycomb can be applied to email as well as anything else on the web (though the importance of some facets shifts). Each facet of the honeycomb fits with the others to guide you in creating a fantastic user experience.