The work as a UX designer could be improved in many ways, I bring some of them in this post that helped me to show more value to my work.
1 - Be good in the basics
This topic may sound a little redundant, but many designers are worried about bringing extra things to the project and they forget to do the simple things well.
To be a good designer you have to understand the basics concepts of our area.
Things like typography, color combination, alignment, sizes and shapes, best practices in the digital world, heuristics and psychology applied in the design.
With these tools very well done you are able to bring new things to improve the value of your deliveries.
2 - Bring context
As designers our work is to solve problems and a good way to start is understanding the context of this need.
This context could be brought to the presentation of your solution, you can quickly recap about the problem and the work that you have done to solve it.
When you present the before and after your work, get a strong power to be approved and the team can accept better.
Remember, in this area we work with things that have a concept behind, you cannot bring a solution based simply on guesswork.
The first topic is directly related to this one, because with a good foundation, your deliveries come with a solid background and explanation.
3 - Branding development
Another way to improve the project that you are working on is creating the branding of the product.
The brand itself, the guidelines as sizes, colors and applications are part of the branding.
You can bring other concepts such as the purpose of the brand, the tagline, create the archetype of the brand and the attributes.
Do not show only the visual, show everything that is behind your choices.
4 - Marketing ideas
To highlight the project to the customers you can propose some marketing actions.
You can create a marketing plan to present to the customer with your ideas of sharing.
Actions like email marketing, posts in social media, direct contact to the best clients and a printed letter could bring some good results.
The most important part here is to show that you care not just about your core area, but you have a view to correlated areas.
These proposals will bring a lot of value to your role and to the project.
5 - Business
As a product designer I have some responsibilities to help the client to define some business questions.
I always try to be involved in these kinds of discussions to be close to the managers, to learn about these items and to suggest some paths to follow.
But to bring these kinds of questions I need to study about it before in order to understand and to suggest things that make sense.
Some possible topics are the steps for the customer adoption, pricing, sales proposals, competitor analysis and value proposition.
6 - Workshop innovations
A skill that the UX designers need to develop is the ability to propose and conduct workshops.
This action shows that the designer has a sense of leadership and can talk to a group without problems.
Some ideas for the workshops are the discovery of a project, the brainstorming for increase the engagement of the customers, the creation of the purpose, the roadmap prioritization and the backlog refinement.
Conclusion
To have a highlight in the career of design it is important to always bring new ideas to the table and to show that this profile is essential to the project and to the company.
I have applied these subjects at my work and I could tell you that those extra things make me different from other designers and I could achieve new roles at the companies that I was working for.
Learning, reading and researching are in our life until our last day. Keep improving and growing!