What is the Design Score?
Your Design Score (DS) is a 100-point metric that compares your design skills, knowledge, and capabilities with 350K+ designers worldwide. It highlights your strengths, shows you areas for improvement, and helps you grow into the best designer you can be.
Your Design Score is visually represented through your Skill Graph, which breaks down your skills into six key categories:
Content Strategy
Product Thinking
Interaction Design
Leadership
Research
Visual Design
Your Skill Graph is tailored to your design role (e.g., UX/UI Designer, UX Writer), showing you how strong and proficient you are in these areas, giving you a bird-eye view of what you can bring to the table, and what you can improve to make your design skills better.
Designers with top scores can join the Designer Rankings and be recognized globally.
How to get your Design Score
The first step to building your Design Score is to take the Pulse Assessment. Pulse is built to quickly test your skills across all 6 categories of the Skill Graph, so you can immediately see where you stand with your skills. It is made up of 25 questions and by completing it, you get your initial Skill Graph mapped out.
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Apart from getting detailed insights into your skills, so you can see where you stand in each category, you’ll also receive personalized course and learning recommendations to focus on areas for improvement for your specific design role. Lastly, you’ll see how you compare to other designers around the globe.
If you had a Design Score but haven’t taken a Pulse yet, you’ll need to retake it to reactivate and update your Design Score. That way, your Design Score will reflect your current abilities.
Building and maintaining your Design Score
Once you’ve taken Pulse and received your initial Skill Graph, it’s time to build upon it and maintain your score. Here’s what you can do to keep it growing:
Complete lessons on Uxcel. Learning new knowledge is the strongest way to grow your skills. If you’re not sure where to start, simply follow the course recommendations from your Pulse results to focus on weaker areas. The more lessons you complete, the better your Skill Graph becomes.
Submit design briefs. Each brief you do will help you apply what you learned in real-life design projects and validate your skills. You can earn extra points that will improve your Skill Graph in specific areas by submitting up to 3 briefs per category.
Take skill assessments. Test your skills with various topic-based Assessments. The more assessments you complete (and the better your scores), the more impact it will have on your Skill Graph.
Retake Pulse regularly. Over time, your reliability metric will naturally drop as new trends and knowledge are introduced. Retaking Pulse throughout the year keeps your Skill Graph accurate and ensures you stay up-to-date with your current skills.
Wrap up
To wrap things up—your Design Score will help you understand where you stand as a designer, so you can grow, get recognized for your skills, and advance your career. By completing lessons, submitting Design Briefs, taking Assessments, and retaking Pulse regularly, you’ll build a stronger Skill Graph and Design Score thus opening doors to exciting opportunities for career growth.