To work effectively as a UI Designer (at least if you intend to create something new), you need to master at least the fundamental principles in three broad areas:
(1) Human Behavior - You need to understand how the human user's innate perceptual, motor, cognitive, and social abilities affect their experience of interactive systems. Attention and memory will be the most important topics, but anything from signal processing to decision making and motivation will be relevant to a particular design problem. This is a traditional human factors and is very well-documented online and in readily available published books and even college-level courses (increasingly available free and online). This is an absolute pre-requisite, and without it you will not be able to function effectively as a designer.
(2) Software Technology - You need to understand how the various elements of the UI are actually delivered to the user, including how they are constructed, what is possible, practical, or feasible within an given timeframe, and how the engineering team works (and what they need as input) to create a final product. This is something that will be acquired over time, and you won't need to learn to code yourself (though that certainly helps, and is worth pursuing on its own merits), but there is a wealth of information out there. You will also want to look at the historical development of user interfaces to understand how we got to where we are today. Much of that history is documented online, so tracking it down will be easier than you think - though experiencing it firsthand may be a challenge.
(3) Industrial Design - You need to understand how to invent properly-optimized design solutions to real-world problems that can be delivered on a given platform within a timeframe that is almost always more compressed than you would like. (I say, "industrial design," here rather than simply, "design," to emphasize the overwhelming influence of "manufacturability" and the need to address a mass market somewhat generically within this domain.) The ability to rapidly explore a solution space (not just copy something a competitor has done) and converge upon the solution that "works" best for your specific problem is a greatly under appreciated skill. Combine this with a sense (which you will need to develop) of aesthetic and conceptual integrity and a strong humanistic concern for the values of the user and their special needs and requirements (as opposed to those of the software vendor, the development team, or their tech media cheerleaders) and you will be well on your way.
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