What is good design?
Good design is a process.
Whether you're designing a seamless e-commerce experience or building a birdhouse, it's important to know the steps and where you fit in the process.
Most UX design projects start one of two ways: a completely clean slate where the designer's job is to collect data and identify areas of value and improvement or with a Product Requirements Document (PRD).
It's up to the UX Designer, Product Manager and pertinent stakeholders to outline the prescribed needs of the user and business in this document. What are we trying to solve? How will this impact the client? How will this impact the users? By identifying these areas of opportunity and preferred outcome ahead of time, we avoid large pivots and unforeseen obstacles during the refinement process.
Not all feedback is valuable.
This may seem sacrilegious, but part of being a good UX advocate is being able to identify what feedback will lead to valuable improvements and what may need to be reprioritized. It's human nature to want to share what you think. Always be happy to listen, but it's best to intake data with a critical mind.
User Experience and User Interface design are fundamentally different. A good product design process should be 75% UX and 25% UI. The data gathered ahead of time through interviews, shadowing, workshops and other sources should inform how the UI is laid out and functions. In a good UX process, all your questions about the UI should be hashed out ahead of time.
UX should be included from start to finish.
Collect data, share data, make sure your product managers, owners and development personnel know where they're headed and why. Outside of doing the research groundwork and delivering mockups, it's up to you to provide UX advising and a voice for the user.
In a perfect world, UX is a consistent step-by-step process that is well understood and easily followed. This is not always the case. Each step can get fuzzy as new areas of value are identified or new questions are raised. Often, there is limited time to gather data and engage in the research step. It's best to stay flexible as a designer and do your best to steer the process in an expected direction while also advocating for good UX practices.
tldr.
Good UX design requires flexibility, quick ideation, and a keen eye for gathering valuable feedback. Maintaining all of these skills (with the addition of high-end UI delivery) throughout each project will always lead to a strong result.