Daily Life of a UI Designer

UI Designers are responsible for designing digital layouts for screens and webpages and ensuring their designs are user-friendly. Daily life as UI Designer generally involves meetings with stakeholders (such as managers, clients, or teammates) to ensure designs meet expectations. UI Designers also complete daily hands-on design work. The type of design work depends heavily on a project’s stage of development. In early phases, a UI Designer may brainstorm ideas and build wireframes. In later phases, work is conducted on prototype creation and user testing. The end of development includes reviewing customer feedback and performing design iterations before finalizing the product.

What is a UI Designer?

A UI Designer designs user interfaces, usually for digital applications such as the web, mobile, or video games. They build visual and interactive elements such as buttons, menus, and widgets. They also develop prototypes and refine their designs based on information gained from user research. Primary job duties of UI Designers include:

• Developing and enforcing a style guide that establishes a consistent visual “look” across the application.
• Designing each screen and individual elements within that the user can interact with.
• Making decisions about layout and visual elements that drive an intuitive user experience.
• Creating animations.
• Building wireframes and prototypes.
• Ensuring layout responsiveness across various screen sizes.

UI Designers craft designs for various industries, such as financial and banking, healthcare apps, retail apps, education, automotive, and gaming. A UI Designer’s primary goal is to design applications so that users intuitively understand how to use them and perform the actions or find the information they need without learning how to use the application first. UI Designers play a significant role in influencing how we use digital technology in our daily lives. 

Read more about what a UI Designer does. 

UI Designer Specializations

A UI Designer generally performs various job duties and tasks in designing a user interface. This includes text, graphics, navigation, user testing, and innovation. A UI Designer working on their own in a small team will likely perform all these duties. However, within larger teams, individual responsibilities can be narrowed down into specialized job titles, including:

• UI Architect – focuses on designing the interface structure and navigation
• UI Writer – focuses on the textual aspects of the interface
• UI Graphic Designer – focuses on the graphical elements of the interface
• UI Innovator – evaluates final design for usability, accessibility, and other improvements 

Additional UI design job positions that don’t fall under typical UI Designer duties include:

• UI Developer/Engineer – develops the final UI design (involves coding)
• UI Strategist – guides the UI design team throughout the project development

Due to their expertise, these specialized job titles generally have higher salaries than general UI Designers. To obtain one of these positions, UI Designers will need additional experience or training. For instance, UI Developers need to learn coding, and UI Strategists need to learn product management.

UI Designers can also pursue an education in UX design. UI and UX design overlap in many areas, but UX design specifically focuses on the overall user experience. They conduct user testing and suggest design improvements to UI Designers. Becoming a UI & UX Designer combines the knowledge of both worlds and is a lucrative career path.

Read more about other job titles related to UI Designer. 

Starting Your Day

A UI Designer may work remotely from home or in an office or studio. Generally, their work relies on computer software and is team-based. So, they need a comfortable desk and computer space and the ability to connect with teammates, whether on the internet or in an office meeting room. 

9 AM:

In the morning, UI Designers will typically check Slack messages and emails. This is also important to review tasks and meetings scheduled for the day. Morning meetings are usually conducted with design team members to review project status and goals. Meetings may also involve going over design elements and assigning future iterations.

11 AM:

UI Designers will use this time to work on project design. Exactly what work a UI Designer performs depends heavily on the project’s stage of development. In the early stages of project development, a UI Designer may work on wireframes. They already have existing low-fidelity wireframes reviewed during the morning meeting. These wireframes exist as black-and-white blueprints. Now that they’ve been finalized, it’s time to flesh out the details, turning the wireframe into a colorful design closer to the actual product. 

UI Designers typically use Figma (or another industry design tool of choice) to create wireframes. In this case, the UI Designer simply accesses their previously created file. They add visual content previously created in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop to their wireframe, adjusting size and positioning as needed. 

They also add text, as the low-fidelity wireframe only contains placeholder lines. They will also format the text as needed, adjusting height, color, contrast, or alignment to ensure it is readable and visually appealing. Within a large team, a UX Writer will have written this text, so a UI Designer only needs to copy and paste it into their design. However, a UI Designer may be responsible for writing this text in a smaller team.

A UI Designer will spend a few hours in Figma, working their bare-bones wireframe closer to the full appearance of an app screen – including text, imagery, and color.

2 PM:

There’s much that can happen in the afternoon. During this time, a UI Designer may continue to work on their wireframe. This is also time to check in with colleagues or vice versa for a status check and to receive helpful feedback on work conducted this morning. 

A UI Designer may also have other tasks, such as developing and maintaining the company UI style guide. This style guide contains guidelines and best practices regarding product UI for things such as typography, color, imagery, and layout. A UI Designer will likely have their guide written in Google Docs and return there to edit and add sections, images, and other details. Once it’s ready, they will present their style guide for feedback. Even after the style guide has gone live, they will likely return to the project to make updates as needed. 

5 PM:

A UI Designer’s day's end involves winding down and preparing for the next day of work. This is the time to jot down thoughts and ideas to revisit. It’s also worth reviewing any upcoming meetings, taking note of any preparations that need attention, and taking one last look at email. 

After Work

Overtime isn’t common in UI design. After work, a UI Designer might continue professional development by reviewing the latest design trends or attending conferences. However, circumstances that might lead to overtime include meeting strict deadlines, often with mismanaged projects where tasks were not completed on time or required more iterations than expected.

Learn the Skills to Become a UI Designer at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop offers several UI design classes for those seeking professional instruction in pursuing a career as a UI Designer. Classes are small and feature expert instructors and free retake options. Courses can be attended in person in NYC or online from anywhere. 

The UI Design Certificate is designed to prepare students to launch a career in UI design. You’ll learn essential design principles as well as how to use the most popular UI design tools: Figma, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Throughout the course, you’ll complete a number of hands-on projects and build a portfolio to showcase your skills to potential employers.

Should you be interested in UX design as well as UI design (the two fields commonly overlap), you can pursue the UX & UI Design Certificate. You’ll learn the design principles and industry tools of both UX & UI design, build a professional portfolio, and receive one-on-one job preparation assistance. 

Bootcamps are also available where you can learn the ins and outs of the most popular UI design tools, including Figma, Photoshop, and Illustrator. These courses are open to pure beginners and are designed to guide you to mastery of the program. 

If you’re not ready to jump into a full UI design course, you can explore Noble Desktop’s learning hubs. These hubs are designed to inform you about a topic and offer learning resources, including free tutorials and self-guided education. UI design learn hubs include:

• Learn UI Design
• Learn Visual Design
• Learn Adobe XD
• Learn Figma
• Learn Sketch