After you have been working for a few years, you will begin to see the different career paths available to UX/ UI Designers. What are the different paths and which one is right for you? The path you ultimately take will depend upon your preferred working environment, the amount of responsibility you want to take on, the salary level you are looking for, and your individual personality.
UX or UI Design?
The first decision you need to make is whether to go for UX or UI design. UX stands for user experience and this means focusing on the overall experience of a user with a product. UX Designers advocate for users throughout the design process, conduct interviews, analyze the data, and identify pain points along the users’ journey. They run workshops to come up with design ideas, create user flows, personas, wireframes, and prototypes, then conduct usability tests.
A user interface, or UI Designer, focuses on the visual aspects of a design and how the user interacts with it. People who choose a career in UI design often start out as Graphic Designers. The UI Designer is in charge of the overall aesthetic and part of their job is to create or uphold the language of the design. This is the visual consistency across products or within one example. For instance, the different pages of a website should look similar and have buttons and drop-down menus in the same locations.
Because UI design is so visual, designers are concerned with subjects like typography, colors, style and branding, spacing, boldness, the number of items on a screen, icons or images that are part of the design. Successful user interfaces are predictable, simple and obvious to use, and forgivable, that is when users make a mistake, it is easy to see how to get back on track.
Necessary Skills for Designers
The skills that you will need to become a UX/UI Designer are varied and depend on the career path you pursue, but one trait that both UX and UI Designers need is empathy. This means a desire to understand the user experience and the emotional journey the user takes with the product. Empathy with the user is the foundation of both UX and UI design.
Other skills that UX Designers need are listed below:
- Knowledge of the UX design process
- Working knowledge of design tools like Sketch, Adobe XD, or Figma
- The ability to conduct user research and competitor analysis
- Experience with interpreting data and test results
- Working knowledge of personas, scenarios, and storyboards
- Setting information architecture and sitemaps
- The ability to create prototypes and wireframes
- Familiarity with interaction design principles
- Understanding of the relationship between business goals and design principles.
UI Designers need a different skill set that includes the following:
- Knowledge of the principles of graphic design
- Understanding of typography
- Familiarity with color theory
- Knowledge of information architecture
- Experience with visual design
- Knowledge of HTML/CSS is a plus
- Familiarity with principles of responsive design
- Experience with creating animation
- Ability to establish and maintain style guides
Other skills that are useful for UX/UI Designers are what are considered soft skills like these:
- Curiosity
- Creativity
- Empathy
- Listening
- Teamwork/collaboration
- Problem-solving
- Communication skills
- Artistic ability
Career Paths for UX Designers
There are several career paths available to UX Designers. These include management, senior or lead positions in design, freelancing, consulting, and specializing in some aspect of UX design like research or writing. UI Designers who know how to code could move into a web development path or become a Design Engineer.
UX Management
Managers not only oversee projects but they work with people. The focus of UX management is to be sure that the right personnel are assigned to the right tasks. If your favorite part of UX design is teamwork and collaboration, this might be a good fit for you. Managers need to have good listening and communication skills. In addition to manager, possible job titles at this level are Creative Director, UX Director, and Chief Experience Officer. According to glassdoor.com, the average UX manager salary is $148,000.
UX Senior and Lead
If the hands-on UX/UI work is what appeals to you, pursuing a senior or lead position should be your next move. Senior designers have more responsibility for developing the design and need to be able to supervise junior designers, but they work more on the product than directing personnel. Job titles at this level are often Senior UX Designer, Lead UX Designer, or Principal UX Designer with an average salary of $140,000 a year. Senior UI Designers make an average of $124,000 annually.
UX Design Specialist
As you work as a UX/UI Designer, you may find that there are some aspects of the design process that appeal to you more than others. You might like conducting interviews or working on the text on the website or app. Perhaps as you have worked on website design, you’ve become interested in the engineering process.
Researcher
UX Researchers conduct different types of tests to find out about users’ attitudes and behaviors toward the website or app under development. They conduct quantitative and qualitative research to test the product and then report on their findings. UX researchers conduct interviews, run surveys, and perform usability studies of various types. Then they analyze the data and report their findings to the design team. Glassdoor.com reports the average annual salary for UX Researchers at $92,000.
Writer
UX Writers focus on creating and shaping the user experience through text and language. UX writing leads users smoothly through the product, and like other aspects of user-centered design, UX writing should not stand out; it should be intuitive. If the user has to stop and think about directions or descriptions, that interrupts the flow of the experience. UX writers create the text that is displayed on apps and websites, including instructions, buttons, labels, help messages, and warnings.UX writing is purpose-driven. It is entirely devoted to getting the user from point A to point B smoothly and effortlessly. The average yearly salary for a UX Writer is $108,000.
Engineer
UX Designers who develop an interest in website coding can become UX Engineers. This involves learning programming languages like JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and others that are used in front end web development. UX Engineers make around $112,000 a year.
Where to Learn UX Design
If you would like to learn more about UX/UI design in order to switch to a new career, one of the best ways to do that is to sign up for classes. You can choose classes that meet in-person or online to learn design software and other applications. Some people prefer to attend brick-and-mortar sessions when learning new information, but that isn’t always available. Live online classes have a similar set-up with a real-time, remote instructor who can answer questions and take control of your monitor—with permission—to show you how to do things. Training is part or full-time and available weekdays, weeknights, or weekends.
The best way to prepare for a career shift to a field like UX design is to enroll in a bootcamp or certificate program. These are intensive training courses that run from a few weeks to a few months and another plus of training is that you will leave class with a professional-quality portfolio that you can show to prospective employers.
Conclusion
It’s easy to learn UX design and start a new career. Check out Noble Desktop’s UX design classes. Choose between in-person sessions in NYC at Noble’s location or sign up for live online UX design courses and attend from anywhere. Use Noble Desktop’s Classes Near Me to find other UX design bootcamps in your area.