Career Paths in User Experience(UX) Design

There’s a good chance that you are reading this blog hoping to find work as a UX designer in the near future. UX design is a rapidly changing field with a projected 10-year growth rate of 15% (Burning Glass, 2020).

When you check out most job searching sites, you’ll find tens of thousands of job postings for UX-related roles.

In fact, recruiters around the world are struggling to fill open positions for UX designers because the demand for people with these skills is outpacing the supply of available UX designers.

That’s where you come in! While it might be a little early to begin searching for jobs, it’s important context to know that “UX designer” is just one of many job titles within the broader user experience field.

As you continue in this field, you might become interested in a certain specialty or career path within the field. In addition, as an entry-level UX designer, you will likely work alongside other UX professionals with various areas of expertise.

To help you get started, this reading will explore a handful of different careers within the field of user experience.

Interaction Designer

Interaction designers focus on designing the experience of a product and how it functions.

They strive to understand the user flow, or the path, that a typical user takes to complete a task on an app, website, or other platform.

At most companies, interaction designers are a specialized type of UX designer.

An interaction designer's work answers questions like: What should happen if a user taps on this button? How do we make this action easier for users to complete? And, how are the design elements within the website laid out?

Interaction designers focus less on how the product looks and instead strive to make the product easy to navigate and simple for users to interact with.

Visual Designers

Visual designers focus on how a product or technology looks. They are often responsible for designing logos, illustrations, and icons, as well as deciding on font color, size, and placement.

Visual designers focus on the layout of each page or screen and make all of the design elements fit together in a visually appealing way.

At most companies, visual designers are a specialized type of UX designer.

The role of a visual designer is to answer questions like: What kind of visual style should icons have, in order to fit the product's branding? Or, which color and font should we use for this button? The goal of a visual designer is to delight users with designs that inspire, engage, and excite them.

Motion Designers

Motion designers think about what it feels like for a user to move through a product and how to create smooth transitions between pages on an app or website.

They may also create animations or visual effects to bring their design ideas to life.

At most companies, motion designers are a specialized type of UX designer.

A motion designer’s work answers questions like: How should an app transition between pages? How do we show the connection between these actions? And, what’s an engaging animation that will help tell our story? Motion designers focus on design elements that move, rather than traditional static designs.

VR and AR Designers

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) designers create products that provide users with immersive experiences, unbounded by the limits of the physical world.

Virtual reality involves a wearable headset that takes over a user’s vision; it blocks out their physical surroundings and immerses them in a completely virtual world.

For example, VR can feel like you're entering the setting of a magical imaginary land.

On the other hand, augmented reality uses the physical world as a backdrop and adds virtual elements on top of it. Users are still contextually aware of their surroundings, but their reality is augmented, or enhanced, by adding elements through a screen.

For example, you can sit in your actual kitchen, and an AR experience can add digital images, like a new barstool or a piece of artwork, to the room around you.

A VR or AR designer’s work answers questions like: How do we create a user experience that leverages 3D space? Or, will this action cause a user motion sickness? To ensure users are comfortable immersing in a VR or AR experience, designers need to carefully consider everything from sound to lighting.

UX Researcher

UX researchers conduct studies or interviews that examine how people use a product.

UX researchers often identify pain points that users are experiencing and explore how products can help solve those problems. They also explore the usability of existing products, by asking users to complete tasks in an app or website, for example.

UX researchers answer questions like: What problems are users facing? Is the design of this product easy to use? And, would people be interested in this new design feature?

The goal of UX researchers is often to understand how a product can provide a solution to a real problem users are having.

UX Writer

UX writers think about how to make the language within a product clearer so that the user experience is more intuitive. UX writers also help define a brand’s voice and personality.

The work of UX writers often includes writing labels for buttons and determining the tone of language used within an app or website.

UX writers focus on answering questions like: What words should be used to communicate this idea clearly? Should the tone for this app be friendly or technical? And, what should the language on this button label say?

UX writers often become subject matter experts in order to present content that’s easy to understand for all users.

UX Program Managers

UX program managers ensure clear and timely communication, so that the process of building a useful product moves smoothly from start to finish.

This might include setting goals, writing project plans, and allocating team resources.

UX program managers answer questions like: What are the overall goals for this project, and what’s the plan to achieve them? And, how can we create and improve processes within the team? UX program managers work across departments to make sure that UX is involved throughout a project lifecycle.

UX Engineers

UX engineers translate the design’s intent into a functioning experience, like an app or a website.

They help UX teams figure out if designs are intuitive and technically feasible.

UX engineers answer questions like: How do we implement each interaction? How do we build this design in a way that stays true to its original intent? And, how might we explore alternatives to determine the best user experience? UX engineers synthesize design and development, bringing product concepts to life.

Conversation Designer

Conversational interfaces are everywhere, from intelligent virtual assistants like Google Assistant and Siri, to interactive voice response systems like customer service systems you can talk to.

Conversational interfaces even include automobile navigation systems and chatbots! Conversation design incorporates natural, real-world conversational behaviors into the interactions between users and these systems.

Conversation designers make it possible for users to have natural conversations to get things done.

They leverage user research, psychology, technical knowledge, and linguistics to create user experiences that are intuitive and engaging.

Conversation designers develop the “persona” or personality of the voice, as well as the flow and dialog of the interaction.

Conversation designers answer questions like: What’s the ideal language and flow based on who users are, the task to be accomplished, and the context of the conversation? Does the personality of the virtual assistant seem genuine, engaging, and reflective of the brand values? How does the conversation work with on-screen elements? Does the virtual assistant offer a consistent, usable, and useful experience end-to-end?

Roles and Responsibilites of a Beginner UX Designer

As an entry-level UX designer, you’ll have a lot of exciting opportunities to gain experience. When you first start out, you’ll probably take on a lot of different roles and responsibilities.

User research: User research is about understanding the people who use your product. Through research, you’ll learn about users’ backgrounds, demographics, motivations, pain points, emotions, and goals. Your research methods might include surveys, observations, and interviews. We’ll explore user research in much more detail in an upcoming course.

Information architecture: Information architecture, or IA for short, involves deciding how your product is organized and structured. Think of IA as a skeleton that outlines how users interact with your product. Everything in your product should be organized in ways that make sense to the user and meets their expectations.

Wireframing: A wireframe is a basic outline or sketch of a product or a screen, like an app or website. As the name suggests, wireframes look like they were created with wires. They’re mostly lines and shapes, with some text. Wireframes can be drawn by hand or created digitally using software. Wireframing helps you bring your design ideas to life, so other people on your team can provide input and feedback.

Prototyping: A prototype is an early model of a product that demonstrates its functionality. Prototypes can be in physical or digital formats and can vary in complexity. Sometimes a prototype is made to demonstrate one specific feature of a product, like the transition between screens or the way the product physically looks and feels. You’ll make multiple prototypes for any given product throughout the design process.

Visual design: Visual design focuses on how the product or technology looks. As a UX designer, you need to understand the foundations of visual design in order to communicate the connection between a product’s functionality and its appearance to users. You’ll learn some of the most important principles of visual design throughout this certificate program.

Effective communication: Effective communication as a UX designer means connecting with your colleagues through emails, meetings, presentations, and design software. UX design is a very collaborative field, so being able to communicate both digitally and face-to-face with teammates is important. You need to be a good listener, be receptive to feedback, and share your ideas in a clear way.

Types of UX Designers

As you get further along in your career, you can choose to specialize in a certain area of UX design or keep your skill set more broad. What exactly are the differences between specialist and generalist UX designers?

Specialist

Specialist: A specialist dives deep into one type of UX design, like interaction, visual, or motion design, and becomes an expert.

Specialist UX designers are more common at large companies that have a lot of designers.

Some of the benefits of becoming a specialist include:

• Focusing on one type of design that you enjoy more than others.
• Gaining deep knowledge of one type of design.
• Becoming well-known in the industry for your expertise in a particular type of design.

Generalist

Generalist: A generalist has a broad number of responsibilities. A majority of UX design jobs are generalist positions, especially at companies with fewer UX designers.

Typically, entry-level UX designers work in generalist roles, and some people choose to stay in generalist design roles for their entire careers.

There are a lot of benefits to being a generalist UX designer, like:

• Expanding your skills in many different types of UX work.
• Trying a variety of responsibilities and finding an area of UX that you’re especially passionate about.
• Keeping your job feeling fresh and new, while doing a variety of tasks.

T-Shaped

T-shaped: A T-shaped designer is a specialist who also has a lot of capabilities in other areas.

T-shaped designers get their name because the stem (or vertical line) of a T represents their expertise in one area, while the top (or horizontal line) symbolizes their related skills in a broad number of areas.

T-shaped designers are great to have on your team, since they come with the benefits of both specialists and generalists.

Conclusion

There are so many different paths you can take within the field of UX design. After you land your first entry-level job and start working in the field, you’ll get a better idea of whether you want to be a UX design generalist or specialize in one specific type of design. There are plenty of benefits to being a generalist, specialist, or T-shaped designer, so it’s all about finding what works best for you!