Are you creative and curious? Do you have an artistic eye? Are you fascinated by human behavior and how people solve problems? Do you enjoy working with digital tools? If you see yourself in these statements, UX/UI design may be the right career for you.
The Nielsen Norman Group, a leader in user experience design, conducted a survey of 693 UX/UI Designers in 2019 to get a picture of what a career as a Designer looks like. Survey respondents were asked about their level of education, what industries they worked in, and what they did as part of their jobs, among other things.
What Do UX/UI Designers Do?
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. Designers who participated in the survey listed the following skills as important for 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 and 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
Where Do UX/UI Designers Work?
UX/UI design jobs are prevalent in the tech industry but opportunities are growing all the time. Here are some of the places where study respondents are employed:
- Computing and IT
- Finance and insurance
- Consulting
- Education
- Independent contracting
- Government and military
- Healthcare
- Retail
- Media
- Advertising
- Telecommunications
- Business
- Entertainment
- Aerospace and automotive
- Non-profit groups
The study respondents reported working on the following types of projects as UX/UI Designers:
- Enterprise apps
- Docs and tutorials
- Desktop applications
- Style guides
- Cloud services
- Artificial intelligence
- Medical hardware/software
- Customer service or business processes
- Social/collaborative software
- Kiosks
- Packaging
- Server/network/sensor systems
- Smart environments
- Installations/interactive exhibits
What is the Job Outlook for UX/UI Design?
The job outlook for UX/UI Designers is very strong through 2030, according to the US Bureau of Labor Standards. The tech industry, and ecommerce in particular, continues to expand and is expected to grow by 13% in the next ten years. UX/UI Designers are in-demand to create the websites and mobile applications that will be needed, and as extended reality products begin to come on the market, the need will be even greater. The annual median pay range for UX/UI Designers is $77,200, with a low of $40,750 and a high of $146,430.
What Education Do UX/UI Designers Need?
While 82% of UX and UI Designers have a college degree, very few have a specific degree in UX/UI design. The most common fields include computing and graphic design, but areas like art, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and communications are common. You do not necessarily need a degree to get a job as a UX/UI Designer. A certificate course can give you the skills you need to find a job in the field without going to college.
What Apps and Tools Do UX/UI Designers Use?
UX/UI Designers use different types of software in their work. These tools allow them to design mobile apps and websites often with little or no coding, and you can learn how to use them at a bootcamp or certificate course. Some of the most common are listed below.
Adobe XD
Adobe XD is a design tool based on vector graphics that allows you to create digital designs for everything from mobile apps to websites. XD is part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud and works well with other CC apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Animate. There are many repeating features that make your workflow move faster, and XD also includes collaboration features that make it easy to share and test prototypes. You can run XD on both macOS and Windows.
Sketch
Sketch is a Mac application that doesn’t work on Windows. You can use vector editing tools or design at the pixel level. It allows you to scale to any screen size and speed up your workflow with mathematical shortcuts. As with XD, there are repeatable components and you can organize your design so everything is easy to find. Sketch recently added real-time collaboration, so now it is easier for a team to work together, and you can also create libraries of the elements the team is using. There are also many plugins available to customize your workspace.
InVision
InVision works to support the design process from brainstorming and collaborating with Freehand, or prototyping with Cloud, or designing with Studio. You can create design libraries for the team. InVision works on the web, Android phones, and on iPhones.
Figma
Figma is another design application. It includes FigJam which provides an online whiteboard for collaboration to let your design team plan, define, and workshop together. You can use the pen tool for vector graphics or plugins like an instant arc design. Auto Layout moves and stretches items automatically, and Figma makes the work move along efficiently. Figma runs on a browser so it will work with macOS, Windows, or Linux systems.
Where to Learn UX/UI Design
If you would like to learn more about UX/UI design 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.