Have you been in search of a promising career in Graphic Design/ Web Designing, then surely you must have come across the term UI UX Designing and wondered what it meant? And probably that is the reason it brought you to this blog. Well, you are in the right place and let me brief you with what is UI UX Design and the job roles involved.
What is User Experience Design (UX)
UX, short for User Experience means how the consumer or the user feels interacting or experiencing with a particular product. The product can be either physical or digital like a website or an app.
UX designing refers to the process of designing the products with the objective of providing the best user experience.
The following are important characteristics that the UX Designers must consider for the best User Experience.
- By improving the Usability factor of the product or making it much easier to use.
- Building a positive relationship between the user and the product by making the product more enjoyable to use.
- It must be Equitable to all kinds of people with diverse backgrounds and abilities.
- It should help to solve problems of people by making the product more useful.
Below image summarizes the framework of what is UX Design
What is User Interface Design (UI)
User Interface refers to the interaction point between the electronic system and the users. The appearance of the display screens, desktop, keyboards, mouse etc. all constitute the User Interface. In simple the UI is the way through which the users interact with a website or an app.
A good example of UI design is Apple, the Technology Giant has focused on providing user-centered designs that has boosted its User Experience by making the Interface easier to use and more intuitive.
User Interface is a subset of User Experience. An appealing UI along with good UX will lead to the best User Experience.
So, by now you know what exactly UI UX refers to. But you might still be under the confusion that, what work exactly do the UX Designers perform? and how can one enhance the user experience practically?
To answer your questions, I will brief you on the types of UX Designers and their roles in improving the User Experience.
Below image summarizes the UI Design concept of Dashboard - Desktop view
Below image summarizes the UI Design concept of Dashboard - Mobile view
Below image summarizes the UI Design concept of Dashboard - Tab view
Types of UX Designers
Interaction Designers
The objective of the Interaction Designer is to enhance the User Experience of a product or user interface. They understand their users and design products in such a way that the interaction with the product, website or an app is simple and easier to use. They focus more on the interaction with the product rather than the visual aspects of the product.
Example
In a Shopping website, adding the button ‘Buy now’ or ‘Add to Cart’ in the right places to make the shopping experience easier and enjoyable.
Visual Designers
Visual Designers as the name suggests focus on the Visual part of the User Experience. They improve the look and feel of the product. They efficiently make use of elements of design such as Images, Colors, Typography, Texture, Shapes, Lines and Spaces and enhance the user interface.
Example
In a food delivery website, placing delicious and tempting food images with stunning background visuals making the website more enjoyable to surf.
Motion Designers
Motion Designers focus on the navigation aspect in the user interface, they step in the shoes of users and understand how smoothly and easily they can navigate through the website or an app. They design lively transitions which may include creative visual effects or animations to move around the interface and make the product more engaging.
Example
While surfing through the website, making the navigation buttons or meta links easier and simpler to use at the same time making the transitions more pleasing.
Alright! Now you have a good idea about UX Designing. But these are not the only roles under User Experience. It commences right from the researching stage to strategizing, test designing the product and finally bringing out the desired output.
To make it simpler, the below flow chart shows the procedure in UX Designing.
Other Roles in UX Design
You already know the role of UX Designers, let me brief you with other roles.
UX Researcher
The role of a UX Researcher is understanding the Users needs or their pain points and what is their expectations from your product. To achieve this, they make use of various research tools such as interviews, surveys, observation and running tests. An example would be asking users to complete tasks on an app, to test how good or bad is the user experience of that particular app. They finally analyze the data collected and derive at meaningful insights from their study.
They mainly focus on, how people use the particular product, whether the experience they derive from it is positive or needs any improvement? Are there any problems they are currently facing with the product? Is the current product/interface easy to use? They finally derive at best possible solutions to these problems and make the product better and usable.
UX Strategist
UX Strategists are the project managers or the coordinators, who lay out a well-defined strategy for the UX Design. Strategists’ role includes managing the team and the project, constructing the Information Architecture with blueprints and wireframes for a website/app, for the UX Designers to follow.
Information Architecture refers to designing and organizing each individual screen and its flow, in such a way that it is user friendly, attractive and easier to navigate. They Design low fidelity wireframes as the reference, which is later designed by UX Designers.
UX writers
We also have UX Writers, they specialize in Copywriting such as writing content for website/app, labels for buttons etc. which are user friendly and easily understandable by all the users.
And finally, a feasible UX Design is developed into a functioning website or an app by the Web Developers/Engineers.
These role titles may not be clearly defined, as a UX Designer might perform one or combination of these above-mentioned roles. It will depend upon the Company you work for.
That a was lot to understand! Good work making it so far. To end this blog, I will brief you around 3 main classifications of these Job roles.
Classification of Job Roles
Generalist
This generally includes all the UX Designer roles, here you start from the user research process to user designing. This will help to elevate your career quickly as you will learn all aspects of UX. Usually, generalists are employed by Start-Ups, Small Companies and Design agencies.
Specialist
As the name suggests they are specialized in one particular UX Role and expected to have expertise in that role. These roles are usually employed by the Big Technological Companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft and so on.
T-Shaped Designers
This role includes the aspects of both the Generalist and Specialist approaches. They have expertise in one particular field yet are capable of performing other UX Roles. In the letter ‘T’ the horizontal part refers to the range of their UX skills and the vertical part refers to their specialized UX skill.
