Understanding UX Design roles — 12 types of UX designers
This article will explore different careers within the field of user experience design.
The UX design industry is a rapidly growing and changing field. It is projected that the UX industry will grow by 15% in the following ten years. With such rapid growth more UX roles are created with more specific requirements.
Whether you are new to the UX field, are just looking to understand the UX Design area better, are looking for new opportunities within the UX industry or if you are one of those who want to continue to focus on their UX craft — this article will introduce you to available options within the UX Design roles.
In the picture below I created a diagram with different types of UX Design related roles, whereas further below you will find a more details description of each type of designer and what their role consists of.
UX Designers
UX designers focus on creating experience that users engage with when using digital products, such as websites, apps, and physical objects. And while doing so they need to wear different hats or work alongside other UX related roles to ensure those everyday interactions and user experiences are efficient, useful, enjoyable, and accessible. That’s why businesses in any industry, need UX designers and it is higly likely the roles will be even more braod and specialized in the future.
In summary, UX designers use design thinking methodology and design thinking tools while taking into account every detail of user interaction and experience. Design thinking focuses on an exhaustive understanding of user behaviour, motivations, goals the user wants to achieve, wants, pain points, and user’s needs in the context of the product’s or service’s purpose.
1. Interaction Designers
Focous:
- Creating experiences so that product or service will be easy to navigate
- Prototype development, using words, images, etc. to simpliye user’s experience
- Striving to understand the user flow, user journey, that a typical user takes to complete a task on a website, app, or any other platform
- How a product functions, designing the experience of it
- Designing interface, interaction, and visual design of web and mobile interfaces
Questions they look to solve:
- How would it be possible to create the certain action more efficient for users to complete?
- What will happen if a user taps on the ceratin button?
- Why are the design elements within the app or website laid out the way they currently are and how is this impacting users interaction with out product / service ?
2. Visual Designers
Focous:
- Responsible for overall design systems, components and designing logos, illustrations, icons, choosing font colour, size, and placement
- How a product or service will look like, making all of the design elements fit together in a visually aesthetic way
- Focus on the layout of each screen or page
- Delighting users with engaging, visually appealing, inspiring, exciting design
Questions they look to solve:
- Which colour, image, or font, should be used on this page?
- What type of visual style should be created for certain icons to fit with other products and services of a brand?
- Which colour should be used for this button?
3. User Intreface Designers
Focous:
- The goal of a user interface designer is to make the user’s interaction as simple and efficient as possible and allow users to accomplish their goal
- Designing the point of human-computer interaction and communication on a device, webpage, or app to enable users to effectively control the device they are interacting with
- Creating interface design standards
- Developing wireframes and prototypes
Questions they look to solve:
- Would there be any special needs of the user I should be aware of when designing?
- What actions do I need to allow users to perform and accomplish while using this product/service?
- Are there areas where the users get lost while using this product/service?
- Would users be able to find easily what they want when they come here to use this product/service?
- How would a user describe this product/service?
4. Motion designers
Focous:
- Focous on designing elements that move, rather than traditional static designs elements without motion
- Creating animations and visual effects to bring design ideas to life
- Trying to solve a challenge of how it feels like for a user to move around a product/service and how this impacts the user’s interactions
- How to create smooth transitions for users between pages on apps or websites
Questions they look to solve:
- What would be the most user-friendly transition for a user to transition between pages?
- How would the connection be displayed between these two actions?
- What engaging animation will communicate our story to the user while using our product/service?
5. VR/AR Designers
Focous:
- Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) designers focous on creating products/services that provide users with immersive experiences in a virtual world
- Creating products and limiting users’ vision of their physical surroundings and immersed them into the virtual world
- Creating augmented, enhanced reality and allowing users to add elements through a screen
- Ensuring users are comfortable immersing in a VR or AR experience and design a pleasant user experience while considering sound and lighting
Questions they look to solve:
- Will this light and sound create a pleasant user experience for the user?
- How to create a user experience that leverages 3D space?
- How will this action or motion influence the user?
6. UX Researchers
Focous:
- UX researchers conduct interviews and studies to examine how users use a product or service
- The focous of UX researchers is to understand how a product/service could provide a solution to problems and pain points users are facing
- Translating observations and insights into action points for the design team
- Identifying what pain points users are experiencing and exploring how products/services could help solve those users’ problems
- By asking users to complete the tasks in apps or websites they explore the usability of existing products/services
Questions they look to solve:
- What problems are users facing and why?
- Is the design and user experience of a certain product/service easy to understand and use for users?
- Would users be interested in a certain new design feature?
7. UX Writers
Focous:
- UX writers focous on presenting content that’s easy to understand for users
- Determining the voice used for a product / service, building the tone of the language in line with the company’s strategy and branding
- Writing labels for buttons within an app or website
- Focous on how to make the language within a product/service clearer so that the user experience is more intuitive
- Defining a brand’s voice and personality
Questions they look to solve:
- What words would be suitable to communicate a certain idea clearly?
- What type of tone for this app should be used?
- Would it be more suitable to use friendly or technical for this product/service?
- What should the language on this button label say?
8. UX Program Managers
Focous:
- UX program managers work across departments to make sure that a great user experience is involved throughout a project lifecycle
- Ensuring clear and timely plan and communication in order to make a smooth process of building a useful product from start to finish
- Setting goals, writing project plans, allocating team resources
Questions they look to solve:
- How can we improve or create processes within the team?
- What are the overall goals for this project?
- What would be the plan to achieve these goals?
9. UX Engineers
Focous:
- UX engineers synthesize design and development and bring product concepts to life
- Translating the design’s intent into a functioning experience for products/services within an app or website
- Suggesting UX teams whether the proposed design concepts are technically feasible and intuitive
- Communicating technical information to non-technical audiences
Questions they look to solve:
- How might we explore alternatives to determine the best user experience?
- Are there any technical constraints before we launch a new product/service?
- How could we implement certain interactions?
- How do we build the proposed design in a way that is relevant to its original intent?
10. Conversational Designers
Focous:
- Conversation designer focused on incorporating natural, real-world conversational behaviors into the interactions between digital systems
- Creating user interfaces from intelligent virtual assistants to interactive voice response systems like customer service systems you can talk to or even automobile navigation systems with chatbots
- Conversation designers make it possible for users to have fluent conversations to achieve their goals by developing a persona with a flow and dialog of the interaction
- Leveraging user research, psychology, technical knowledge, and linguistics to create engaging, fluent and intuitive user experiences
Questions they look to solve:
- Does the personality of the virtual assistant or chatbot reflect barnd’s value in a genuine, engaging, and reflective tone?
- What would be the ideal language and flow based our users?
- What tasks do users aim to be accomplish within the context of the conversation?
- Does the virtual assistant offer a fluent, usable, consistent and useful experience for users end-to-end?
11. Usability Analyst
Focous:
- Usability analysts measure the overall success rate of UX products/services, based on usability metrics, such as whether users could perform the desired task, the time it takes for users to perform a task, frequency of errors within a given time and overall users satisfaction rate with product or service
- Developing user stories through task analysis, process mapping, and user input
- Usability analysts focous on making sure the product is a success by seeking to understand what the user experiences as they interact with a digital product
- Conducting ongoing usability tests on existing products and developing fixes and improvements
- Carrying out competitor analysis to leverage data for informed design decisions
- Considering the steps that users take to achieve a certain goal, pinpoint where they get stuck in the user journey process and why
- Facilitating usability testing and communicating such insights to the wider UX team
- Focusing on how well an app or website functions in terms of accessibility and interactivity by inspecting methods and assessing product/service usability
- Planning and executing usability tests, analyzing the resulting data
- Analyzing usability test data and drawing out valuable insights
- Identifying usability issues in existing products and making recommendations for improvements
Questions they look to solve:
- What steps does a user need to take to achieve a certain goal?
- Where and why would a user fail in the user journey when completing a certain task?
- Can a user perform the desired task?
- How satisfied is a user with this product/service?
12. Information Architect
Focous:
- The information architect is in charge of the way content is laid out across a product
- Structuring all the content across a website or app to ensure a positive user experience by making the information accessible, logical, and well-organized
- Focusing on users’ interaction with an existing information architecture based on data from a variety of usability tests
- Developing strategies to serve user needs and business goals
- Conducting analysis and based on these findings determine the best informational layout for getting users to complete their tasks
- Finding out what users want and expect from a product’s informational structure and translating these insights into logical and sitemaps
- Driving continuous improvement of IA processes, models and data management
Questions they look to solve:
- What does the target user want from a product’s informational structure?
- How can I translate user insights and research into clear, logical informational architecture?
- What do users expect from this product’s informational structure?
I hope this article gave you more clarifications on what UX Designers do and what opportunities there are currently on the market if you are interested in UX but are not quite sure yet which path to take.
As you can see these roles are closely overlapping with each other while having specific types of requirements. Familiarity with each of the roles will help you excel in your role as a UX Designer.
What type of UX designer are you?
Source:
- In vision web
- Google UX Design Professional Certificate course
