What Does a UX Designer Do?

User Experience (UX) Designers are responsible for the look and feel of a product, website, or app. They work with teams of product managers, UI designers, writers, and developers to create high-fidelity screens and prototypes that represent how the product will look and function once it's released to the public. Understanding user behavior is crucial for UX designers as it helps them identify how users interact with a product and pinpoint areas of friction, enabling them to refine experiences and remove obstacles for users.

A few of the day-to-day tasks or projects you might work on as a UX designer include:

User Research

UX designers are grounded in data. This data is gathered when you conduct user research, where you collect data from your target audience and ideal product users and analyze it to empower your design decisions.

With this data, you can create user personas—or snapshots that profile user groups or types to help you quickly assess the wider needs of your users—as well as map out user journeys During these sessions, you can identify user needs and use it to help you create better designs.

Conducting user tests and usability tests early and often throughout the development process is crucial. Initiating tests at various stages, even in the initial phases with friends, allows for rapid feedback and improvements, ultimately refining the user experience before finalizing design and copy.

Wireframes

A wireframe is a simplified version of an app or webpage, like a blueprint, that maps out where each design element will be placed on a page.

They're a quick sketch that allows you to look at structure, layout, flows, interactions, and more … easily shifting components around to arrive at a good decision before moving on.

The earliest part of any design process is to map out user flows and more.

Information Architecture

Information Architecture (sometimes simply referred to as "IA") is the process of organizing, structuring, and labeling the content of a product to help users find information quickly and easily. In the context of product design, it involves creating a logical and meaningful structure for the content to help users navigate through the product in an intuitive and efficient manner. This is crucial for enhancing user experience, making products accessible and enjoyable for a diverse range of users.

UX designers incorporate the principles of information architecture early on in the UX design process to ensure that users can access the information they need, when they need it.

Learn more: UX Designer's Guide to Information Architecture

High-Fidelity Designs

After the initial wireframes have been approved, the design then moves into a new phase: high-fidelity (or "hi-fi"). Here, the grayscale sketch comes to life with colors, typography, imagery, and interactions.

As a UX designer, it's typically assumed that you'll have the ability to create a high-fidelity design yourself, which is why UX Academy students learn how to take a concept from initial user research to final product, ready for handoff to a development team.

However, there are also specialized roles like UI Designer or Visual Designer that may take over this part of the process in companies with larger design teams.

Learn more: What Does a UI Designer Do?

Prototypes

Throughout the design process, a UX designer may turn the design into a prototype.

A prototype is a working model of a design that behaves similarly to how it would when it's fully coded by a developer. It allows you to conduct usability testing without requiring coding skills, and is a helpful way to observe real user interactions. Conducting user tests with prototypes is crucial to gather user feedback, ensuring the final product meets user needs and enhances the overall user experience.

Learn more: Best Prototyping Tools for UX/UI Designers

Usability testing

A UX designer plays a crucial role in usability testing, which is the process of evaluating how easy and efficient a product is to use. The UX designer is responsible for setting up the prototype, creating and implementing test plans, recruiting participants, moderating test sessions, and analyzing the results to identify areas for improvement.

Data Review and Analysis

We’ve already mentioned that product design is a data-driven process. Analyzing user behavior is crucial for extracting insights. As a UX designer, your goal is to collect meaningful data throughout the process, analyze it to understand user behavior, and then share these insights with your team to inform future design decisions.

User Interface Design

User interface (UI) design is a crucial aspect of UX design that focuses on creating visually appealing and user-friendly interfaces for digital products. UI designers work closely with UX designers (or, in many cases are the same person) to bring the user experience to life through the visual design of the product.

The goal of UI design is to create an interface that is intuitive, easy to use, and aesthetically pleasing. Effective UI design can make a significant difference in the overall user experience, and it is essential to consider the user’s needs and goals when designing the interface.

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How Do UX Designers Collaborate?

Fundamentally, the UX designer role is a collaborative one. You'll interact with real users to conduct product testing, as well as work closely with your design team (although in smaller companies you may be the only designer).

UX designers also collaborate with other team members, such as developers and product managers, to ensure that the product meets the needs and expectations of users.

At a mid to senior level (or again, if you're the only designer at your company), you'll also work with stakeholders to ensure that business needs are also being accounted for and tracked throughout the product design process.

To successfully collaborate, UX designers must adapt to the changing needs of their partners and actively listen in order to effectively deliver projects on time and within budget.

What Tools Do UX Designers Use?

As a UX Designer, it's important to stay up-to-date with the latest and greatest tools in order to maximize efficiency and create the best user experience possible. When it comes to UX Design, there are a wide array of software options available—from prototyping to analytics and everything in between.

Some of the industry standard tools you might use include:

Figma
FramerAI
UXCam
Marvel
Justinmind
UXPin

Are you a Designlab student? Check out our Perks page, for discounts to industry design tools that might benefit your design process.

The UX Designer Skill Set

UX design requires a unique skill set that blends hard and soft skills.

A UX designer must be able to create intuitive product designs, while also exhibiting strong interpersonal relationships and leveraging human empathy to understand user needs.

Hard skills need to encompass each part of the UX designer job:

Mastery of industry-standard design tools like Figma
User research
Wireframes
Prototypes
High-fidelity designs
Basic data analysis
Visual design principles

Soft skills typically address how you collaborate with others and manage your own day-to-day work requirements:

Collaboration & communication
Task/project management (for your daily workload)
Time management
Presentation skills (important during the job search as well as when collaborating with your team)

Learn more: Product Design Skills: What Hiring Companies Are Looking For

UX Design Salary & Career Outlook

The average base salary for UX Designers varies, depending on experience, career level, geographic location and industry. In the United States, Indeed estimates that the national average salary is about $124,173 USD.

In addition to competitive salaries, many companies offer bonuses and other benefits such as flexible work hours that can add value to the total compensation package of a UX Designer.

Learn more: What Salary Can You Expect As a UX Designer?

How is AI Involved in UX Design?

UX designers can leverage AI to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the design process. For instance, AI-driven tools can help with:

Automating repetitive tasks
Brainstorming or generating simple designs, like wireframes
Providing predictive analytics for research
Testing and iterating on prototypes
Simulating user interaction and providing feedback

The integration of AI can help speed up the design process, be used as a creative brainstorming tool, and assist in achieving an end result faster. However, it’s important to remember that UX is deeply based in empathy and understanding of users, making human input and interaction incredibly important and necessary for the design process to be successful. AI can be a useful tool, but will not likely replace actual designers any time soon.

Learn more here: 7 Ways UX Designers Can Use AI to Their Advantage

How to Become a UX Designer

Switching careers can be a daunting task. But don't let the unknown scare you away from making a change.

If you're interested in UX design, here are a few ways to start:

Check out our guide: How to Become a UX Designer. It's a great resource to help you understand more about the field of UX design, and offers some tips on finding the right online courses or bootcamp to support your journey.
Enroll in UX Academy Foundations, a 4-week course that allows you to experience the world of design to better gauge whether this is the right career path for you. Throughout this course you'll learn the fundamentals of visual design and get to meet 1:1 with an experienced designer for feedback on your projects, and answers to more specific design questions. Foundations will also equip you with all the skills you need to step into our award-winning career accelerator program, UX Academy.

What Does a UX Designer Do?

What is UX Design? An Introduction