‘Hunted’. Pleasant. Allows to achieve work-life balance. That is the characteristic of a profession in the field of information technology, UX Designer (User Experience).
Currently, UX can indeed be classified as a promising job. UX Designer vacancies are increasingly criss-crossing job-seeker websites and applications. The Onward Search Digital, Creative and Marketing Professionals Salary Guide places UX first in the list of professionals needed. CNN also ranks UX 14th in the top 100 jobs list. Interestingly, UX designers love their jobs. This is proven by the 5.4 rating from a scale of 1-7 given by UX designers in the Nielsen Norman Group survey. In addition, Forbes is in 7th place on the list of the 20 best jobs in the work-life balance category.
UX designer, although a fairly new profession, plays important roles in product development. UX design is the process of designing everything that affects user and product interaction. It can be said that there are brilliant UX designers behind our favorite websites, applications, and digital products. Called to be a UX designer? Check out the following reviews!
What are the Duties of a UX Designer?
UX designers collaborate across multiple functionalities, finding the sweet spot between user needs, business goals, and technological advances, to design products that make digital products, such as websites and apps, useful, usable, and fun.
The daily work of a UX designer can vary depending on the company. Not infrequently a UX designer has to be a ‘Jack of all Trades’ or an all rounder. To give an idea, the responsibilities of a UX designer quoted from Adobe are:
Product research: Obtain quantitative and qualitative data in order to make informed decisions. Research conducted includes user behavior, industry standards, interviews, competition analysis, online surveys, and Focus Group Discussions. The results of the research become a guide for UX designers in designing.
Creating personas and scenarios: Identifying reflecting user groups for whom the design is intended and creating fictional characters to represent them. Then, the UX designer creates scenarios for the persona’s daily life, including how the site or application can contribute to that daily life.
Information Architecture (IA): The structure of the site/application/other product that allows users to understand where they are, the information they are looking for. IA determines how the user navigates.
Create wireframes: Wireframes are simple outlines of a product and can be likened to a ‘blueprint’. In the context of building a site, for example, wireframes indicate the layout of interface elements.
Prototype.
Test the product.
Becoming a UX Designer…
UX designers are very diverse. According to the Nielsen Norman Group, there is no major that dominates the background of a UX designer. The most common majors are design, psychology and communications, followed by English and computer science. The five disciplines are only about 45%. The rest came from various majors. Graduates majoring in anthropology, history, chemistry are also possible to become UX designers.
Compared to majors, what needs more attention is preparing skills. Skills useful for becoming a UX include designing, writing, programming, and research. Collaboration requires soft skills such as communication skills, negotiation, setting priorities and so on, should not be underestimated because UX collaborates with many parties. Knowledge of psychology and business is also not to be missed.
Career of a UX Designer
In the course of a UX career, the enthusiasm to continue learning and gain experience is very crucial because the roles that UX have vary. In addition, there is not only one type of platform that is being worked on.
UX that has good performance can be appointed as a manager. However, it is still rare for UX to occupy the executive level because they are too immersed in project details without having a career goal. In fact, UX designers master the problems and needs of users. In order to advance in their careers, UX designers need to be immersed in the business as a whole, practicing leadership and decision-making skills.
UX Designer Earnings
The average UX salary in the United States per year is $107,880.00 (based on data from Glassdoor.com). In Indonesia, the salary starts from IDR 6,500,000.00 per month or IDR 78,000,000.00 per year.
Opportunities to become a UX are very open, regardless of your major background during college. The demand for UX is also increasing. If you are interested in working in the information technology industry and want to learn, UX can be the right choice. You can create digital products that make people’s lives easier.