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What does a UX designer do?

UX is short for user experience and refers to the way people interact with an app. UX is often intermixed with UI (user interface) to become UI/UX, which refers to the overall look of the app and how easy/convenient it is for people to use. UI/UX as an independent field is relatively new and used to simply be considered under the purview of designers.

However, the importance of the app experience has led to UI/UX becoming an independent field in its own right. While designers still work on things like color schemes and brand identities, a UX designer focuses on people’s experience while using an app or a website. They ask questions like: How easy is the app to navigate? Can users access important areas with minimal effort? Is anything about the app confusing or ambiguous? UX designers aim to design interfaces and app experiences that are intuitive and pleasant for end users.

What skills do I need to become a UX designer?

UI/UX is a relatively new field that has stemmed from web design and front-end development. Many UI/UX designers have experience with front-end development, web design principles, or both. Having experience in these areas will make it much easier for a UI/UX designer to understand general design principles and how to implement them effectively. However, those who don’t have experience, can attend coding boot camps and online courses to develop their skills.

Each particular job or client may expect slightly different things from a UX designer. In some positions, a UX designer is expected to work solely on creating appealing and intuitive designs and experiences for websites and apps that developers will be given to implement. In others, the UI/UX designers may also be expected to write the HTML and CSS to implement their front-end designs.

Below are some of the skills that a UX designer should know in order to cover as many tasks they may be expected to undertake as possible.

Design principles

A UX designer will be expected to have a solid understanding of design and branding principles, particularly as they apply to the web. Google’s Material Design principles are popular on the web, so it’s worth being familiar with them, though they are by no means the only ones used.

In particular, it’s important to have an understanding of how fonts are translated to websites and apps. Different devices have different screen sizes and resolutions, so font scaling and wrapping is a very common consideration for UI/UX designers.

Front-end web development

It’s not uncommon for UX/UI designers to be expected to implement their designs into working code. In such cases, a UX designer must be able to use HTML and CSS to translate their designs into code that can be passed on to back-end developers to create a working website. UI/UX designers should also study JavaScript as it relates to front-end development, though how important this will be depends on how much development work is expected from a UX designer.

UX principles

UX is a relatively new field, but it is rapidly becoming a specialized subject as more software companies look to experts to help tweak their apps. Better UX increases user engagement, makes apps more pleasant to use, and keeps users coming back. These are all very important goals for many apps, so UX designers must understand user experience design principles and best practices. Also, other skills such as prototyping and the ability to create wireframes in apps such as Sketch and Adobe Photoshop are important to have in your toolset.

This means taking into consideration the UX/UI design process that goes beyond simply how an app works. It includes accessibility and usability testing for those with impairments, user testing to find usability flaws, checking for consistency in the overall look and feel of the app throughout the user journey, and ensuring a navigational flow through the app that feels natural.

Usability principles

An important responsibility of a UX designer is making sure that an app or site is easily usable by as many people as possible. In general, this means that an app must be made to behave in such a way that users are able to understand how to use the app the first time they ever use it. This entails ensuring that an app implements best-practice usability concepts such as:

• Making sure users always have a way to undo/redo an action
• Minimizing the amount of information a user has to remember
• Steering users clear of error conditions as much as possible
• Using plain and clear error messages when things do go wrong
• Removing interruptions and obstacles within the user journey