What do I (UX designer) actually do? 🤷🏽
Most of you’re likely hearing the words User Experience(UX) and UX designer more and more these days.
Due to it’s relative newness, I have had many people ask me about it or some had given that look 🤔🧐 “What do you actually do?” or even indirectly asking “How come you guys got an Apple Mac laptop?”👩🏽💻💻
This article is for those who are out there wondering🤷🏽 “Who is a UX designer and what do we actually do?” I’m sure some of you have an idea, but often confuse UX with UI.
First things first, UX and UI design are two different elements of single consumer experience.
As I’m a plant lover, let’s take a simple example of gardening.
- I have lots of green plants hanging in my balcony garden.
- Half the floor is wood and the other half is synthetic grass.
- I have also placed some white stones to make look pretty.
Does this tell you enough about my garden? What is missing here?
- How do I enter the balcony?
- What do I experience while I’m in the garden?
- How do I water the plants?
- Why did I hang some of the plants?
This is the difference between UX and UI, Where UI focus on the looks while UX focuses on the ease of use or experience.
Who is a UX Designer and what we actually do?
The answer to this question is, it depends. The UX designers job description can vary from company to company and sometimes even from project to project within the same company.
Generally, a UX designers conduct user research, design, write UX copy, validate/test with user and sell/present the design solution to the business. It’s the UX designer’s role to be the voice of the user and advocate for the users needs while balancing the business goals.
👩🏽💻User research: It’s the starting point for every designer and we can’t skip this step as it’s the foundation to the design. This is the stage we would identify user needs, pain points, behaviors and goals. We’ll also identify information about the industry, competitors, standards, technical barriers and opportunities.
👩🏽💻Design: It is often misunderstood as being about “making things look pretty” whereas It’s about solving the problems and connecting with the user to improve usability, accessibility and user delight.
👩🏽💻Writing UX Copy: It’s about writing the content on the user interface to reflect the voice of the product/organization and also to help the user to navigate.
👩🏽💻Validate/Test with Users: This helps to identify the problems faced by users during the interactions in the design prototype. User testing is usually done in person to observe user behavior. It could be a feedback told by the user verbally or we could spot the problem with the user’s reactions.
👩🏽💻Sell/present the design solution to the business: This is the crucial part of every designer’s job. The UX designer should be able to present and interact with people in order to empathize on a potential problem.
So now you have a simple understanding of who a UX designer is.
