User experience designer job

The purpose of BrainStation's UX Designer career guide is to provide you with the resources you need to get started in a potentially profitable career in UX design. Continue reading to get an overview of the day-to-day tasks that UX Designers are responsible for.

A user experience designer's attention is focused on the whole development of a product, from its appearance and usability to its capabilities and even its branding and marketing. Their job encompasses the whole of a user's experience with a product, from beginning to finish, and it also involves the process of finding new prospects for the company's products and operations.

It should come as no surprise that user experience designers (UX Designers) are responsible for a diverse range of tasks because of the breadth of their responsibilities, which varies greatly based on the firm and the project. In point of fact, according to one poll, there are over 200 distinct job titles within the field of user experience design, not to mention a vast array of tasks. But just what is it that user experience designers do?

What Exactly Does a User Experience Designer Do All Day?

The majority of a UX Designer's day-to-day work is comprised of a core set of tasks and responsibilities, which may be broken down into a few essential components of the user experience design process. According to the findings of the 2020 BrainStation Digital Skills Survey, a considerable amount of time is spent by UX Designers working in each of the following areas.

Research on end-users

The amount of research that goes into user experience design is something that a lot of people are unaware of. In point of fact, market, product, and user research are significant components of UX design. This is due to the fact that research is essential to comprehending the user and the specific requirements they have. User research often focuses on the actions, motives, and requirements of a customer to provide the Designer with information that will assist them in determining what possibilities exist in a certain market for product solutions. Data collecting, user interviews, surveys, and focus groups are some of the research tools that UX Designers often utilize to gain information and insights about target consumers.

Persona development

The creation of user personas is another essential step in the process of user experience design (UX design). During this stage, UX Designers compile and analyze their results to build representative personas based on patterns and similarities found in their research. These personas are then used to inform subsequent stages of the design process. Each persona communicates a potential user's demographic information, motivations, needs, potential responses, and anything else Developers will need to consider. This is a helpful tool that helps the organization gain a clearer picture of who they're building the product for, which in turn helps the organization build a better product.

The Architecture of Information (IA)

How information is mapped out and structured to express a clear purpose is what we mean when we talk about "information architecture" (also known as "navigation"), which is another phrase for "how the information is used." Adobe's definition of information architecture is as follows: "the design of a framework for a website, app, or other product, which helps users to understand where they are—and where the information they want is in connection to their present location." As soon as the design team has this blueprint in hand, they will be able to get started on constructing wireframes and prototypes. The ultimate goal of this blueprint is to improve the way people are introduced to, navigate around, and engage with the product or website.

Wireframing

UX Designers develop wireframes, which are low-fidelity design drawings, as one of the initial steps toward constructing the final product. These wireframes reflect the many screens or phases of the product that the user encounters during the course of their journey. Wireframes are simplified representations of user interface (UI) design components that are used as a reference for further stages of product development and design.

Modeling with a high degree of realism and prototyping

Prototypes are a higher-fidelity design of the product than wireframes are. They may be used for user testing and for displaying the product to the development team. Wireframes are a lower-fidelity design of the product. These prototypes are developed by UX Designers to have a look, feel, and set of features that are very comparable to those of the anticipated final product. Test customers are able to engage with the product thanks to clickable prototypes, which provides UX Designers with the opportunity to try out actual variants of the experience and locate areas that need development.

User testing

UX Designers may put a product through its paces in a variety of different ways. User testing is one of the most popular types of testing. In this sort of testing, people are given the opportunity to interact with a prototype of the final design in order to evaluate its accessibility, usability, and intuitiveness. But there are also alternative ways, such as focus groups, moderated user testing, and unmoderated user tests, which all give essential input on what is working and what isn't working with a product or service. Testing the product is one of the last and most important processes in the process of determining what modifications should be made before moving on to the next stage of development.