Yes, it is in demand. You can exhale and close the article (joke, do not switch, we will tell you a lot of exciting things!). Let's analyze the profession of a UX-UI designer on points, without any waste talking.
Features of the UX Designer Profession
User Experience a designer, as a rule, has many related or supra-professional skills: he understands graphic design, software development, and conducting social research. He can combine the duties of a UX and UI (User Interface) designer in his work. At the same time, UX design is more related to the structure of the product and the comfort when using it in this context, and UI-with the appearance of the product and the convenience of its use in this regard (for example, a pleasant combination of colors, a convenient size of buttons, etc.). You can read about how to change your career from graphic design to UX design here. The primary duties of a UX designer usually include:
- Analysis of user scenarios;
- Creating a portrait of the target audience;
- Conducting user surveys;
- Thinking through the logic of using the product;
- Development of a clickable product prototype;
- Testing the prototype on users, making changes based on its results;
- Repeat iterations of "prototype development-testing-making changes" until achieving an optimal user experience with the product.
As you can see from this list, taking a job as a UX designer means being ready to do a lot of research. Such a specialist does not make decisions "on a whim", based on their own ideas or even well-known principles of interface optimization. It is based on the results of testing the prototype on real users, because this is the only way to ensure the creation of a truly convenient and functional product.
Average Experience of UX Designers
UXtools.co, a free resource for UX designers, companies, and classrooms, conducts an annual survey on design tools. In 2020, it received more than 4,000 responses that painted a picture of the UX design landscape.
According to the survey results, the largest number of UX design professionals surveyed (1,110 people) had 3-5 years of work experience. This was followed by those with a decade or more of work experience (1,044 people).
Average Salary of UX Designers
Trying to find the average salary in a UX designer is a complex process, just like looking for a needle in a haystack. Also, a UX design career is a relatively new thing, which adds a level of uncertainty when trying to calculate standard salaries related to a career in UX design.
Worldwide, the average annual salary for a UX designer is about $52,683, and in Switzerland, the highest average salary is about $100,890. According to the job portal Glassdoor, a UX designer's average base salary in the US is approximately $ 85,277 per year. The Glassdoor website data also shows that some companies offer higher salaries:
- Apple offers a salary of $73,000 to $183,000
- Adobe offers between $66,000 and $ 162,000
- Google offers between $77,000 and $173,000
With the increase in the number of freelance employees, some UX design projects may be paid by the hour. Online marketplace ZipRecruiter presents the average hourly rate of a UX designer for 50 US states.
Highest hourly wage:
- Washington ($52.17)
- Maryland ($51.29)
- Nebraska ($50.24)
Lowest hourly wage:
- Illinois ($37.48)
- Mississippi ($37.54)
- Arkansas ($37.68)
8 best US Cities for UX Designers
The Adobe website published a research article that took into account both the career potential of UX designers (the number of available vacancies, average salary, UX design communities, etc.) and location (the best US cities to study outside of work). Here is the list:
- San Francisco, California
- San Diego, California
- Seattle, Washington
- Redmond, Washington
- Boston, Massachusetts
- New York, New York
- Chicago, IL
- Austin, Texas
Best Tools and Design Systems
The 2020 survey of UX designers revealed the tools that designers use most often:
- Figma
- Miro
- Sketch
- Adobe XD
- FlowMapp
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