What is a UI/UX Designer?
A UI/UX Designer is someone proficient in both UX and UI design. UX design refers to User Experience design which focuses on how something works and how people interact with it, while UI design stands for User Interface design and it focuses on the look and layout. Despite being very integral to each other, these two roles are quite different and involve distinct processes, but both are crucial to an IT product and need to be developed hand in hand.
Through this article, we will try to examine closely the different roles and traits of UI/UX Designers and look for insights about the skills required for the job.
Market insights : (Powered by Riminder)
About Riminder :
At Riminder, We provide businesses with an AI-powered infrastructure to assess, score, and rank talent pools.
Insights :
Through our analysis we gathered information about UI/UX Designers around the globe, here are some of the most relevant insights we drew:
The job of a UI/UX Designer requires a diversified set of skills, ranging from Graphic design and Customer analysis to Web development and Wireframing. UI/UX Designers also have to master different software used for design, the most popular one is Adobe Creative Suite.
Below we try to explain some of the skills these profiles should master :
- Graphic design: The process of visual communication and problem-solving through the use of typography, photography, and illustration. It can take a physical or virtual form and include images, words, or graphics. Graphic design is essential for UI/UX Designers to create visual concepts and represent ideas that inspire, inform, and captivate consumers.
- Customer analysis: The process by which data from customer behavior is used to help make key business decisions. This information is used by businesses for direct marketing, site selection, and customer relationship management. Marketing provides services in order to satisfy customers. With that in mind, the productive system is considered from its beginning at the production level, to the end of the cycle at the consumer. Customer analytics plays an important role in the prediction of customer behavior.
- Web development: The work involved in developing a web site on the Internet. It can range from developing a simple single static page of plain text to complex web-based internet applications (web apps), electronic businesses, and social network services. Although UI/UX Designers are rarely the ones in charge of developing a web sites or apps, they usually have to communicate their vision to the development team and assist them along the way to make sure the execution of their designs is well handled. A good knowledge of web development can be very useful in this stage for UI/UX Designers and allows a much more effective collaboration between them and coders.
- Wireframing: A way to design a website service at the structural level. Wireframes are commonly used to lay out content and functionality on a page which takes into account user needs and user journeys. They are used early in the development process to establish the basic structure of a page before visual design and content is added. As a UI/UX Designer, this is an important tool to help provide a visual understanding of a page early in a project and to get stakeholder and project team approval before the creative phase gets under way.
- Typography: The art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable, and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing, letter-spacing, etc. Typography is an important component of web design and have a direct impact on the success of the final product, this is why UI/UX Designers have to pay close attention when making their typography choices and learn as much as possible about this technique.
After talking about the top skills UI/UX Designers need to master in their job, it's time to see what are the most relevant companies for these profiles.
Through our analysis, we create the chart below ranking the top 10 companies for UI/UX Designers.
Now let's examine the early beginnings of UI/UX Designers and see how they kicked off their careers. As our analysis reveals, many started their professional career in design, which is natural for such profiles.
Below are some of the most common first jobs of UI/UX Designers.