UX & UI Design

There is far more to design than pretty colors or a fancy logo.

In the design department of larger tech companies you’ll find UX Designers, UI designers, user researchers, visual designers and more. We’ll take a brief look at some of these roles now.

UX Design

User Experience (UX) designers are focused on how users interact with a product. The process is commonly split into two stages: research and design.

In the research stage, UX designers conduct user research with the aim of building an understanding of the target users, the problems the users have, and any potential solutions.

The UX designers can then use this information to start designing the “software solution” to the user’s problems. These initial designs are usually made as wireframes , very basic sketch-type layouts of screens and components, and then as prototypes , where the wireframes are connected together into a simple clickable version that allows for basic testing of the design.

A great user experience can transform a product. As an example, in the recent past users of dating apps needed to manually click or tap on buttons to let the apps know whether the user was interested in a specific profile. Tinder introduced the “swipe right” motion that allows their users to quickly indicate they are interested in matching with a prospective date.

Swiping left or right speeds up the interaction which in turn increases the use of one of the core functions of a dating app (matching dates). But the physicality involved with the smooth swiping motion also “feels” better than clicking or tapping on a button, encouraging users to perform the action more frequently. It seems simple in hindsight, but swiping played a huge role in the growth of Tinder in an incredibly competitive market – a great indication of the power of UX design.

UI Design

User Interface designers create the visual look and feel of the product. They tend to have strong skills in related areas like branding, visual design, graphic design, typography and color theory.

While a UX designer will usually create the wireframe or prototype of a product to help with initial testing, it’s the UI designers who turn these wireframes into beautiful finished products, right down to the colors, fonts and images used on the website and app, or the icons used for the app.

Visual Design

Visual designers are similar to UI designers as their role has an aesthetic focus, but while UI designers focus on the apps, websites and other digital products, visual designers tend to be focused more on brand and marketing material, like logos, photos, or the images used in online advertising or social media campaigns.

Web designer

Web design focuses on designing the layouts, creating the visual elements, and ensuring the usability of websites. Some web designers will also build the websites, using visual no-code platforms like Webflow, or through their own knowledge of HTML, CSS and Javascript.

Is design right for you?

You’ve probably already realized that design roles favor people with creative tendencies. All design roles also require great communication and interpersonal skills. You’ll likely be working within a design team, but also with members of product, engineering and marketing teams.

A background or interest in topics like human psychology can also be very helpful for designers, especially if they are designing for interaction, like in UX design.

Designers spend large parts of their day using tools like Figma or Sketch, and many will also have at least a basic understanding of HTML, CSS and Javascript.

Many designers will have a college or university degree but they will not always be in design-related fields, and it is certainly possible to get a job in design without a degree. Self-directed learning is an option, and there are many well-reviewed online courses available teaching UX, UI, visual or web design for people who want to follow a more structured path.

UI/UX Design Salaries

Design salaries are in line with roles like marketing, and tend to be below technical roles like software developer or data scientist. Current Payscale data shows UX designers making an average of $75,000 and web designers at $52,000, although these salaries can be much higher for experienced practitioners.