UX Design is often presented as a good career choice. Demand is huge. Salaries are high. The barrier to entry is seemingly low. It is low stress, high-reward job with great work-life balance.
But things are not that simple. While many of the promises are true, there are also some caveats. Let’s look at them in detail, and then you can decide for yourself whether UX is a good career choice for you!
What do UX Design do?
First of all, let me start with saying that there is no clear agreement on what the job of UX design actually entails. That complicates things a bit. Without clear understanding of what UX designer is required to know how can you tell what exactly you are getting into, and know that all the promises of the great career will hold true?
Well, UX is about great user experiences, isn’t it? What so complicated and ambiguous about that? The problem is that there are many facets to designing and delivering products.
First of all, there a need to understand who is going to use the product, when, and how. Then, figure out the company can actually build and deliver. Then there is design itself: there are features, flows, pages, visuals, messages, calls to action, tables, and charts, and interactions that need to be designed. Then designs have to be tested to ensure they are usable, and make sense to the end user. And of course, they need to be implemented, that is actually made real!
I am leaving out a big chunk of what is needs to happen to make it all work, and that is somehow communicating product vision, research findings, as well as design ideas between the team members and often even multiple teams and departments.
So what part is covered by UX Design, or to be more accurate by UX designers? Well, it really depends. And that is where complications come to the surface.
You see, every company defines the role as it pleases. Some companies understand the field of UX and provide more accurate role and job descriptions. Others simply jump on a trend and blindly copy others. So you might not really know what you are getting yourself into until the job interview.
It is a good idea to study the UX Designer job descriptions and figure out for yourself what the requirements and responsibilities are.
And this leads me to the main points of this article which you have to consider to figure out whether UX Design is the right career choice for you. And I am talking about long term career!
UX Design is largely about soft skills
As you study the job postings you might notice that large portion of responsibilities and requirements is not about technical skills, not about knowing how to use a particular design tool, or design techniques, but rather about communicating and working with others.
So that is something for you to consider. How are you working with others? Is it something you enjoy doing? How are you at handling disagreements and conflicts? Are you ok with meeting and talking to complete strangers on regular basis? Are you comfortable presenting to groups of people?
Of course, UX design is not all about soft skills. You will get a chance to retrieve from your team and get some alone time to work on the designs, and recharge until you will be asked to come out of your comfort zone again.
UX is about continuous learning
UX is also about continuous learning. And I don’t mean learning to improve your design skills. I mean learning the domain (or domains) your company and product are in.
For example, during my years working for the same company, I worked on project for real-estate, property management, investment, accounting, and even building engineering domains.
As a UX designer you might not have to become an expert in the domain, but you should be familiar with it enough to hold meaningful conversations with users and team members.
UX is about embracing change
In software world things change at record speeds. Some projects get shelved as new ones take priority. Even the same project might go through several iterations and change drastically until it is fully shaped. Change is unavoidable. You will have to be ok with that.
Moreover, you might have to be a catalyst for a change. Which brings me to the next point.
UX is about leadership
The nature of UX design is that it is ambiguous. It covers practically every part of the business, and touches every department in the company: product owners and management, development, quality assurance, sales, customer care… Seemingly everyone is responsible for UX. However practically often no one is. That is why companies hire UX designers.
UX designers are often expected to take charge and lead the design initiatives. But it might be challenging to get everyone on the same page. There might be conflicts of interest between departments, politics at play, and plain misunderstandings. That complicates things.
Besides no one might be there to tell you what to do, and how to do it. You will have to figure it out yourself! And you will have to form and present your vision in such a way that others will want to follow.
It is challenging, and not everyone is comfortable with that. But that is the reason companies are willing to pay top dollars. You really didn’t think that you can get a job that pays $100k a year to sit at your desk and work in Sketch all day, did you?!
So if you are aiming for a higher salary you have to realize that stakes are higher too, and the promises of low stress job might not hold true, at least not until you figure things out.
I hope this give you some food for thought in your desire to pursue a career in UX design. If you are looking for a job in UX, check out UX Design Jobs (and Where to Find Them) for helpful tips on searching for a UX job as well as a comprehensive list of job boards.
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
