Everyone seems to be talking about UX Design these days. UX designer is a trending profession. It is in demand. But what do UX designers actually do?
UX Designers work with multidisciplinary teams to understand business goals, user needs, and technical constraints, and design and deliver delightful products that meet and exceed users’ expectations. This is what UX Designers actually do. This is the essence of the UX design job.
Let’s take a closer look at UX Design job in its essence, as well as at what UX Designers do in their day to day.
I’ll top it off with describing my own working experience as a UX designer in a large software development company.
The Essence of UX Design Job
It is not news that UX designers are hired mostly by software development companies. These companies are built around a digital product, an application of some sort: web app, desktop, or mobile app. In some cases, products are paired with services. Let’s keep it simple for now, and focus on the products. Besides, designing services rarely falls on the plate of a UX designer.
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Think about any app you use regularly. It is designed and built a certain way. It meets your needs as a user. Somehow it also meets goals of the business, a company that produced it.
The way I see it, there are three major factors that shape products.
Firstly, there is a demand, a market for it. That simply means, people want the product. In other words, it is desirable.
Secondly, it makes sense for the business, otherwise the operations will not be sustainable. It is viable.
And thirdly, it is possible technically within expertise, timelines and budget of a company. It is feasible.
So we have: business, users, and technology.
There are product owners, business analysts, and strategists that are responsible for the business side of things. There are developers and engineers responsible for technical side.
It is tempting to think that designers are responsible for users side. Some even say that designers are “advocates for the users”… In reality, UX design role lays on the intersection of the three:
That doesn’t mean UX designers are directly responsible for defining the business strategy of the company, nor does it mean that designers need to understand technology on par with developers and engineers. If I were to write a job description for a UX role it would go something like this:
“Looking for a person who can work with the multidisciplinary team to understand business goals, user needs, and technical constraints, and design and deliver delightful products that meet and exceed users’ expectations”
That’s it! I wouldn’t care to ask for more! This is what UX designers actually do! This is the real value they provide!
All the detailed requirements are important for a specific process that the company has in place, but the essence of the job is not in knowing how to carry out user research or testing, how to wireframe or prototype. It is in ability to work with other team members to figure out what users need, and how to meet that need taking into account business goals and technical constraints.
That’s right. I said “figure out”. That is the job UX designers are hired for: to help the company figure out what the product is, or how it can be improved, taking into account these three factors: business goals, user needs, and technical constraints.
This is not something that you will find in the job postings, at least not in plain words. That is understandable, no company wants to admit that it doesn’t really know what it is doing.
Further reading:
- Design Thinking by IDEO
- Lean Startup by Eric Ries
- Getting Real by 37Signals (available as free ebook or paperback)
- Value Proposition Design by Alexander Osterwalder
UX Designer’s Day to Day
So what does UX designer do at work every day to deliver the essence? As you can probably guess there is no simple answer to this question.
It depends on several factors including range of projects, and project and team needs at the moment. Let’s look at those in more detail.
Factors at play
Day to day of a UX designer will largely depend on factors like:
- the size of the company and its culture
- design maturity of the company
- size and dynamics of the product team
- nature of the product
- stage product is in
- product timelines
- access to users
- designer’s skills
Depending on the company UX designer might be part of a design team, or work as part of a product team on his own or with other designer.
It is not uncommon for a smaller company to have only one UX designer. Yes, it can be lonely at times.
UX designer (or a team of designers) might be assigned to work on a single, or multiple projects at once, and design the whole product, or a particular part of the product. The project can be about improving existing product, or designing a product from scratch.
Range of Projects
UX designer might be working on a wide range of project, like:
- web apps
- mobile apps
- company or product websites
- blog
- email templates
- internal tools
Typically a UX designer would follow a design process, a series of steps that prove to work in a particular context and setting. Design process might change depending on the project, team dynamics, and timelines.
It is important to have a solid design process in place, but also to be flexible and adapt quickly.
Do UX designers design websites?
Sometimes UX designers are asked to work on the company or a product website, but most of the time websites are designed by Web Designers and not UX Designers.
Most of the time UX designers focus on functional products (apps), but they can contribute to design of the website in the form of providing user research, Information Architecture, suggesting navigation, etc.
Day-to-day Activities
Depending on the stage in the design process on a given day UX designer might be doing any of the following:
- sitting in product planning meetings
- interviewing stakeholders
- listening-in on customer care calls
- observing users
- working on deliverables like personas, customer journey maps, wireframes, mocks, etc.
- brainstorming design ideas
- discussing recent design changes with product owners and developers
In larger companies there is usually a number of designers working together, each designer (or a team) focusing on a particular step in design process, like user research, or Interface design. Typically, they would use a relevant title like UX researcher, or an Interface Designer. The subject of UX titles deserves an articles of its own.
In a smaller company a solo designer might have to juggle all the above mentioned responsibilities. It can be a daunting task but can also be something you like.
My Experience
It might be best to conclude this essay with talking about my own experience, and describe what I do as a UX designer working at a large software development company.
To give you some context, my company currently has over 7000 employees. A lot of them are software engineers and web developers. We build software for real-estate industry in general and property management specifically. Most of the applications are not customer facing, meaning they are not like Facebook or Gmail that anyone can access and use.
We also build our own internal tools: like issue tracking, reporting, etc. I worked on those as well.
We have several design teams, but it happened that currently I am working on my own. That arrangement changed several times during my 12 years here. At some point I was a team lead, but then I realized that I enjoy working as an individual contributor and not a manager. So that is the day-to-day I’ll be talking about.
Team work
I’ve been working as a UX designer at the same company for over 10 years. Even thought I was at the same place, I got to work with dozens of different teams each with different project requirements, process and team make up.
Some teams were collocated and could meet regularly. Others were distributed and met only occasionally.
Some teams were very supportive of full design process: doing user research, prototyping, user testing and so forth. While others asked merely for visual changes. Both approaches are fine. You get what you ask for.
The most enjoyable and successful products I worked on were the ones where the whole team got together often to brainstorm ideas (including design). We would spend countless hours in a meeting room, huddled around the whiteboard discussing latest findings from user research, or planning out information Architecture for the upcoming application. Teamwork at its best!
Projects
I get to work on projects of all kinds. They vary in size and complexity. Most are web application, some are mobile apps. Most are B2B SaaS apps, products not available to the general market.
Some apps were designed and built from scratch, others were updates to existing products.
Some projects lasted a few weeks, others months, and yet others — years.
I am one of the people who likes novelty, so very long projects get me particularly tired. Luckily there weren’t too many like that so far.
I like a problem big enough that I can sink my teeth into it, and yet small enough so I don’t have to get a PhD to solve it.
It is not uncommon for me to work on several projects at once. The way I juggle them is simple: I design part of one project and while waiting for feedback work on something else. The projects on my plate are never the same priority (project managers would not agree with me on this), so I can always decide which one needs more attention.
Activities and Deliverables
When time allowed I’d start a project with extensive user research. For one of the project, I’ve got to visit some of the office buildings in Manhattan, New York City. I’ve got to learn how those buildings operate and got to see some amazing views from the rooftops.
Most projects didn’t require me to travel and get into the basements of the buildings. Sometimes we would invite clients to the office, or get them on a conference call. Sometimes we would just chat, and at other times we would arrange for extensive user testing.
Observing and interviewing users was just one source of research material. Customer support complaints and requests was another one.
I’d formalize the findings and make them available to the teams and stakeholders as personas, user stories, and customer journey maps.
With some projects and teams I designed and build interactive prototypes that were often mistaken for a working app. With others there were rough wireframes.
Most of the time I’d deliver high-fidelity mocks that would look like a screenshot of a real application.
Regardless of deliverables I made a point to move fast: learn and iterate as much as possible. This kind of practice fit well into agile development practice were work is broken down into sprints that last one or two weeks.
My Day to Day
Enough general words. Time to talk about my day to day.
Most typical day for me would be sitting in front of my Mac working in Sketch on a series of screens. Since I work from home these days I’d share the mocks with the team in the email, or by posting them into a group chat. I’d get feedback that way too.
I’d schedule a meeting only if the mocks require elaborate discussion or explanation. (I secretly despise work meetings. I believe they waste a lot of peoples time.)
Of course that kind of work would be kicked off by a meeting with Product Owner and Project Manager where they would explain their needs and goals. Those would be the people I meet with again and again to discuss progress and show my work to.
Once the designs are finalized I’d often have a larger demo to a wider group, including customer support, sales and developers.
Once designs go off to developers I’d have to review the state of the product and make sure designs were implemented as intended. Sometimes there is change that needs to be done, so designs have to be updated on the fly.
Sometimes as I am working on a project, I’d be asked to do something else. I can quickly evaluate how much time it will take and either do it, or schedule it for days or weeks to come.
Hopefully this overview give you some insight into what UX designers actually do.
As you can see, UX designers get to do all kinds of things. No one day is the same. It can drive some people crazy, but it is also one of the factors that attracts so many to UX design as a profession.
What do you think? What did you think UX designers do? Did this article change your opinion about becoming a UX Designer? Let me know in the comments!
