UI/UX Designer: All you need to know!

Another booming job profile currently in India is the User Interface(UI) and User Experience(UX) designer. With the growth of content in the web, products have increased in number and form. Having an idea of the user wants and how well the user can use a product becomes key in figuring out how well the product will do in a market. This is where the UX/UI plays a part.

Basically, UI stands for ‘User Interface’. Both of these are design disciplines and are related to one another. UX stands for ‘User Experience’ and is sometimes even termed as ‘UXD’—User Experience Design. However, they are very different in nature.

The UI/UX design specialization puts forward a user-friendly and skill-based instruction, highlighting a visual interaction standpoint. Instead of concentrating on marketing or programming alone, UI/UX creates a space that emphasizes on design.

UX is a little more analytical and UI is more visual. Simply put, one cannot do without the other and are, for this reason, clubbed together.

What is UX design?

According to Wikipedia, UX design is the process of improving user satisfaction with a product by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction with the product.

UX is mainly spoken about in the tech industry, because it came about during the digital boom, back in the ’90s. However, UX has a larger place in design as a whole.

Basically, UX design is the art and science of delighting users when they interact with your product.

The larger role of a UX designer can be broken down into a few components.

1. Strategy and Content

Content, as we know it, is the king of the web. Strategizing how this content is applied and received best by the user plays a huge role for UX designers.

UX designers have an idea of competitor analysis as well. They focus on customer analysis and an overall construction for content and strategy. They help develop the content so it best fits the user. UX design is a user first discipline where they always think about the user.

2. Wireframing and Prototyping

A UX designer is trying to find what structure works the best and how a user can receive that content. A good UX designer is concerned with the execution of the product and its feedback and analytics.

The UX designer has to coordinate with the UI designer or the web designer to make sure everything is being implemented smoothly.

A product has a lifespan and as it lives and breathes and works in the world. People are experiencing the product and interacting with it and have opinions with it. This might change depending on time or user-base. So, UX designers are constantly looking to make sure that it is a well constructed and developed platform.

3.Connecting Business to Needs

Ultimately, the goal of a UX designer is to connect business needs to the user’s needs. If the user’s needs are to take in content, the UX designer is making sure that the product experience is delightful.

How do you know that UX design is for you?

There are several ways and reasons as to why one can choose to be a UX designer.

• If you’re a problem solver – Finding solutions to problems within a time constraint and winging ideas that can later become essential for the execution of the product is key to a UX designer. 
• Cognitive and analytical thinking – A UX designer has to be interested in what people are thinking and feeling while they are doing something psychological in nature.

So what does a UX designer do at work? There is a list of methodologies that a UX designer follows through the day to accomplish certain tasks. Here is a list that aggregates a few of said methodologies. 

1. Usability testing
2. This is a way to see how easy it is to use something by testing it out with real users.
3.  
4. Personas
5. A persona, in user-centered design and marketing, is a fictional character created to represent a user type that might use a site, brand, or product in a similar way.
6.  
7. Feedback Loop
8. With regard to digital user experience, a value loop is created when a business creates an app, site, or online transaction that benefits a target user or customer. In return, the user gives the business attention, money or both.
9.  
10. Prototyping
11. A prototype is a simulation of the final product, which is used for testing before launch. UX designers focus on prototyping to ensure maximum usability.
12. 
    
13. There are several other methodologies such as quantitative vs. qualitative research analysis, card sorting, UX survey, UX interview, heuristic evaluation, etc.
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15. UX design within a technical sphere is booming largely at the moment. To understand better, Don Norman’s ‘The Design of Everyday Things’ and Steve Krug’s ‘Don’t Make Me Think’ are two good books that can help you better understand the idea behind UX design.

What is UI design?

The UI design is the design of user interfaces for machines and software. The goal of UI design is to make the user’s interaction as simple and efficient as possible through aesthetic means.

They focus on the look and feel, presentation of the production of the product. UI design is closely related to the visual communication—art and graphic design, as in picking colors and typography and making things aesthetically pleasing.

A few job responsibilities for a UI designer are graphic design related, web design related and even sometimes branding design related. Some UI designers focus on front-end development because a good understanding of code can help you design the media more effectively.

Responsibilities of a UI designer 

1. Look and feel of the product
2. A UI designer will do a competitive analysis of what’s going on in a market—for instance, the standard, what a good look may be and feel of the product when the user may use it.
3.  
4. Visual design
5. A UI designer is going to do all the graphic and visual design for the project. They check the color palette, typography, buttons, and interactions.
6.  
7. Interaction design
8. In some cases, the UI designer takes up responsibilities for animation, interactivity and even sometimes prototyping as well.

A UI designer adapts their design to fit every screen size and resolution. A good UI designer is responsible for interacting with the developer and making sure that things look and feel and work the way they should.

Similarly, a UI designer has several methodologies that they have to follow on a day-to-day basis. 

1. Collaboration
2. A UI designer must be ready to communicate with team members, keeping the user in mind. However, since user research and personas fall under UX, the UI designer’s job is to take this information and develop it on to the project. The UX designer will give the UI designer a wireframe on which to work on.
3. 
   
4. Once the design is done, it must be handed to the developers. Therefore, this sort of communication is crucial for the completion of the project.
5.  
6. Design
7. A UI designer must be very handy with design and the look and feel of the product. Designing is definitely the crux of what a UI designer does and can include a wide array of roles required to complete the product.

Design can include making screens and creating visual touch points—their appearance, animation and interactivity behind them go into this as well. They make the style guide that is used as well.

Designing each individual screens and mapping the structure and understanding what goes where, also taking into consideration how the app will look, designing buttons and sliders and necessary icons, choosing the color palette—these are some of the things that a UI designer must do on an everyday agenda.

Salary details of a UI/UX designer

• New Delhi: The average pay for a User Experience designer in New Delhi is Rs. 7,60,000 per year. However, in New Delhi the average pay for a User Interface designer is Rs. 5,21,379 per year. 
• Bangalore: The average pay for a User Experience designer in Bangalore is Rs. 7,67,385 per year. The average pay for a User Interface designer in Bangalore is Rs. 4,90,181 per year. 
• Hyderabad: The average pay for a User Experience designer in Hyderabad is Rs. 6,25,101 per year. The average pay for a User Interface designer in Hyderabad is Rs. 3,51,329 per year. 
• Chennai: The average pay for a User Experience designer in Chennai is Rs. 5,00,000 per year. The average pay for a User Interface designer in Chennai is Rs. 4,31,667 per year. 
• Mumbai: The average pay for a User Experience designer in Mumbai is Rs. 6,33,095 per year. The average pay for a User Interface designer in Mumbai is Rs. 4,82,652 per year.

Rapid growth?

Another reason as to why UX/UI design is growing rapidly in India would be for the fact that India is a diverse nation—with growing cultures and interests. Over the years, interests changed from being company centric to user-centric. There was exposure in terms of content and work styles, and while coping with the trend of this new work-life culture, there came a need to focus on design and aspects of enhancing usability.

We have always been a nation that laid most focus on jobs such as engineering and medicine. However, with this newfound exposure to content, people are slowly starting to branch out.

As unconventional as UI/UX may be, the product is ultimately designed for the user—therefore, UI/UX captures the need to put them first, before creating the product itself.

We have now evolved into a quality-first approach rather than a quantity first approach, which was how it had always been. And with this growth comes new opportunities like a design-oriented, user-centric field such as UI/UX design.