What does UX Designer Job Descriptions entail ?

As an aspiring UX designer, avidly reading through dozens of job boards, you would realize that it’s more of a minefield. Since UX design is a multidisciplinary domain, posting a UX designer job description may vary from company to company, making it a bit confusing.

A general overview of how a UX designer job description would entail some of these responsibilities-

• Plan and conduct competitor analysis along with the objective of user research is.
• Interpret qualitative and quantitative feedback into the design.
• Determine UX strategy and sitemaps for information architecture.
• Create a customer journey map UX and UX design personas.
• Create wireframes, free mockup software, and prototypes.
• Conduct ui ux testing tools.

A UX Designer’s Job descriptions would usually mention measuring and optimizing the product, either app or web-based. UX Designer job descriptions also detail conducting competitor analysis, user research, and UX testing to observe behavior other than improving ease of use.

Thus, the UX designer job description’s overall goal is to design a delightful experience to solve user problems, creating products or services that add value to people’s life. A similar role is that of a UI designer; however, their focus is on designing the product’s presentation and interactivity level. Some UX designer job descriptions may combine both UX and UI.

Typical UX designer job descriptions

There is not much difference between a junior UX designer job description and a senior UX designer job description, apart from experience and an in-depth understanding of the overall process. Allow me to give an overview of both profiles. I googled both and found the below-mentioned UX designer job descriptions on Glassdoor.

This is what a junior UX designer job description looks like –

• Conceptualizing creative ideas with clients.
• Testing, iterating, and improving the (product’s) design.
• Establishing standards, best practices, and design guidelines.
• Maintaining the (product’s) appearance
• Establish (product’s) visual design that aligns with branding for clients.
• Communicating design ideas and designing sample pages.
• Incorporating (product’s) functionalities and features.
• Preparing design plans to present the (product’s) structure.

And this is what a senior UX designer job description looks like –

Build a strong understanding of users:

• Partner with UX researcher to facilitate and analyze user research.
• Put together a detailed, structured analysis of issues and potential solutions after usability testing.
• Generate ideas and feedback by facilitating and leading collaborative design sessions.
• Define product requirements by brainstorming and high-level prototyping with cross-functional teams.

Deliver great user experiences:

• Create user-centric designs by considering customer feedback.
• Design for multiple platforms including web, iOS, and Android.
• Design detailed wireframes.
• Design low and high-fidelity mockups.

Communicate and influence design decisions:

• Communicate and present design work to the UX team, product team, and senior management for review to finalize UX deliverables.
• Effectively sell design solutions to cross-functional teams and stakeholders.
• Work with visual designers and engineers to ensure the UX’s integrity in the final product.

Design Management:

• Utilize knowledge and experience in UX to the development of design processes and philosophy.
• Create and maintain design schedules with partner teams.
• Mentor junior designers to support their growth and continuous progress.

Recruiters composing a job post for a multidisciplinary field like UX know very little about it in the first place. The reason behind it is that many employers have recently come to realize the importance of UX, but they haven’t quite pinpointed what the role of a UX designer could or should be within the organization. Then there’s the matter of the size of the organization itself. Smaller organizations create UX designer job descriptions making the UX designer look like a generalist catering to all their needs regarding UX. Larger organizations may create UX designer job descriptions with better specifics, to build a UX team. Conglomerates may add more variation to determine seniority levels due to experience, making the senior UX designer job description different from the junior UX designer job description.

Principal UX designer job description

When it comes to UX designer job descriptions, you may have seen or heard of a Principal UX Designer, yes? So, who is a Principal UX Designer? Well, Principal UX designer is a new title relatively, so think of this individual as the Head of the design team: the highest level that any UX designer can obtain which requires extensive field expertise. A principal UX designer is an individual with 10+ years of experience. He/she is an expert in the field.

This is what a principal UX designer job description looks like –

• Participate in user research activities to determine user requirements.
• Create useful UI parameters by interpreting business needs.
• Define, develop, and review all UI and usability requirements.
• Ensure to conceptualize and formulate scenarios on an entire product level.
• Solve design problems ad create a simple and elegant UI.
• Conduct usability testing on the current product and report results to partner teams.
• Develop innovation and accessibility in ux design to business and user needs.
• Translate feature requirements in interaction and visual designs throughout various platforms.
• Develop high-fidelity mockups, rapid behavioral prototypes, and final design assets with design specifications.
• Work closely with the developer team to assist in UI implementation efforts.
• Establish primary design standards to evolve the organization’s Design Language.
• Mentored and manage junior team members.
• Involve and contribute to UI design and prototype of new product features.

UX consultant job description

Talking about UX designer job descriptions, UX consultant is another term that surfaces. There’s an overlap between UX designers and consultants when it comes to daily responsibilities. However, UX consultants operate under a clear set of expectations from the clients. The difference lies in priorities and mindset. Let me show you by comparing a UX designer job description to a UX consultant job description:

Organizations hire UX consultants to improve the UX of apps, products, or websites. Think of them as doctors. Digital products can be quite complex, just like the human body. Sometimes, they fall sick, and the doctor has to cure their ailment with medicine or surgery. An organization hires a UX consultant because they have noticed problems that they are not able to solve. This organization needs an expert to diagnose the problem and create a plan for rehabilitation for recovery. Therefore a UX consultant job description entails user research, prototyping, usability testing, audits, holistic evaluation, etc.

UX designer job salary

Now that we have established UX designer job descriptions and the others, let us talk about UX designer job salary, yes? The salary of a UX designer can be quite variable depending on:

• The experience level.
• The company you work for.
• The city you are working in.

I found a list of the highest-paid cities in India on Indeed. The image below is a part of it.

As per the research done by Payscale, the average salary of a UX designer in India is ₹6,11,252 at the moment. The pay hike for entry-level UX designers might have dropped due to the pandemic, but with experience, an average UX designer can earn up to ₹20 lacs.

Conclusion

Let me be honest, as you are a newbie, this might be a lot to take in. UX designer job descriptions can be varied, inconsistent, and downright confusing. All you need to do is set out a few critical goals during your job search. Do you prefer to be a specialist or a generalist? Think about what you want from the role and consider what kind of workspace you would like to work in.

Just remember, read multiple UX designer job descriptions carefully and pay attention to how the words reflect the role and the organization.