UX designer – Roles and responsibilities

UX designer – Roles and responsibilities

Every company wants a jack-of-all-trades in UX designing. While venturing down the rabbit hole for a perfect or concoct UX designer is quitedifficult. So through this blog, we will highlight major UX designer roles and responsibilities.

UX designer responsibilities

While the role of UX designers dramatically varies from company to company as every company has different projects. Thus if your question is how a UX designer does work on a daily basis? Then the answer is “it depends”

There are some general functions of a UX designer despite a variety of roles and responsibilities and irrespective of the company profile.

“There are three responses to a piece of design– yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for.” — Milton Glaser

Let’s have a look at 6 main responsibilities of UX designers

1. Research

This foundation step of UX designing is centered around market and user research. While designers need to understand customer needs, goals, motivations and behaviors and thus designers need to get in the minds of the target audience through research. And thus bring about the desired sketch design accordingly. Instead of throwing darts in darkness and on the basis of assumptions, thorough research helps designers to make solid decisions. Channels of research include online surveys, interviews with stakeholders & users, focus groups and competitive analysis. Informed personas(fictional representation of real end-users) are developed by analyzing the collected data. And thus in the next stage, the UX design process completely relies on these personas.

Importance of product research

• Desired sketch and layout is designed as per user’s and stakeholder’s requirements.

• It teaches designers about user’s behavior, needs, motivation, and goals.

• In a given area it helps UX designers to identify opportunities and understand the industry standards. And help in product prioritizing.

2. Design-

In this stage, designers sketch the product designs based on persona developed after researching the target users. As per the content scenarios, designers create structure. Scenarios are crucial for UX designers as it helps them to understand the customer’s journey and how the product fits in the user’s life.

“Design used to be the seasoning you’d sprinkle on for taste; now it’s the flour you need at the start of the recipe.”

— John Maeda, Designer and Technologist

At this stage, designers assign design practice of information architecture which is further divided into three stages

• Structuring

• Labeling

• wireframing

Wireframing helps in showcasing the final look (program, app, website or software) of product. This technique is important for visualizing product design and increasing customer experience. Thus it is a low fidelity representation of a design.

3. Prototyping-

Here the draft version of the product is prepared by the designer. This phase includes UX designer’s major roles and responsibilities as the process revolves around experimenting with designs, correcting errors, improving ideas and developing data. After completing these steps, designers share the product with other team members including management. Product usability and functionality is checked thoroughly. Well, many people are confused between the two terms “prototype” and “wireframe” but there is a significant design difference between the two deliverables. They look different, serve a different purpose and communicate differently. The prototype is middle to the high fidelity representation of the final products

Properties of prototyping-

• It gives an idea of how to interact with a product. To guide viewers through your design functions, you can even record prototypes as a video using modern tools like AdobeXD instead of a static image of interactive design.

• In user testing, prototyping can be used to full potential. In this stage of prototyping, it should allow the user to experience content and test interactions. It is not necessary that a prototype looks exactly like the final product but it should relate to the intentions.

4. Testing

This stage is to learn about the problems which arise when users interact with the product. Product testing is just like observing customers and it also includes complex test procedures. It also helps in presenting various versions of the product to learn the best out of it. If designers identify problem areas, they may interview users and create questionnaires and surveys. One of the most common ways of doing product testing is by conducting an in-person user test to observe one’s behavior. To create a better user experience, a UX designer gathers and analyzes verbal and non-verbal feedback from the users.

5. Measurement( UX designing- a never-ending process)-

One accurate measurement is worth more than a thousand expert opinions. – Grace Hopper

While the story does not end here as UX is a constant process and lives as long as the product is in use. Continuous testing is done to check customer satisfaction is met or not. Improvisation and continuous alterations are done as per requirements. A very common way to analyze is how likely a customer will recommend a product to others.

UX design job titles –

A designer is an architect of experience and builds a model with his creativity and past experience.

Roles of an experienced UX designer can be listed as

• Experience designer

• Interaction designer

• Information architects

Conclusion–

From the above points, it’s quite clear that the role of UX designer is complex, challenging and multifaceted. If you want to hire a UX designer or want to hire a UX designing company India then the above steps are a must check before deciding. In case if you have any queries please feel free to contact us at [email protected]