What Do UX Designers Do: Roles and Responsibilities

User experience (UX) design has become one of the hottest fields in tech. Consumers interact with apps and websites every day. A great user experience keeps them coming back, while a poor one drives them away.

So what exactly does a UX designer do? What skills and mindsets make them successful in this role? In this article, we’ll break down the key roles and responsibilities of UX designer so you can get the full picture.

What is UX design?

UX design is all about crafting digital experiences that are easy and enjoyable for users. The “user experience” refers to the entire journey a person has, interacting with a product or service.

A UX designer’s job includes both the visual design and behind-the-scenes work needed to make the user’s experience feel cohesive. They conduct user research to understand user pain points and needs. Then they create user flows, wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs to solve those problems.

The goal is to create intuitive products that align with users’ thinking and behavior. Good UX results in products that are useful, usable, enjoyable, accessible, and credible.

Interesting fact: The term “user experience design” originated in the mid-1990s with author Donald Norman during his time at Apple. It gained widespread popularity after the year 2000.

What is a UX designer, and what do they do?

UX design is a complex field that draws on skills and knowledge from psychology, anthropology, business, and design. So what do UX designers do?

• Conduct user research. This is a crucial starting point for UX designers. They employ various methods like interviews, surveys, observation, and user testing to deeply understand user behaviors, needs, motivations, and pain points. This research provides critical insights that inform the entire design process.
• Analyze data. UX designers must have a data-driven mindset. They constantly analyze usage metrics, feedback data, and web analytics to uncover issues and opportunities. For example, they may analyze customer support tickets to identify common user problems.
• Create user flows. UX designers map out the paths users take to complete key tasks and achieve goals within a product. These diagrams illustrate how a user moves through the product at each step in their journey. Flows help define logical, seamless experiences.
• Develop information architecture. UX designers structure and organize content and functions in an intuitive way. For instance, they may audit and cluster content to develop a site’s navigation scheme.
• Produce wireframes. UX designers use wireframes to outline the interface layouts, content structure, intended flows, and functions. Wireframing brings concepts to life in a basic visual way for stakeholders.
• Design visual elements. While visual designers focus on aesthetics, UX designers also craft the look and feel of a product through typography, color schemes, iconography, and imagery that all bring the experience to life.
• Prototype concepts. UX designers create interactive prototypes to demonstrate how the product will function in real life. Prototypes are invaluable for gathering user feedback in the design process.

As you can see, UX design draws on diverse skills! Excellent communication, empathy, creativity, and attention to detail are all critical.

What skills do UX designers need?

Here are some of the key skills and abilities of successful UX designers:

• User empathy. A UX designer needs to be able to put themselves in the user’s shoes. They should deeply understand users’ emotions, motivations, abilities, and needs. UX designers must see things from the user’s perspective and use that insight to guide designs. Without empathy for the target users, products suffer.
• Creativity. They should use creative thinking to design engaging and enjoyable experiences rather than just functional ones. Their concepts must appeal to users’ emotions. UX designers exhibit originality in their work.
• Communication skills. Design is a highly collaborative discipline. UX designers must communicate their ideas and recommendations clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Analytical thinking. UX designers must interpret complex data from research, translate findings into insights, and apply those insights to design decisions. They deal with ambiguities and variables. Analytical thinking helps them handle large amounts of information.

What exactly does a UX designer do?

Now let’s dive into the day-to-day work of UX designers. While every company has different processes, here are some typical activities:

• Kickoff meetings. UX designers meet with stakeholders early on to align on goals, set expectations, and gather critical contextual information to inform designs.
• Competitive research. UX designers thoroughly evaluate competitor products’ and benchmarks’ strengths and weaknesses. This helps them identify opportunities.

• Drafting research plans. Based on project goals, UX designers sketch out plans for research activities, recruiting methods, scripts, and discussion guides.
• Stakeholder interviews. UX designers may meet with various stakeholders to understand business requirements and objectives that solutions need to address.
• User research activities. A large portion of the UX designer’s time is spent conducting research through things like moderating tests, interviewing users, sending out surveys, and synthesizing findings.

• Concept sketching. UX designers start bringing ideas to life by sketching concepts for user flows, wireframes, and visual designs. They commonly iterate on paper first.
• Presenting work. They regularly present their work, recommendations, and rationale to teammates and stakeholders to align everyone.
• Testing and iterating. After launching prototypes, UX designers observe user testing, gather feedback, analyze results, resolve issues, and refine the designs based on insights uncovered.

So, in summary, UX designers spend their time deeply understanding the audience, analyzing data, concepting solutions, bringing those solutions to life, testing with users, and driving design improvements.

What tools do UX designers use?

UX designers use a wide toolkit of applications to conduct research, create deliverables, and bring concepts to life. Here are some of the most common UX design tools:

• Sketch. This digital wireframing and prototyping tool is hugely popular for its ease of use and UX-specific features. UX designers rely on Sketch for wireframes and prototypes.
• Figma. This collaborative interface design program enables real-time collaboration. UX and UI designers use Figma for designing and prototyping interfaces together.
• Adobe XD provides a full spectrum of UX design capabilities. It’s best for teams already using other Adobe products.
• InVision. UX designers leverage InVision to create clickable, interactive prototypes and gather feedback from teammates and users.
• UsabilityHub. Software like UsabilityHub allows UX designers to quickly recruit test subjects and gather feedback for remote moderated user testing.
• Google Analytics. Most UX designers regularly access analytics platforms like Google Analytics to analyze user behavior data.
• Hotjar. UX designers use Hotjar’s visitor recordings, heatmaps, surveys, and feedback tools to understand on-site user experiences better.

This is just a small sample — new UX tools are always emerging. Later on, we’ll discuss how to find a designer. Meanwhile, let’s explore more about the responsibilities of junior and senior UX designers.

Junior UX designer responsibilities

For designers just starting out in UX, what does the role entail? Here are some typical responsibilities for junior UX designers:

• Conduct secondary research by compiling and synthesizing existing knowledge about users and competitors
• Recruit users to participate in usability studies
• Moderate and observe usability testing sessions
• Administer surveys and interviews
• Perform basic data analysis like compiling stats, charts, and graphs
• Create low-fidelity wireframes and prototypes
• Assist senior designers with visual design tasks
• Document design specifications like flows, personas, wireframes, etc.
• Work closely with developers to implement designs
• Communicate design ideas and recommendations under the guidance of senior UX designers

Generally, junior UX designers focus on executing defined research, design, and testing activities while assisting more experienced designers on complex tasks.

Senior UX designer responsibilities

As UX designers gain years of experience, what additional responsibilities do they take on? Here are some common duties for senior UX design roles:

• Lead major phases of UX projects end-to-end
• Craft research plans and moderate complex studies like ethnographic research.
• Leverage intuition and expertise to make decisions that balance user needs, business goals, and technical capabilities
• Mentor and guide more junior designers
• Clearly communicate design processes, ideas, and recommendations to all stakeholders
• Drive innovation and UX strategy for the product and company
• Oversee more holistic design activities like branding, visual identity, content strategy, etc.
• Institute best practices for UX among internal teams
• Forecast resourcing needs and budgets for projects
• Hire and build high-performing UX teams

So, in short, senior UX designers take the lead on complex projects, guide teams, influence design strategy, and inject their wealth of knowledge and expertise into the product.

How to hire a UX designer

As UX design becomes more crucial for business success, many companies hire dedicated UX teams. What should you look for when hiring UX designer? Here are key things to evaluate:

• 2+ years of professional experience in mid-level roles, 5+ years in senior roles.
• Case studies and examples of real-world UX work. Ask candidates to walk through their process.
• Knowledge of UX principles and methodologies.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating mastery of skills like user research, wireframing, prototyping, etc.
• Good communication skills and ability to collaborate cross-functionally.
• Analytical skills and data-driven mindset.
• Creativity and problem-solving abilities.
• Passion for designing experiences centered around users.

Prioritize work samples and case studies over resumes alone. Assess communication skills through interviews. Test candidates with real UX challenges relevant to your product and industry.

By evaluating both hard and soft skills, you can determine whether a UX designer will thrive in your company’s environment and culture. Invest in the right talent, and your team’s design maturity will accelerate exponentially.

Conclusion

UX designers have many skills. Their work draws on research, analytics, creativity, and empathy to create products that connect with users.

From junior to senior levels, UX designers must obsess over the details while keeping the big picture in mind. Their output, from user flows to wireframes to prototypes, informs the development of the product every step of the way. UX design provides that critical human-centered perspective in the digital product development process.

With UX savvy becoming increasingly crucial to product success, investing in the right design talent pays enormous dividends. An empowered UX team acts as the voice of the customer. They unlock innovation and drive customer-centricity into the DNA of your products.