UX design can be seen in every single aspect of your digital life.
The apps you use to order food, the addictive mobile games you play, the (really great) website you use to apply for jobs and buy courses. The overall functionality of each of these things is all thanks to UX professionals, who are responsible for ensuring your experience is optimised, meaningful, and basically, makes sense.
We spoke to the UX Design Institute, global leaders in UX education and certifications, to learn more about UX:
What is UX design?
User experience (UX) focuses on how it feels to use a product or service.
Products, websites, or apps with good UX design should be enjoyable and easy to use. This results in the user having a positive experience, meaning they’re more likely to go back and use it again.
On the flip side, a negative user experience can lead to a decrease in sales, engagement, and could even affect a brand’s reputation.
Eight reasons to start a career in UX design right now
- Your work will make an actual difference
In short, good UX design helps people.
Everything you do will be improving the way people access products and services, and essentially making their day-to-day easier. This means you could work on problems that matter to you. Some UX designers could even change lives, particularly if their role is based on improving the usability of healthcare services, or making tech easily accessible to elderly or disabled people.
And through delivering a good user experience, businesses benefit too; boosting their sales and reducing customer complaints.
- You’ll get to delve deeper into human behaviour
No matter what area of UX design you work in, the user is at its core.
After all, in order to create the best experience for your users, you have to understand them. What do they want? What are their priorities? What are their pain points?
A career in UX will enable you to delve deep into the human psyche, researching and analysing common patterns of human behaviour, and learning to create an experience that best suits your audience.
- It provides the perfect balance of tech and creativity
UX design requires both critical and creative thinking, so you get to use both sides of your brain.
For example, whilst you’ll need to focus on the technical side of building a product and making sure it works, you’ll also be required to make creative choices on colour schemes, layout, typography, and more.
Not only does this make for an exciting and varied career, it also means you’ll be building a wide range of transferable skills, boosting your employability in all areas of product development and design.
- You don’t need to be a programming expert
An understanding of what software developers do is helpful for UX designers, but that doesn’t mean you’ll need to be a coding genius.
For instance, basic knowledge of languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript will enable you to speak the language of developers, and better understand the product you’re working on. However, actual coding certainly isn’t part of the role.
So if the likes of Java, Swift, and Objective-C have you reaching for the dictionary, there’s no need to panic. It’s much more important to master a successful design thinking process built on user research than it is to know the ins and outs of code.
- You can specialise in the areas that matter to you the most
UX design is a broad field, meaning it requires a range of skills and expertise.
Many UX designers are generalists,so they’re involved in the full process of designing a product, website or app.
However, you could also become a research or content specialist, or delve deep into a specific area of the design process such as information architecture or usability analysis.
- It’s a friendly and thriving community
If you’re interested in collaborative learning, UX design is the perfect career for you.
The culture of UX is heavily based around mentoring and knowledge sharing, with many UXers happily offering up their skills and expertise to help others grow and learn.
Whether it’s via social media, online forums, networking events, or meetups, the chance to meet fellow designers is never far away.
- It’s a future-proof career with great earning potential
UX design pretty much makes up our day-to-day lives.
Whether you’re ordering a takeaway, getting electronics delivered to your door, or even purchasing your daily caffeine fix – the apps, websites, and machines you use are fueled by UX designers.
And this ease-of-use culture is only going to grow as technology advances, meaning qualified UXers are in immediate demand. What’s more, you could earn up to £62,000 a year once you’ve worked your way up to senior level.
- You can get qualified without going to a classroom
So what does it take to break into UX design?
When it comes to pursuing a UX role, there are many different paths into the industry, and employers primarily look for people who are passionate about UX, know the full UX process, and its tools.
This means that you don’t have to go to university to fit the bill. For example, if you take the Professional Diploma in UX Design from the UX Design Institute, you’ll be able to gain a university credit-rated qualification that makes you job-ready, without even stepping foot in a classroom. What’s more, you can complete it in six months – and it won’t break the bank.
Why study with the UX Design Institute?
The UX Design Institute is the global leader in UX education and certifications.
Offering the world’s only university credit-rated online UX courses, it enables students to build their career with a genuine university certification, recognised and valued by employers globally.
What’s more, courses are developed with a career in mind, and overseen by tech leaders such as Intercom, HubSpot, SAP and Dell.
Studying with the UX Design Institute also means that you’ll:
- Get ongoing support and guidance from its Student Success team
- Receive feedback, mentorship, guidance, and expert advice from UX professionals
- Participate in practical projects that will enable you to build a professional UX portfolio
- Connect with fellow students and designers in a friendly and thriving community
- Be part of a successful group of alumni, who consistently confirm that the diploma helped them to secure work in UX
- Benefit from course content that meets the highest educational standard approved by Glasgow Caledonian University
Interested in studying UX design? Enquire with the UX Design Institute today.
The UX Design Institute is the global leader in UX education and certifications, offering the world’s only university credit-rated online courses in UX design.
