If you’re interested in UX design, you’re in luck! This area is in serious demand right now, and the need for UX designers in today’s job market will only continue to grow. Here is some information on why UX design is in such high demand, job outlook, and what skills employers are looking for.
UX design in focus
UX design is a subspecialty within web design. A UX designer focuses on all things user experience, from understanding the ways that business goals and customer problems relate to each other, to identifying possible solutions and testing them with actual customers. The UX designer needs to be able to see all sides of every problem; it’s critical to be able to understand both how users are experiencing each step of their journey and to solve glitches they encounter in ways that meet the company’s needs too and maintain consistent branding.
A major demand for UX designers has arisen because UX itself has become so important. The most successful companies of the past decade from Facebook to Apple have all shared one thing: a design-centered focus. Users now expect this kind of experience and companies that provide great UX simply outperform the competition. In fact, according to the Design Management Institute, investing in design helps companies grow faster and outperform the S&P 500 by 228 percent over ten years.
The demand for UX designers: job outlook
There is a tremendous demand for UX designers thanks to this shift in emphasis towards user experience. CNN Money calls UX designer one of the best jobs in America, while Brazen Life cites UX design and its job growth of up to 30 percent among its top seven in-demand planning and design careers. While the US Bureau of Labor Statistics does not have data on UX designers specifically, it does cite web developers as one of the few fields in the US that is growing much faster than average at a rate of 27 percent.
According to Glassdoor, the average salary for a UX designer in the US is $87,883 annually. At the time of this writing there are more than 6,700 UX designer jobs listed on SimplyHired.com, and more than 7,400 on Indeed.com. Dashburst reveals that New York, San Francisco, Seattle, San Jose, and Boston are the top five cities for UX designer jobs; salaries in four out of five of those cities reach six figures.
Getting into UX design
When it comes to UX designers right now, it pays to be up on the latest technology. Designers that are proficient with the most recent JavaScript MVC frameworks such as Angular.js, Backbone.js, Ember.js, or React.js, are in a stronger position to create the kind of seamless, pleasurable online user experience that businesses are hoping to achieve. You’ll also need to create interactive wireframes and test usability, so master Balsamiq Mockups, for example.
Conclusion
UX design is most certainly what’s hot now, but it’s also the wave of the future. A user-centered focus will continue to become even more important to business success, and as it does, companies will seek out UX designers. The job outlook for UX designers across the US and globally is excellent, so if this is your interest area, make sure you’re pursuing the right skills, technologies, and education to make your move into this booming job market.