Unfortunately, UX or user experience is still considered to be an ambiguous area and therefore is often misunderstood. The primary reason for is that there are lots of technicalities in it and an equal number of complex terminologies that seem to be like potholes to many people.
However, while considering the roles of UX within, there are lots of positives in it as well just as there are negatives. You must remember at this juncture that any digital product is different from the other and when it comes to UX specifically, the roles of a particular project are defined on the basis of many different factors such as:
- The budget
- The timeframe
- The combined and ultimate experience of the team
- The culture of the organization
- The support received from the management
- The specific type of industry of which the digital product is in question
- The legacy of the business and the product
- The complexity of the software
- The personal opinions regarding it and
- Those other factors that are probably missing in this huge list.
This means that UX is a complex subject and therefore the UX designer jobs NYC requires a few ‘best practices’ to follow for the designing process such as:
- Thorough knowledge about the technology to use
- The software and tools available
- The customer behavior and psychology
- The needs of the customers
- The trends followed in the market as well as
- The needs of the business and the owners.
All these facts and knowledge will help the designer to create the best framework to provide the users with what they want exactly and also implement the same in myriad ways.
However, to achieve this on a consistent basis the UX designers have to be specialized in different aspects to work successfully on a web project. These areas of specialization include:
- As a user researcher – In this aspect, the designer has to focus on specific jobs such as conducting interviews with the users to know about their behavior and analyze it to implement in their designing process
- As an information architect – This area focuses on different ‘how to’ jobs like how to organize a site content, how to make a search work, how to label the menus to use and others
- As a content specialist – This is a specific job that focuses on copywriting and structuring of a content that needs to be installed on different devices and also working on different buttons and microscopy on headings
- As an interaction designer – This is a specific area that focuses on tasks such as finding out how a user flows through the website or app or what type of screens should be used and where to place them in the site or app along with considerations to make regarding the proper transitions between the screens so that these are inspired by the paradigms of the real world such as sliding windows, page curls, and others
- As a visual designer – For this, the designer needs to focus on the layout, typography, color, graphics, imagery, visual effects, mood, and texture
- As a project manager – The designer must focus on specific areas for thins that includes planning, controlling and organizing a digital project as well as the entire team involved in its crafting and also focus on all other UX-related activities
- As a front-end coder – This is another important requirement of the UX designer for focusing on writing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript codes that can be implemented seamlessly into the visual design and
- As an online marketer – This specialization will help the designer to focus on all different marketing activities such as the sales copy, the conversion rates of the landing pages, the email campaigns, search engine optimization, web analytics, and integrating sales with proper blog content.
This needs a lot of skills, knowledge, time and effort and is, of course, a brain dump. However, there may be a few specific projects, especially the large ones where all these jobs may be divided among a couple of people or even more wherein each person may also be required to play multiple roles at the same time.
Reasons to know more
On the other hand, there may be a few other specific organizations that may have specialist teams for one of the above-mentioned disciplines but may be contracted out to work for other departments as well. However, in the end, it means splitting up the total time required by different projects.
There are also several other reasons why you should learn more about UX. These are:
- You will be infinitely better off when you learn and understand how it needs to be done even if you are at it already.
- You will be able to make the most user-centered design in the process which means your design will be scientific practically and realistically.
- You will be better off in using the scientific method for analysis and measurement of user data and behavior and at the same time apply these in the best possible way considering the human users and their behavior.
- You will know that this is especially science, more precisely quasi-science more than artistic geniuses and this matter most in UX.
- You will know that this is not very hard if you are technically inclined. There is no rocket science in it as all you need is to understand user behavior and the basics of user testing and deliver accordingly.
- It is more of a card sorting and scene writing that will help in creating the best wireframes by following a relatively straightforward process.
In short, UX design is fun and fascinating. It is highly interesting, challenging and rewarding. It involves designs that are behind the visuals which are just one single aspect of it.
A look at the future
To wrap it up, UX design is subject to change and that too without notice. This is due to its ever-increasing need and benefits for the business, its impact and potential to make a digital product not only look good but also make it more functional and increase the level of performance.