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What is the development of your career?

What is the career path/development path for a UX designer?

  • User Experience is a huge umbrella with various specialized skills and have lots of opportunities and career paths. Some UX designer move into specialization like UX researcher, visual designer, Interaction designer , information architect and so on. Some move into people management and become UX managers, UX directors and some move into product management. I am interested to know ideal career development path for any UX designer.

  • Answer:

    As you mentioned, user experience design covers many different but related disciplines so it's difficult to say what an ideal path would be. Here are several questions to consider that might help you plan your own journey: Do you prefer to stay close to the design work, or would you prefer to manage designers? Not everyone is good at managing people. One of the classic mistakes that managers make is promoting a talented individual contributor to people management because it's a "promotion", without realizing that that role requires a different skill set. As a design manager myself, I love watching my team grow and collaborate – it's the best part of running a team – but it's different than being an interface designer. Do you prefer to work for yourself, or as part of a team? Do you like small companies where you can make a big individual impact, or a big company where you can specialize as part of a larger team? Do you like the independence of managing your own consulting business, or prefer the security (more or less) of a regular paycheck and company-sponsored health insurance without having to worry about selling yourself and your services? Is there a particular discipline at which you excel, or are you expert at combining multiple UX disciplines? This particular question has evolved in the last few years to also include designers who can code or have experience with product management. Some larger companies have principal individual contributor roles for people who want to focus on one discipline. Similarly (and more typically) there are career tracks for creative managers in all kinds of companies. Consultants can usually be as focused or multi-disciplinary as they choose. Lots of options. So, all of that said there really isn't an easy answer to your question. However, the opportunities within UX have never been more broad – or in demand. So think about what makes you happy and steer in that direction. Reach out to local meetup groups or organizations if they are available and talk to other designers. You never know what opportunity might present itself. Good luck!

Jim Lane at Quora Visit the source

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The career path for UX designers can be likened to the career path for developers. The first phase of your career, you are an individual contributor who is creating experiences solo or within a team. Your titles can range from Junior UXD, Associate UXD, UXD (level I, II, III), Senior UXD, UX Lead... Once you get to the senior/lead level, your options fork. Keep in mind that choosing one path does not mean you can't explore the other path later on. The two paths are: IC Path Continue as an individual contributor, on a team or solo Your learning goal is to amass expertise in not only UX design methodologies, but also expertise in the field of your domain. You should learn the users inside out, you should understand the competitive field, you should become *the* UX expert of that domain. For example, I made myself an expert at UX of b2b video technologies during my time at Ooyala. You will demonstrate your expertise and leadership skills by leading projects, mentoring more junior designers, building pattern libraries and consistency within the design language that your team/product uses. The path you'd take here would ultimately lead you to titles such as Staff UXD and Principal UXD. However, I've noted that these roles typically exist within design agencies or organizations with huge UX teams, like Google. They're rarer to find in smaller or mid-sized companies or startups. Management Path Take the forked path to management. Management isn't solely people-management. For UX Management, it's bridging the gap between the business goals and the user goals. UX folks tend to be left out of strategic decision making at high levels because there usually isn't a UX counterpart to a VP of Product who can debate why some user-focused goals are just as important as business-focused goals in the long-term strategy of a company. UX Management is also evangelizing UX and ensuring that each team at the company understands the value of UX and can utilize it. We typically think of UX teams working closely with PMs and Engineers, but UX teams are hugely beneficial to Marketing, Sales and Customer Success as well. UX Management is also being a leader outside of your company. There's still a lot of variation in defining UX and its contributions and place within a product or technology company, but I think as a UX leader, it's your job to share knowledge and failures of integrating UX within the UX community. We're so small, it's so nice to be able to learn from each other! Anyway, the UX Management path for me: UX Lead, UX Manager, Sr. UX Manager, Director, Sr. Director, VP. But what about money? If you were to just look at the titles in those paths, you're probably wondering about money. Wouldn't someone on the management path make more than someone on the IC path? Not necessarily. A Staff UXD roughs makes the same as a Director of UX.

Wendy Johansson

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