What exactly does a UX designer do?

I’ve been a UX professional for three years now. One question that I keep getting is, what is it that UX designers do exactly? The answer to that has changed over time. This is the first time I am committing it to a post. I will enjoy revisiting this in a couple of years and see how things have changed with me, and with the industry.

UX professionals make hypotheses about what the experience (digital, physical, online, offline before, after and during use of a product or service) should be. They construct prototypes and plan and execute studies with users to test these hypotheses, and figure out what works, what doesn’t, and validate their assumptions about what will make their product or service successful for it’s users.

Along the way, in doing these things, we’ll require an whole bunch of tools in our toolbox that will let us do our job. This includes and is not limited to:

• Making wireframes.
• Using whiteboards.
• Applying design thinking methods.
• Seemingly wasting a lot of sticky notes.
• Designing interfaces in a digital design software like Sketch, Illustrator, UXpin.
• Building prototypes out of paper, or in digital tools like Invisionapp, Axure, Marvelapp, or in HTML+CSS+angular (or any thing else).
• Mapping the information architecture.
• Creating service maps and customer journey maps.
• Writing documentation to assist developers and other teams in the company. using remote meeting and user testing tools.
• Conducting scientifically valid studies and experiments to validate assumptions of the design.
• Lots of people skills because half your job will seemingly be always convincing people about the benefits of user research, and conveying the importance of your findings to an organization that might not see it’s implications.

Still with me? Good. Here’s a stereotypical photo of some stickynote brainstorming for a little breather in this monologue.

It might sound like a lot, but one thing to keep in mind is that all UX deliverables are fundamentally communication tools. I pick the tool depending on my audience and the nature of deliverable I need to present in order to communicate what will be the most successful thing to implement in the project.

If you’re starting off with UX design, start reading. There is no dearth of blog posts and articles telling you what UX designers are doing when they work. If you’re looking for more guidance, send me an email at mail@mihirpathare.com

Being a UX professional is exciting because there’s always something new to learn with every project.