Rustam K. Lead Designer

What does a UX designer do?

To answer the above question we should go to the meaning of the acronym UX (User Experience). Experience here means not only the appearance of the product, but working with the product as a whole in other words how the user interacts with the product. As far as it is convenient and intuitive, as far as it meets the needs and expectations, and as far as the software product in general solves the user’s problem.

As a result, a UX designer is a person of a technical profession and often has nothing to do with the artistic or aesthetic component of the project. His main task: to develop a comprehensive plan for the future digital system at the level of its interaction with the user through a set of documentation, prototypes and other materials . Thus the UX designer’s duties and functions include:

- Collecting data about the target audience, including potential users interviewing.

- Data analysis

- Creating a user’s avatar

- Creation of user scenarios at the interface level and the general logic of the interactive product

- Documentation for the project implementation

- Preparation of the project’s prototype (wireframes, without the graphic part of the design)

To some extent the UX-designer should know the software part of the product. At least the level of general technical knowledge.

Sometimes the duties of UX-designer additionally include the cooperative work with UI-designer and marketing specialist (for collecting the data and creating the right concept in the context of marketing processes), understanding of business processes at least at the interface level, user scenarios, interaction with programmers (usually a Project or Product Manager, but sometimes, for example in case of MVP for a start-up this role can also be assigned to UX-designer, who will monitor the MVP development process after the analysis and documentation creation).

As you can see, the work of a UX-designer is similar to the work of an analyst, project manager and marketer in one. Only with the emphasis on the user logic of the interactive product (that is the User Experience).

The UI designer (short for User Interface) is involved in the graphical part of the interactive product. Aesthetics, the visual experience of the user and the impression that the latter will receive are the points UX designer is responsible for first of all. At this point, such specialists are often skilled in animation and other skills related to the graphic design of digital interactive interfaces.

Sometimes these two roles are combined in one person. Such an expert is called a UI / UX designer. That is responsible for both the aesthetics of the interface and the overall logic of the product. Despite the frequent use of the term UI/UX, the number of really high-class experts in this field is very few. As a rule, a novice designer can really do both UI and UX, but with experience his/her expertise and interest will go either to design and analytics (UX) or to aesthetics and visual communications (UI).