Myths Regarding A Career In UX Design

UX design has been a hot topic not just inside the tech world but even outside. But, due to some buzzwords, legend belies reality. You might have heard your colleagues commenting about UX designs, but there is still quite some ignorance around this term actually. There are some myths revolving around careers in UX design, which need to come in the limelight. It is mandatory if you are actually planning for a career in this section.

Myth 1: UI and UX designers perform the same task:

This is a rather common misunderstanding among people. They believe that UI and UX designs are same. Well, the truth is not even close! Even though UI and UX designers often work together to cover a project, but they are given different job roles to perform. A simple difference might solve the issue.

• UX design is a procedure used to enhance user satisfaction. It works by improving accessibility, usability and pleasure, which are parts of interaction between user and items.
• Then you have UI design. The primary aim over here is to focus more on actual interface elements and their designs. It helps users to interact well for accomplishing application based goals.

While covering UX design procedure, the designers have to concentrate on easy navigation purposes, or easily understandable program. They will let you know about the areas to click to reach your destination. Then you have UI designers, who will concentrate on ways the user feels after using the program. They will think about the logical hierarchy to typography and interface. They will think about color scheme and about the design patterns to be recognized from other options.

Myth 2: Anyone can easily hold the position of UX designer:

Well, this isn’t the truth actually. Not everyone has the capacity to hold the position of UX designer. Working in this area will not just require you to love people but you have to be extremely curious on their things they do and why. In case you are not a person-people and you don’t have any curiosity regarding their behavior, then this career choice might not be a good option for you. To be a successful UX designer and be a part of UX staffing, there are some essential personal traits you need to have.

• Curiosity: Being curious about people will not be an important part of your job but it will have marked effect on how much you love doing it. Most designers are quite fascinated by workings of human minds and would spend hours studying human behavior.
• Empathy: While going through user research, UX designers have to go through regular interaction with groups and individuals as they clearly navigate product. You need to have this power to see product from perspective, irrespective of what your own needs might be. You have to put yourself in your user’s shoe to understand their thoughts and create a better user experience.
• Communication skills: You are not just going to interact with your target audience online but have to give them a call or go for face to face consultation. You might further have to communicate with CEOs, developers, designers and project managers of the company. So, your communication skills need to be at par with experience and knowledge. At some point, you may further have to explain what you are doing and why it is so important.

Myth 3: You must have proper programming skills to become UX designer:

This is clearly a myth as you don’t need programming skills to become UX designer. Being able to proficiently communicate with your programmers and know how they are working is quite important and part of your job. Whether in any large corporation or a startup venture, you have to work quite closely with the developers for reaching your project goal. The developers are likely to work a lot for transforming design ideas into working real website. So, the way you are going to approach the relationship will be the one to determine failure or success of your project. There are some proven ways to work with development team.

• Transparency: Developers always have to be transparent about what they are doing for achieving best results. They have to explain their steps clearly and even those points, which aren’t working.
• Honesty: UX designers have no other option but to be open with developers, while discussing the end result of the item.
• Involvement: UX designers need to communicate well and proficiently with development team straight from first till last. They have to maintain this involvement all the time. This will help them to get a clear idea of things, which might work and those, which may not.
• Work on same team: If it is possible, ensure that you work with the same team as programmers. It will lower the chances of disagreement and miscommunication as you are communicating freely with the team.
• Always be realistic: When you are all set to send design for rather implementation, you should take time to talk to developers about realistic timeframe. It will help everyone to be on same page with expectations.

Myth 4: You need ideas on graphic design to become UX designer:

UX and graphic designs are quite different. Graphic design talks about the aesthetic part of a product, which are colors, decorations and fonts. It dictates on ways a thing should look. On the other hand, as discussed already, UX design works hard to make user experience a memorable one, to help them reach their goal fast and on time. It generally focuses on structure and logic behind elements that you actually get to see or interact with. Then you have graphic designers concerned on the ways that element might look. So their works are completely different and not even close to any similarity!

Get rid of the myths:

If you still have these myths covering your thoughts, you may not succeed in UX design as your career growth. So, if you really want to be a part of this designing team, make sure to learn more about the myths and get to the core of their realities first. It will definitely help you with the rewarding answer.