Becoming a good UX or UI Designer

By Laure Gabrielle Chatenet

UX design (User eXperience Design: UXD), UI design (User Interface design) and User eXperience (UX) are the most popular design terms today.

User eXperience describes the quality of interaction with an interactive system.

It is becoming the new standard for certifying the usefulness, accessibility, usability and desirability of a digital product, based on the needs of the end user and the ergonomic and usability requirements corresponding to the context of use.

Along these lines, UX Design and UI Design are among the most tumultuous disciplines, which play an important role in successfully delivering an excellent user experience.

What is a UX designer ?

The UX Designer is the person in charge of a good user experience. A good or bad UX is closely linked to the quality of the design. In this perspective, the UX Designer is in charge of applying a user-centric design that places the user's feeling as the main concern, with the objective of ensuring the most positive user experience possible.

It is the ideal alternative to optimize the efficiency of a digital product/service: a website, a mobile application or a software and gain the trust and satisfaction of users.

To do this, this UX specialist's main missions are :

Design an ergonomic, intuitive, navigable, simple to use and easily understandable ihm interface.
Intervene at the beginning of the project to collect users' expectations in collaboration with the UX Researcher, especially through qualitative methods (such as focus group and individual interview) or quantitative methods (for example surveys, A/B testing and card sorting). This step is very important to consolidate the knowledge of the user and understand his motivations.
Analyze the users' experience and their feedback, following the dialogue with the digital product, by integrating them into the different stages of the UX design process.
Conduct user tests to inspect in an incremental and iterative way the effectiveness of the digital interface.

How to become a UX designer?

To make a career in UX design, it is necessary to proceed mainly by a training in webdesign, which can be followed by a master's degree in psychology, information and communication, or in sociology.

It is also interesting to join groups specialized in UX design, especially on social networks. Social media on the topic of UX design encourage the learning of this user-centered approach, through the sharing of experiences, ideas and useful tips with UX professionals. These communication channels can even lead to a job offer.

It is also important to be on the lookout for technological events related to user experience design. These spaces promote innovation, creativity and the exchange of expertise. They also allow you to build relationships with experts in the field and strengthen your knowledge.

These strategies help you immerse yourself in the world of UX Design, find the best alternatives or schools to shine in this field and even offer you the opportunity to succeed as a self-starter.

The skills of a UX designer

The UX designer's job is a tough discipline that requires a hybrid profile that combines several qualities:

Curiosity and adaptability, in order to actively follow the latest trends in UX and align your work strategy accordingly.
Teamwork and listening skills. The UX designer works closely with the other actors of the project: UI designer, information architect, product owner, UX writer, etc. For this reason, you must have good interpersonal skills to successfully communicate with your colleagues.
Good analytical skills.
Knowledge in frontend development technologies: HTML, CSS, Responsive Design, etc, and in graphics, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma, Adobe InDesign, etc.

Employment opportunities

The UX Designer profession opens the doors to hold other very interesting positions, such as:

a web developer,
a project manager,
an information systems manager, etc.

What is a UI designer?

UI design concerns the graphic environment of a user interface: typography, colors, information architecture, size and shape of UI elements, etc.

The UI designer is responsible for arranging the UI elements of a user interface according to ergonomic and graphic standards and according to the graphic charter in force. He is in charge of these missions:

Ensure consistency between the graphic components, by setting up a harmonious hierarchy of information. This UX professional ensures that the layout is visually pleasing, but also that the content is clear, airy and perfectly understandable to the user.
In a UX optimization dimension, the content must facilitate the user's journey and reduce his workload, guiding him intuitively to the information he is looking for. In this way, he can quickly reach his goal.
Create a well-structured navigation plan that aligns with the user's mental model, so that they can easily navigate the site or app.
Create a functional and aesthetic design that ensures to gain the user's trust and stimulate his empathy. In this way, the interaction with the HMI interface produces a sense of pleasure and makes the product more desirable.

How to become a UI designer ?

To become a UI designer, you need to take a course in graphic design, multimedia, computer science, computer graphics, etc.

Notably, you can improve your knowledge by consolidating your high school diploma with a BTS Graphic Design.

To obtain a master's degree in this discipline, you can go to a design or multimedia school.

Skills of a UI designer

To excel in this profession, you must have these qualities :

The sense of creativity to be able to design adorable and attractive interfaces.
The mastery of design software: Illustrator, Adobe XD, etc, and prototyping and wireframing tools, such as: Figma, Sketch, InVision, etc.
Knowledge in interaction design and color psychology.
A good sense of negotiation in order to communicate smoothly with team members.

Job opportunities

After gaining some experience, the UI designer can perform other functions, such as :

A project manager.
An information architect.
A director of information systems.

UX and UI Designer: two complementary professions

UI design and UX design are often confused. In fact, these two approaches are different but complementary. Both approaches converge on user satisfaction and optimizing product efficiency.

The scope of intervention of the UX designer is broader than that of the UI designer. He carries out his design in a more thorough and granular way than the latter. He goes beyond the graphical aspect of the man-machine interface to control the performance of the system's functionalities. He examines the form and substance of the product, in order to optimize the overall UX.

However, the UI designer focuses solely on the visual aspect of the digital interface, with the aim of providing a pleasant, ergonomic and attractive rendering, which arouses the visitor's interest and encourages them to discover and use the product.

UX design and UI design reflect differences in their functionalities and objectives, however, they complement each other to achieve the same goal: to create the best possible UX. Inevitably, combining the skills and missions of these UX specialists (in a single profile, that of the UX/UI designer) guarantees a more mature and user-friendly design, and consequently, a better product.

Capian: your collaborative tool to boost your UI/UX design business

Capian is an online collaborative project management tool that helps your UI/UX design team work together. Its purpose is to optimize the review and UX audit of web interfaces. This solution helps to optimize the review and optimization process of human-computer interfaces to ensure an impactful user experience.

Capian provides several undeniable advantages, such as :

Save a considerable amount of time. You can forget about countless long meetings. Your team can chat directly, in real time, through a shared workspace.
Review an HMI interface more efficiently. Capian gives you all the functionality to more easily track usability issues, discuss them among stakeholder team members, and decide what improvements need to be made to enhance the performance of a user interface.
As a result, you can forget about long email exchanges, screenshots, PowerPoint presentations and Word documents, which can get lost along the way and mislead your employees. Indeed, unspoken words and misunderstandings lead to frustration and exhaustion of the actors involved. This can damage the relationship between them and the smooth running of the project.
Capian's centralized communication space ensures that your team can share and exchange information and ideas in a clear and transparent manner. This avoids conflict, builds team spirit and increases motivation and productivity.
Have a global view of the project progress and all updates made in real time.
Optimize your client's satisfaction. Indeed, good internal communication guarantees to propel its performance and move faster towards the envisaged goal.
Deliver the project faster. With an optimized work process and more efficient collaboration, you can avoid the delivery delay. With the help of this collaborative tool, you can streamline your interface review work without needing to spend time training your team to learn how to use the tool.

Services offered by Capian

Capian's goal is to simplify the process of UX and UI evaluation of an HMI interface (which can include an ergonomic audit, an expert evaluation, a heuristic evaluation, etc.). To do this, it provides a set of powerful services that make the work of UX designers and UI designers more adorable, notably through these functionalities:

Easily capture interface issues on a mobile device or on a desktop, through the chrome extension, without leaving the application or site to be inspected. Users can create their usability audit project quickly and in a few clicks, while adding the desired evaluation criteria. Ergonomic criteria can be standardized, such as

Nielsen criteria, or customized according to the requirements of the task and the client. The user then annotates the detected problem to describe it in more detail. Before sharing his UX audit report, the user can adjust it according to his needs: add a severity level, modify data , resize captures, float sensitive information areas, etc.

Communicate more easily through a centralized collaborative space. Your collaborators, clients, and partners can exchange comments, reports, captures, and all project data (with access restrictions) in real time.
The Capian tool helps your team to be more responsive and to work more smoothly as a result.
Realise an interface audit more efficient through instantaneous discussions that put all the actors involved in communication in real time. The whole team can exchange, in the same place, the evaluations made concerning a usability defect and plan the necessary optimizations.
Optimize your digital interface inspection method in a rigorous manner. Capian allows you to keep all annotations and screenshots shared up to date. This ensures your team has the most thorough and successful discussions based on reliable data.

Capian is a relevant online collaboration tool for breaking down silos and enabling stronger, more consistent collaboration among your people.

A word to the wise

Although the professions of UX Designer and UI Designer differ in some respects, they complement each other to achieve a common goal which is the optimization of the user experience.

In order to create a memorable UX, it is essential to monitor the effectiveness of user interfaces and the entire system through user testing and UX Audit.

The user test allows to analyze the interaction between the user and the system, in a real context of use, in order to understand his behaviors and his needs. This allows us to optimize and adjust the functioning of the system according to his expectations.

On the other hand, the usability audit is important to raise usability defects that limit the performance of the product. This helps to find favorable optimization paths to make the product more efficient.

Please feel free to contact us for any other information.