Senior Level
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(7+ years)
$140K - $200K+ per year
$80K - $90K per year
Associate Level
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(1 to 3 years)
User Experience Designer
Start a career as a User Experience Designer! Learn how computer software and web applications are built from scratch using code and collaboration from technical teams.
Click here to start learning about the UX/UI career path
What is User-Experience Design?
User-experience design is a broad term that encompasses many business and technology aspects including the user-interface design for software products (what you see on the page), also known as the UI. Nielson Norman Group, a global leader in research-based UX, best describes the term user-experience by saying "user experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products."
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User-experience designers, also known as UX designers, work on technology teams to help make products easy to use, enjoyable, and more accessible.
What Do UX Designer Do?
UX designers often work on technology teams to help make software products easy to use, enjoyable, and accessible. Some UX designers work as "UX/UI" designers for their company helping contribute toward the research and workflow of the overall end-user experience as well as mocking up and designing the visual components on your screen. Larger companies can have enough resources to delegate these tasks into separate roles creating specialized UX teams that include UX designers, UX researchers, and UI designers (sometimes called product designers).
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UX designers at most companies work on technical teams called scrum teams. Building software is collaborative effort between product management, UX design, QA testing, data science, and devOps teams.
Why is UX/UI a good career path?
Software engineering scores high on many job satisfaction reports. If you enjoy solving technical issues and working in team environments then perhaps you should consider software development. Engineering teams get to solve complex problems that can help thousands or even millions of users depending on the company. Although the pay is good, there is also some gratification to be had as a contributor on a technical team . The software industry will continue to grow for years to come; the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates a 24% growth by 2026.
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Check out what others are saying about being a UX Designer
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