Image by Faizur Rehman

This article will explore four the most popular UX careers paths in 2022.

1. UX Researcher

Research plays an integral role in the product design process. Without research, it’s impossible to understand who our users are and what they need. Many companies today have a UX researcher role. A UX researcher is a professional who specializes in the research aspect of product design.

UX research is the process of understanding the problem space.

What does a UX researcher do?

UX researchers study potential or actual users to learn the target audience. Their primary goal is understanding user needs, wants, and pain points. UX researchers spend their time interviewing prospective users and collecting insights about user behavior. These insights help inform user personas, which become a north star that guides the entire design process.

Here are a few activities that UX researchers do regularly:

• Communicating with users. UX researchers use techniques like an interview, field studies, and surveys to understand the target audience.
• Translating user research findings into strategic recommendations.
• Communicating and presenting research insights to the product team and stakeholders. Researchers typically have strong communication skills that allow them to effectively present their findings.
• Work closely with product designers to evaluate potential solutions. UX researcher is actively involved in the validation phase, where they test a product prototype with real users.

What top skills do UX researchers have?

• User research;
• Data analysis;
• Usability testing;
• Public speaking;

Where do UX researchers come from?

UX researchers often come from analytical or customer-related fields such as marketing & sales or information science.

How much money do UX researchers make?

The average salary for a UX researcher in the United States is $97,799/yr (according to Glassdoor).

2. UX Writer

Words in the user interface have a tremendous impact on user experience. Good UI copy guides the user as they navigate a digital product. A UX writer crafts UI copy, ensuring that every piece of information the user encounters helps them work more effectively. Recently, the role of a UX writer emerged as a natural response to creating better UI copy.

What does a UX writer do?

Unlike marketing writing, UX writing is about writing texts that help users interact with a product. UX writers are familiar with user experience design principles and rules of effective copywriting. UX writer is responsible for microcopy (small bites of text in UI such as error messages, text in input forms, etc.) and macrocopy (i.. functionality description, etc.).

UX writer is also responsible for creating a content strategy. Content strategy summarizes essential rules that the product creators should follow when they craft content for a product. It includes voice and tone that the copy should have to create a proper impression on users.

Sometimes UX writer needs to create rapid prototypes to illustrate the solution they want to propose. Most of the time, UX writers create low-fidelity prototypes created from wireframes.

What top skills do UX writers have?

• Psychology (behavioral sciences);
• Copywriting;
• Wireframing;

Where do UX writers come from?

UX writers often come from marketing or technical writing.

How much money do UX writers make?

The average salary for a UX writer in the United States is $95,393/yr (according to Glassdoor).

3. UX Designer

UX designers are people responsible for the product’s user experience. UX designers role often have a broad range of responsibilities, from ideating a product concept to designing actual prototypes.

What does a UX designer do?

The role of UX designer is a dream job for creative people who love to invent new things. UX designers aim to learn as much as possible about their target audience and find the best solution for their problems. Typically, a large portion of UX designer time is dedicated to research and ideation.

UX design is all about learning about the different people we design products for.

UX designers think about user experience holistically and typically construct and evaluate user journeys to see how users interact with a product. UX designers have excellent knowledge of user interaction principles and can apply them in practice.

UX designers are responsible for creating many design artifacts. For example, UX designers can create storyboards, and user interaction flows to illustrate design ideas.

UX designers typically contribute to design systems and style guides.

What top skills do UX designers have?

• Research;
• Ideation;
• Prototyping;

Where do UX designers come from?

UX designers often come from visual design, user research and usability domains.

How much money do UX designers make?

The average salary for a UX designer in the United States is $115,743/yr (according to Glassdoor).

4. UI Designer

You probably wonder what “UI Designer” do in our list. A UI designer is responsible for creating user interfaces, and without UX design skills, it’s impossible to design UI with good usability. In fact, in many companies, UX design is a large part of UI designer responsibilities. As a result, UI designers determine how the product should look and how it functions.

What does a UI designer do?

Designing new user interfaces is the primary responsibility of UI designers. UI designers typically have hands-on experience with prototyping tools because they perform visual design. Many UI designers have hands-on experience with animation tools so that they can create motion effects and make UI more alive and dynamic.

UI designers are also responsible for creating and supporting design systems.

What top skills do UI designers have?

• Visual design;
• Prototyping;
• Motion design;
• Front-end coding;

Where do UI designers come from?

UI designers often come from graphic design or front-end development.

How much money do UI designers make?

The average salary for a UI designer in the United States is $74,693/yr (according to Glassdoor).