Background and history
Before being a UX designer, he was a “Webmaster”, then “Information Architect” and “Interaction Designer”. His adaptation to a moving environment is one of the main characteristics that allows natural integration into the creation chain.
UX design is becoming of paramount importance within companies. The UX designer is becoming a key element of business success, allowing the company in which he is invested to create products that are faithful to the expectations and needs of users. There is an increase in demand for these profiles of 30% each year according to Aquent. 63% of companies confirm that they will recruit in the coming months according to a survey by interactive designers on the place of UX in 2018 in the strategy of French companies.
We mainly imagine the UX designer working on the design of digital interfaces. However, today, he can intervene in many other fields and contexts.
For example, in companies, internally, where the use of UX methodologies serves to streamline the creation, management and communication processes, allowing to optimize the production and efficiency of employees. The UX designer is therefore on all fronts and can choose to specialize.
Evolution and specializations
Some venture into virtual realitylike Mike Alger who has been working in this field for a few years and has made it his specialty. The design features are evolving and other criteria must be taken into account when creating a virtual reality environment. In the video below, Mike Alger goes over these different features and allows us to better understand the challenges of this “new” field of expression:
Others prefer voice interfaces or conversational interfaces such as chatbots, for example, which require the designer to develop writing skills. Indeed, the designer must, through a conversation with multiple possibilities, represent the personality of the brand and facilitate communication with the target: an opportunity that arouses the interest of brands like Google or start-ups like Howdy Or X.ai who made it their warhorse.
There is also UX writing which corresponds to the writing of content dedicated to the points of contact with the user and which guides him in his interaction with the interface. These elements written by UX designers are also called microcopy and concern all the small components of the text which serve as help to the user during his navigation. To give a few examples, this includes buttons, error messages or even security notes.
There is also the motion designwhich gives the interface personality through the nature of the movement integrated into it, but also and above all improves usage. It increases affordance, connects the different states of the user journey and offers visual feedback to users.
There is a clear parallel between the evolution of this profession and its methodologies and the emergence of new means of communication initiated by new technologies.
These are the elements that companies must master in order to reach their audience. This is where the UX designer positions himself, he is invested with a mission of major importance: to create ever more innovative and immersive experiences that meet the expectations and needs of users.
Today, we are witnessing an exponential acceleration of the mutation of our communication and technological environment. As mentioned above, the scope of action of the UX designer is exploding and we will probably see many more changes, leading the latter to an ultra specialization. Moreover, the UX designer, in this context, will probably no longer be called this. New “designations” will emerge, and this is already the case with those who go beyond the interactive aspect and who are more closely interested in the strategic and business aspect and who are called Product designer.
UX has a bright future ahead of it and it doesn’t matter what title the person who uses its principles and methodologies has, as long as they place the user at the center of their concerns, because as Geoffrey Dorne said during a TedX conference “Design is first and foremost about thinking of others”…
