Everyone around is talking about the importance of concentrating on users experience for providing better browsing experience for targeted visitors that will eventually lead to more sales and steady growth. It is heartwarming to see the demand of user experience designers is rising and corporate organizations are loosening their purse string to get the right person onboard. It is good for the designers, good for the company and for the visitors as well. Thanks to this revolution, we are seeing fewer boring designs and as a general visitor, we no longer need to go through the trials and tribulations of bearing with the absurdities and complexities of a boring design. So, UX is the way to move ahead and there is no way you can deny its ever-increasing popularity.
Image Source – http://www.flickr.com/photos/pveugen/3182820590/
UX Is the Way Ahead
Do you know what are the two things that you business can’t do away with? Yes designing and marketing. Though most people will agree that without proper marketing their business does not even stand a chance to compete with their heavy weight competitors, they might not consider “Design” to be a decisive factor in making or breaking their business. But luckily enough, this perception is changing thanks to the efforts of some great designers who finally made it big in their respective spheres. You may not aware of the fact that the following uber successful sites – Pinterest, AboutMe, Slideshare, YouTube, FlipBoard etc are actually the brainchild of some top designers.
Image Source – http://www.flickr.com/photos/mollystevens/5179946914/
As far as the statics is concerned, nearly 17,000 job positions are available for UX designers and the demand is not showing any sign of slowing down. In fact, it has become a norm for a business organization to have a UX designer aboard than an SEO professional and I hope you can realize the reason. And the career of a UX designer is certainly more than a 9 to 5 job. It is fun and the great thing is that here you will get paid for being creative and crazy. And the best part, by becoming a UX designer, you are going to make millions of people lives simple by de-cluttering the interface they are going to use on daily basis.
So, do you believe that being an UX designer is just about fun? Of course it is not. There is a dark side of UX design that people often tend to ignore. Wondering what are they? Let me tell you:
The Flipside of UX
The biggest misconception about UX design is that it is not just about being creative all the day. Nope, when you are a UX designer, you will not be going to make massive changes in the interface of the website; rather you will be making experiments with tiny elements and sometimes with some design elements that may appear too insignificant in their eyes of others.
And of course, this job is certainly not anything like being a rocket scientist that you can brag about. It is about being obsessed with the performance of a webpage, monitoring and measuring the impacts of a small change and then determining which elements are adding to the overall performance of the page.
Image Source – http://www.flickr.com/photos/53752777@N00/2809766215/
In short, if you wish to be a UX designer, you have a scientific bend of mind, as you will be required to do small things with utmost precision. And believe me, it is less about doing interesting things with the visual stuffs and more about doing boring stuffs with numbers and things related to human psychology.
So before you say you want to become a UX designer, you have to accept the reality. And the reality is this requires you to find enjoyment in small things. For say, you may have to work hours on finding the perfect position of the Submit button so that it draws more clicks than ever and when you find the spot, you have to feel happy about it. If you do not find it is interesting, just do not waste your time on it.
Image Source – http://www.flickr.com/photos/21218849@N03/5016013533/
And of course, you have to face frustration when you find that even after delivering your best on the designing front; conversion rate is as low as ever. That simply means, something is wrong with that interface and you have to make changes in it to so that visitors do certain tasks like – click on the “Submit Button”, fill out a simple “Form”, or call you. I know how frustrating it is for you to make changes in your own design just to align the objective of the design to that of the marketing strategy.
And sometime, you may require working on a single page for months just to get things under control. Personally, I have worked on a single page for 3 months just to see more conversions happening.
The final Frontier
So, I hope that you have formed a fair idea about the challenges of being a UX designer. So, accept the challenges and then make a decision whether you want to be a part of this evolving and demanding field. Choice is yours.
Author Bio
Stark Jensen is a passionate writer and he has written several articles on web hosting. You can check his latest articles on Hosting Review: iPage.
