What Does A UX Designer Do Day To Day

Any time someone interacts with a Shopify theme, app, or website, they’re engaging in a “user experience”. The kind of experience they have, and whether its positive or negative will depend on various factors, from simplicity, to design elegance, and reliability.  

In a competitive digital marketplace, UX designers are a crucial part of the web development journey. They ensure a user can easily and conveniently interact with a digital asset, and improve conversion rates. As a Shopify developer, you may spend a significant portion of time working on “UX design”, or you may even decide to expand your skills to adopt the title of “UX designer”. 

As demand for UX experts continues to grow, more innovators than ever before are exploring career opportunities as a UX designer. Here’s your guide to what a day-to-day life in this career might look like, to help you determine if its right for you.

What is UX Design? An Introduction

To fully understand the responsibilities and work of a UX designer, it’s first crucial to define what UX design actually means. Shopify theme creators, app developers and website builders often take part in “UX design”. The term “UX” stands for User Experience, and it focuses on how it feels to use an app, product, or website. 

Experts in UX design focus on making a digital interaction as convenient and efficient as possible. They ensure each website or tool is easy to navigate, valuable to the end user, and capable of solving crucial user problems. There are usually 5 main elements involved in UX design:

• Strategy: Determining the goals of the product or solution for the business and the user. For instance, a good Shopify store should sell products and make it easy to purchase items. 
• Scope: This looks at the features and functionality the product should offer, such as a checkout page, thank-you pages, product content and so on. 
• Structure: The structure in UX design determines how a product should be laid out, and how the user will navigate the product to accomplish their goals. 
• Skeleton: The finer details of how each page will be structured and which elements should be placed where are outlined in a “skeleton” of the design. 
• Surface: This encompasses how the design of the product might look, feel, and behave for the users who are interacting with it. 

UX Design is crucial to businesses today because it determines how users feel about a brand, and whether they continue to return to the company. If a Shopify store has a good UX, customers are more likely to trust the company and the products it sells. 

What is a UX Designer? The Basics

Now we know what UX design means, and how it’s involved in things like building secure Shopify apps and websites, we can dive deeper into the nature of a UX Designer. The UX Designer in a web development team is the professional responsible for creating a positive experience for the user, while meeting with the goals of the business. 

The UX Designer follows the UX design process to understand the needs, goals, and pain points of the target audience, and design solutions to those issues. UX designers are essentially experts in understanding the needs of the user and implementing them throughout the design process.

Notably, UX designers are most focused with how a user moves through an app or website experience, rather than how a Shopify site or theme looks. They’re committed to ensuring a logical layout, navigation system, and structure to solve user problems. 

What Does a UX Designer Do Each Day?

The day-to-day tasks of a UX designer can vary depending on the project in question. However, most of the time, the activities of these professionals will be determined by the overall UX process of the business. The UX process consists mostly of the following activities: 

Conducting User Research

Because UX designers are heavily focused on user needs, they need to get to know the target audience or end-user. Most UX designers will conduct extensive user research or analyze existing research collected by the company to understand what the target needs from a feature or product. 

User research can be quantitative and qualitative, and include techniques like surveys, user interviews, card sorting exercises, surveys, and observations. In many cases UX designers will also be involved in the creation of “user personas”, which outline a target audience’s demographic information, motivations, needs, and other valuable data. 

Information Architecture

The information architecture part of a UX designer’s job involves mapping out how information will be delivered and organized to serve a clear purpose. For instance, this will mean thinking about how the structure of a Shopify site will be created to support customers in purchasing a product. 

A Shopify website would need to have a clear collection of categories and sub-categories for products, as well as a clear checkout page and other valuable components. This blueprint aims to optimize the way users encounter a service or product before the building begins. 

Designing, Wireframing and Prototyping

When UX designers are finished analysing their user research, and they’ve uncovered any potential problems or barriers, they can begin to move into the “design phase” of the process. This involves creating flow diagrams, prototypes, and even wireframes of an app or website. 

UX designers create flow diagrams to give business owners and other designers a clear insight into how different elements of the product work together. They’ll often use various tools for the wireframing and prototyping process, such as Adobe XD and Figma. Prototyping helps to reduce the risk of making common mistakes. 

User Testing

Once wireframes are handed back to developers, the work of UX designers doesn’t quite come to an end. Most UX experts will also be required to continually test the performance of their designs and gather valuable feedback. UX designers often conduct A/B tests, polls, surveys, and usability tests to improve and optimize the experience for each user.

The user testing process can lead to the iteration and development of new versions of a website, app, theme, or similar solution for a business. In some cases, companies will regularly hire the same UX designer to continuously upgrade or enhance the quality of their website or app. 

What Does the Job Market Look like for a UX Designer? 

As mentioned above, the demand for UX designers and experts with UX skills is increasing drastically as the digital world continues to evolve. According to Glassdoor, the average salary for a UX designer is usually around $115,743 per year in the United States. However, this salary can vary depending on where the professional is located and the type of work they do. 

It’s also worth noting that UX designers can work in a wide variety of different roles and environments. Generally, many Shopify designers and developers leverage aspects of UX design, even if they don’t use the title of “UX designer” outright. 

UX designers can also work for agencies, or on a freelancer or contractor basis. A freelance UX designer will have the freedom to choose their client and set their own prices for their work, while an agency professional will work as part of a team. 

If you already have UX design skills, and Shopify-based talent, find out what you could accomplish as a Shopify Expert with Storetasker today.