User Experience Roles

User Experience (UX) Design  is the art of making complex products easy and fun to use. UX drives almost all the products that you use from airplanes to mobile apps. Simply put, A UX professional is like the architect that designs houses, where as a software engineer is like the civil engineer who uses the designs to construct the house.

Strong UX teams are representated with members of each of the four skill sets detailed below. Consequently, we are looking for candidates from diverse backgrounds to fit into each of the roles below.

NOTE: The curriculum will be common for all trainees, though they will be given opportunity to specialize during the practicum.

Researcher

Assess, Understand & Evaluate

 

  • Loves interacting with people - to understand their goals and needs.
  • Is a strong advocate of users needs in the team.
  • Has strong analytical skills, and is comfortable with data (Qualitative and Quantitative).
  • Has strong communication skills, and is able to convince team based on data.
  • Typical background: Experimental Design, Cognitive Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Human Factors, Human-Computer Interaction, Statistics or Market Research.

Visual Designer

Brand & Communication

  • Provides the soul of the experience.
  • Understands color's, color combinations, layouts, Typography and Visual Hierarchies. Has strong drawing skills and design aesthetic.
  • Is extremely detail oriented.
  • Expert in graphic design tools: Photoshop, Illustrator, CorelDraw etc.
  • Typical background: Fine Arts, Graphic Design,Visual Communications or Architecture.

Interaction Designer

Structure, Flow & Hierarchy

  • Defines how the product will interact with the users.
  • Builds skeleton of the experience.
  • Has strong analytical skills.
  • Is extremely detail orientied.
  • Has strong communication skills, and is able to convince team based on data.
  • Is comfortable with technologies such as HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX etc.
  • Typical background: Industrial Design, Architecture, Engineering or Human Computer Interaction.

Design Prototyper

Explore & Refine

  • Loves programming, and can do flowcharts in sleep.
  • Ability to quickly build prototypes.
  • Expert in multiple languages including HTML5, CSS, PHP, SQL, Ruby on Rails etc.
  • Is able to quickly learn new concepts.
  • Typical background: Engineering, Software Development etc.

 

What is UX?

 

UX is not just web-design. It is about designing products that are easy and fun to use while helping businesses achieve their goals.

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User Experience applied in business (1 hour) Prasad Kantamneni