012 min
The problem a UX designer is hired to solve
Say an online grocery shop has a steady flow of visitors. Many of them fill a basket. Then a large share of them leave on the page that asks them to create an account before they pay. Engineers built that page as the ticket said, marketing wrote its words, and the product manager wanted more repeat customers. Nobody owned the whole path from a full basket to a paid order.
That missing owner is the gap a UX designer fills. A UX designer looks at the product the way a shopper meets it, one step after another. At each step they ask what the shopper is trying to do, what stops them, and what the business needs. Then they change the design so both can happen.
A real case: the $300 million button
The grocery shop is invented, but the problem is not. In 2009 the usability consultant Jared Spool described a checkout form on a large e-commerce site. It had two fields, email address and password, and two buttons, Login and Register. The team that built it expected first-time shoppers to register gladly, because an account would make their later orders faster.
Spool's team ran usability tests. They paid people to come in with their own shopping lists and buy those items on the site. First-time shoppers did not want an account at all. They had come to buy something, not to start a relationship with a shop. Repeat customers struggled too, because most of them could not remember which email address or password they had used.
The designers removed the Register button. In its place they put a Continue button and a short message: no account was needed to buy, and one could be made during checkout. After the change, the number of customers who bought something went up by 45%, which brought an extra $15 million in the first month and $300 million in the first year.
Why the account step cost so much
The form was meant to help repeat customers, and it hurt them most. When Spool's team later checked the retailer's database, 45% of all customers had registered more than once, some up to 10 times. The site was also handling about 160,000 password requests every day. Each extra account was a shopper who had failed to log in and started again.
Nobody on that team was careless. They had a reasonable belief about shoppers, and nobody had watched shoppers to check it. A usability test with a small group of real people showed what months of planning had missed.
022 min
Where the UX designer title comes from
Spool's case was in 2009, but the job title was about fifteen years old by then. Before the 1990s, the work went by names such as human factors and usability engineering.
Don Norman left the University of California, San Diego in 1993 and moved to Apple, where his title was UX Architect in a three-person User Experience Office. Norman was a cognitive scientist and the author of a well-known book on everyday design. His was the first job title to use the words "user experience".
In 1998 Norman and Jakob Nielsen, his co-founder at the Nielsen Norman Group, wrote down what they meant. User experience, they said, covers every part of a person's dealings with a company, its services and its products. So it is wider than the user interface, the screens and controls. A good experience, they wrote, needs engineering, marketing, graphic and industrial design, and interface design to work together.
In the grocery case, the account page is part of the interface. But shoppers also leave over delivery fees, trust in the payment step, and how the shop handled their last order.
Garrett's layers: from user needs to visual design
The title spread with the web. In March 2000, the designer Jesse James Garrett published a one-page diagram called The Elements of User Experience. It stacks the work in layers, from abstract at the bottom to concrete at the top.
- User needs and site objectives: what people want, and what the business wants.
- Functional specifications and content requirements: the features and content the site must have.
- Interaction design and information architecture: how tasks flow, and how content is organised.
- Interface, navigation and information design: how each page presents its parts.
- Visual design: how it looks.
The order explains a lot about the job. A decision on a lower layer limits every layer above it. If the grocery shop decides that every buyer must have an account, no amount of visual design on the account page will remove the step. A UX designer who starts at the top, with colours and buttons, is fixing the layer that matters least.
What Garrett's diagram does not say
Garrett's diagram is often read as a list of the tasks one UX designer does. Garrett said the opposite on the page itself: the model does not describe a process, and it does not define team roles. It names the decisions that shape an experience. Who makes each decision is a separate question, and the answer changes from one employer to the next.
033 min
What a UX designer does, step by step
So how does a UX designer actually find the step that stops people? Back at the grocery shop, the work follows a loop that most teams share, even when they name the steps differently.
Research.
The designer reads the analytics to see where people leave, then talks to shoppers. They interview some people who left and some who finished. They might add a short survey to the checkout page.
Define.
They turn what they heard into something the team can use. That may be a few personas, which are short profiles of typical shoppers, and one clear problem statement.
Structure.
They map the information architecture, which is how pages and content are organised and named. They draw user flows: the exact steps from basket to confirmation, including errors and the ways back.
Sketch.
They draw wireframes. These are plain grey layouts that show what goes on each page and in what order, with no colour or final images.
Prototype.
They link the wireframes, or more finished screens, into a prototype that people can click through.
Test.
They watch real shoppers try to finish a task with the prototype. They note where each person hesitates, misreads or gives up.
Iterate and hand off.
They fix what failed and test again. Then they give engineers the final designs, with notes on every state: errors, an empty basket, a slow connection.
After launch, the designer checks the analytics again, to see whether the fix worked for everyone or only for the people in the tests.
Two other roles shape this work closely. The product manager decides what the team builds and why, and owns the business goal. The engineers decide how it is built and what it will cost. The UX designer speaks for the shopper in those discussions. In the grocery case, the business wants more repeat customers, and shoppers want to pay quickly. A good designer looks for a design that gives both, such as offering an account after the order is paid.
Why UX designers test with five people at a time
Teams often skip step 6 because testing sounds slow. In 2000, Jakob Nielsen argued that it does not need to be. His model of usability tests showed that the first five participants find about 85% of the problems in a design. Each extra person after that mostly shows the same problems again.
His advice was to spend a budget for 15 people on three rounds of five. The first round finds most problems, and the redesign fixes them. The second round checks whether the fixes worked, and it finds deeper problems that the first ones had hidden. A third round does the same again. The 85% figure is an average, so one group of five can find fewer, especially when users differ a lot.
Say that in the first round, four of the five shoppers stop at the page that asks them to create an account. The designer does not need fifty more sessions to know where to start. The second round, with a guest checkout, will show the next problem.
042 min
What a UX designer makes, and the tools they use
Each step of that loop leaves something behind. These outputs, often called deliverables, are how the rest of the team sees the designer's reasoning and questions it.
| Deliverable | What it settles | Step |
|---|---|---|
| Research findings | What users are trying to do, and what stops them | Research |
| Personas and journey maps | Who the main users are, and what they go through before, during and after a task | Define |
| Sitemap | Where each page lives, and what it is called | Structure |
| User flow | The steps of one task, including errors and ways back | Structure |
| Wireframes | What goes on each page, and in what order | Sketch |
| Prototype | Whether people can finish the task | Prototype and test |
| Test report | Which problems were found, and how serious each one is | Test |
| Design specification | Every state the engineers must build | Hand off |
A small fix to the grocery checkout may need only a user flow, a prototype and one round of tests. A new product may need the full set.
Tools
Most UX designers today draw wireframes and prototypes in Figma, a design tool that runs in the browser and lets several people edit one file. Whiteboard tools such as Miro hold research notes, and remote testing services record people trying a prototype at home. Paper is still common for first sketches, because nobody mistakes it for a finished design.
Newer tools can draft a layout from a written prompt. That saves time, but it cannot tell the designer whether shoppers understand the checkout. Only watching shoppers can.
Skills
The hard skills follow the loop: research methods, information architecture, interaction design, wireframing, prototyping and testing. Many UX designers also know some visual design and some front-end code, but most employers do not require code. The soft skills matter as much: listening without steering the person interviewed, explaining a choice to engineers and managers, and accepting it when a test proves an idea wrong.
Accessibility
A UX designer also plans for people who use a screen reader, a keyboard only, or have low vision. The usual standard is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) from the W3C, the body that sets web standards. WCAG 2.2 success criterion 2.5.8, Target Size (Minimum), for example, sets a smallest size for buttons and links.
052 min
UX designer vs UI designer, product designer and UX researcher
Job titles in this field overlap, so the grocery shop's job advert could have used several of them. The first difference is between the person and the practice. User experience design is the practice of shaping how a product works for its users. UX designer is a job title for someone whose main work is that practice. Many people do UX design without the title.
| Title | Main question | Typical output |
|---|---|---|
| UX designer | Can people finish their task, and does the flow make sense? | Flows, wireframes, prototypes, test findings |
| UI designer | How does each screen look and respond? | Visual layouts, type, colour, components |
| Product designer | What should we build, and how should it work and look? | Designs from the problem to the final screens |
| UX researcher | What do users need, and what is really happening? | Studies, interviews, findings |
| Interaction designer | How does the product respond to each action? | Flows, states, behaviour notes |
| Graphic or web designer | How should this message or page look? | Brand, marketing and page visuals |
The line between a UX designer and a user interface (UI) designer is scope. The UI designer owns the look and behaviour of each screen. The UX designer owns whether the sequence of screens gets the person to their goal. In small teams one person usually does both, and the job advert says "UX/UI designer".
Product designer is a common title at technology companies for someone who does UX and UI work and also helps decide what to build.
What a careers study found about designers and researchers
The line with UX research is about depth. A Nielsen Norman Group study of UX careers combined a survey, focus groups and interviews with UX professionals around the world. It found that designers more often had a design education, skills with prototyping tools and visual design, and front-end coding skills. Researchers had fewer duties outside research, and stronger writing and speaking skills. A UX designer does research too, but usually less of it, and less formally, than a full-time researcher.
062 min
How the UX designer job changes between employers
Even inside one title, the job changes from employer to employer. At a startup, the only UX designer may run interviews in the morning and draw screens in the afternoon. At a large company the work splits: researchers run studies, UX designers own flows, UI designers own screens, and a design-systems team owns the shared parts. An agency designer moves between clients. UX designers work in software companies, banks, shops, hospitals and governments.
So two job adverts can share the title UX designer and almost no duties. Read the outputs an advert lists, not the title.
Government teams that split the role
Some large employers do not use the title at all. The UK government's digital profession framework has no role called UX designer. Its service teams split the work between interaction designers, content designers, user researchers and service designers. An interaction designer there decides how users move through a service, both the overall flow and the single elements on each page. Content designers own the words, and user researchers own the research. The framework sets six levels for interaction designers, from associate to head of interaction design.
In the grocery shop, the account page's wording would go to a content designer, the study of shoppers to a researcher, and the flow to an interaction designer.
Labour statistics that have no UX designer
Official job statistics also lag behind the title. The US occupational database O*NET, run for the US Department of Labor, has no separate category for UX designers. It groups them under "Web and Digital Interface Designers", whose sample job titles include UX Developer and UX Engineer but not UX Designer. That wider group also includes web designers and people who write the code for web pages. So official pay and job-growth figures for UX designers are really figures for that larger group.
072 min
Becoming a UX designer: background, portfolio and pay
Because the title is blurred, people reach the job by many routes. The Nielsen Norman Group's study found that most UX professionals had a degree, but their backgrounds were as varied as in its 2013 study. Designers had often trained in a design field, and researchers in the social sciences. One designer in the study had learned UX while freelancing as a graphic designer.
The usual routes into the job are:
- A degree in human–computer interaction, interaction design, psychology or a related field.
- A bootcamp or online certificate, a short course built around practice projects.
- A move from a nearby job, such as graphic design, front-end development, customer support or marketing, often by taking on UX tasks in that job first.
The portfolio
Whatever the route, hiring managers decide mostly from the portfolio. A strong UX portfolio holds two or three case studies, not a gallery of polished screens. Each tells the story of a real problem: what research found, which options were tried, what the tests showed, and what changed after launch. For the grocery checkout, that means the first test round, the guest-checkout prototype, and the result.
Levels and pay
A typical path runs from junior UX designer to mid-level, then senior, then lead or principal designer. From there, some move into management as design manager or head of design, and others stay hands-on. A senior designer is expected to choose which problems to work on.
Pay rises with each level and varies widely by country, city and employer. Salary websites give very different numbers for the same title. O*NET lists a median wage of $104,000 a year in 2025 for its wider US group of web and digital interface designers. Job-growth forecasts share that limit, so the best sign of demand is the number of current job adverts where you want to work.
082 min
Where the UX designer role goes wrong
Skill is not enough on its own. A UX designer's work can still fail, and the cause is usually how the team uses the role.
Hired to decorate
The most common misreading treats a UX designer as the person who makes screens look good at the end. The designer is asked to tidy the result a week before launch, after the decisions that shape the experience have been made. In the grocery case, the rule that every buyer needs an account sits on Garrett's bottom layer. No designer can remove it from the top layer a week before release.
The sign is in the calendar. If the designer first sees a feature after its scope is fixed, the team has hired a UI designer, whatever the title says.
Never allowed near users
Some teams hire a UX designer but give them no time to talk to users. The designer then works from opinions, often the most senior person's. The sign is a design review where nobody can say what users did.
When the business goal wins: deceptive patterns
The skills that make a checkout easy can also make a subscription hard to cancel. A designer who knows where people look, and what they skip, can hide a cancel link or pre-tick a box that adds a paid plan. In 2010 the UX specialist Harry Brignull started a website, then called darkpatterns.org, to name and collect designs like these. These dark patterns, now often called deceptive patterns, lead people into choices they did not mean to make.
Picture the grocery shop again. A manager asks the designer to add a pre-ticked box that signs every buyer up for a paid delivery plan. Sign-ups would rise at first, then complaints and refunds would follow. A UX designer who refuses, and explains the cost, is doing the job.
091 min
How to work well with a UX designer
Those failures point to a few concrete moves for a team that hires a UX designer or works with one.
Bring the designer in before the scope is fixed.
The grocery shop's account rule would have been cheap to change in a planning meeting, and expensive after launch.
Give them users.
Budget for a round of five tests on every major change. Make it easy to recruit customers, including people who left.
Ask for the evidence behind a design.
A good UX designer can say which finding led to each decision, and which parts are still guesses.
Measure task success, not screen polish.
Track whether people finish what they came to do, how long it takes, and where they give up.
Decide between a generalist and specialists.
A small team needs one person who can research, plan flows and draw screens. A larger team gets more from specialists.
For someone deciding whether to become a UX designer, one question settles most of it. Do you enjoy watching a user struggle with your design, and then fixing it? The job is that loop, repeated for years. People who prefer to finish a design and move on may be happier in visual or graphic design.
?4 questions
Questions people ask
Do UX designers only work on apps and websites?
Can a graphic designer become a UX designer?
What is a UX unicorn?
Is a UX designer the same as a UX writer?
§10 sources
Sources
Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen, "The Definition of User Experience (UX)", Nielsen Norman Group, 8 August 1998.
Nielsen Norman Group, "Don Norman" (profile, on his 1993 move to Apple and the User Experience Office).
Jared M. Spool, "The $300 Million Button", first published 14 January 2009, republished by Center Centre.
Jakob Nielsen, "Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users", Nielsen Norman Group, 18 March 2000.
Show all 10 sourcesShow fewer sources
Jesse James Garrett, "The Elements of User Experience" (one-page diagram), 30 March 2000.
UK Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework, "Interaction designer".
O*NET OnLine, "15-1255.00 — Web and Digital Interface Designers", US Department of Labor.
Deceptive Patterns (formerly darkpatterns.org), "About us", founded by Harry Brignull in 2010.
Rachel Krause and Maria Rosala, "What a UX Career Looks Like Today", Nielsen Norman Group, 19 April 2020.
W3C, "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2".
