I have recently completed one year as a UX designer at Cognizant Technology Solutions, Kolkata. Before that I completed my engineering in Information Technology stream from BIT Mesra. I thought of sharing my experience in order to help all those freshers who are skeptical about this domain.
One year back when I was given an option to choose UX designing as my domain, I was really confused as I always thought of myself doing some technical stuffs like coding or networking. After an in-depth research and consulting some experienced professionals, I was convinced to select UX as a carrier option.
I got to learn lots of stuffs over the year and now I can say that my viewpoint about the world has changed. I don’t see things in a way I used to. So, here are some important questions and their answers.
What is UX Designing?
UX stands for “User Experience” and the overall phenomenon to enhance that experience comes under UX designing.
To understand it in a better way, let me ask you few simple questions:
How do you feel when you are booking a ticket from a travel portal and it comes up with a long form asking your details which are irrelevant?
How do you feel when you are about to buy a pair of shoes from an e-commerce site but the product details are not clearly visible?
How do feel when you want to search for a course detail on an university website but can’t find it upfront?
So, basically its a task of UX designer to put himself in the users’ shoes and design a product that is not only usable but also pleasant. UX life-cycle includes User Research, Stakeholder Interviews, Competitive Analysis, Personas, Information Architecture, Wire Framing, Prototyping and Usability Testing.
I am from Technical Background. Should I Join UX Designing?
This was the exact question I used to ask me before joining this field and today I can give you enough reasons why UX is better than other technical fields.
You get a chance to work on some innovative ideas with every new project.
You are free to think in a different way and to implement those thoughts.
You have to work on the inter relationship between users, business and technology. So, your technical skills never go in vain.
Do I Need to be good at Designing/Drawing to be a good UX Designer?
Frankly speaking, an year ago I was not even able to draw a bird, but it never came as a hurdle. if you are able to understand the users’ problem, can create some ideas to solve it and can present those ideas, no one can stop you being successful in this field. If you have a creative mind, sooner or later you will learn all those skills.
What will be my role as a UX Designer?
The task of a user experience designer revolves around:
Doing research work by conducting user and stakeholders’ interviews.
Doing competitive analysis to understand the market trends.
Creating information architecture for the website or applications.
Creating personas to understand the users expectations and pain-points.
Creating wire-frames and prototypes to show the functionalities and navigation and interactions.
Last but not the least, showcasing you work and defending your design.
Remember,
“Nothing is right or wrong in designing”.