Any time you open a laptop or use a desktop to access any website, whether to shop online, do research, make a transaction, join an online class, interview or participate in a meeting, you are sure to interact with the work of someone called a UX designer.
UX, a techy acronym for user experience, describes how people or consumers interact with a product. For example, if you want to switch the channels on the television or reduce the temperature in a room, you mostly interact with the remote control. Remote controls come in different shapes, sizes, and interactive buttons that may impact the way we feel about the device. Think about your DStv Explora and the normal television remote in your house. UX is therefore seen as everything that affects a user’s interaction with a digital product.
There are different measurements people use to define their experience of a digital product. These include the value it gives them, how the product works, the usability of the product, and other people’s experiences of the product, was it pleasant or not?
It is the work of UX designers to stay abreast of the varying degrees of differences in user assessment and ensure the next digital product addresses these concerns. UX designing is a career path that has evolved from the 1950s since the first touch-tone phone with about 10 UX professionals. It grew to 1 million professionals in 2017 and it is predicted that there will be 100 million UX professionals by 2050.
Oore Babatunde, who has been a UX designer since 2018, describes it as a “life raft in the vast oceans”. It is her homage to a career that saved her from drowning.
After graduating as a computer engineer, Babatunde struggled with writing codes, one of the most popular skills to have as a tech worker today.
“I can probably recite the C++ code for calculating CGPA but I can’t do much else,” she said.
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She found out about UX design while she was researching ways to build an app “without building an app.” Her search brought her face-to-face with prototyping. A prototype is a simple model or a mockup of a concept, idea, product, or service, used to test or validate design assumptions that were made to construct the prototype quickly and in a less expensive way than developing a full-fledged product or service.
“I vividly remember asking on my course chat group if any of them had used Adobe XD because I think that was the top tool at the time and many of them hadn’t. So I knew I was going to figure this out on my own. I did because I ended up making my first prototype,” Babatunde said.
Having found a career that she loves, Babatunde wanted to know everything about UX design. At first, she was applying for different courses and acquiring all manner of free certificates, mainly because of her limited financial resources at the time. Eventually, it dawned on her that while the certificates are helpful, the most important thing she needed was the learning that will ultimately reflect in her work. She made a decision to apply for paid courses in UX design.
The goal of UX designers is to make a product simple, easy to use, and familiar. They also ensure that a product fulfills the needs of a consumer. Designers want to also make products desirable and this has more to do with making them visually attractive and able to evoke positive emotions in users. Users should also be able to find a quick solution when they have a problem with the product. The product must also be accessible to everyone, including those with disabilities.
While UX design is a niche career and still not widely spread like programming, Babatunde’s skill is highly sought. She has worked with a logistics company, a health-tech company, an ecommerce company, a data management company, and a client in the social entertainment space.
In her experience, no two projects are the same because although there is always a design framework or a design process that seems like it’d work best, there have often been times when the process did not deliver the expected outcomes, and thinking on her feet was the only way out.
She will choose to work for a tech company rather than be a freelancer mainly because of the stability in income, job, and the less stress that working with teams brings. Being a freelancer can be exhausting as it includes securing the client, doing the research alone, the user interface (UI), the testing, the handoff, and managing taxes alone.
However, despite the growing popularity of UX design, not many companies understand the importance of hiring a UX designer. Babatunde, who has worked in teams across Nigeria, the United States, and Europe, says it is not location-based bias. In many companies across these regions, UX designers constantly have to prove their place on the table is necessary. Most companies would hire a product designer and expect them to do the graphics, the illustrations, and the marketing content on Instagram and other social media platforms.
“In many companies, especially startups, you will have to fight to explain the importance of your job even though you were hired for a reason. You have to work hard to prove that your place at the table is necessary. A few companies and startups seem to do it right and they have a seat at the table for designers of all kinds,” she says.
A typical day for her begins with several meetings with users, other designers, the marketing team, or the developers. There are also meetings with superiors which could last for hours making it difficult to find time to do the actual designing. After the meetings, Babatunde says she will typically allocate three hours without distraction from her phones to collect her thoughts from the meeting. At that time she collects her thoughts, schedule emails, and ensure all the bases are covered. In the end, she manages to get some design work done.
“You just have to do your due diligence before you join any company and be sure of what to expect before you say yes,” Babatunde says.
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