Navigating the UX Landscape: Design Roles and Process

In recent years, the UX Design industry has been growing at a rapid rate each year, spearheaded by industry giants such as Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and others that championed the integration of user-centric solutions in their products and services, resulting in substantial awareness of the role it plays in driving business success.

Consequently, the responsibilities of product and design teams have expanded significantly, necessitating increased specialization, and despite the myriad opportunities this surge presents for UX designers, navigating the diverse roles and processes across various companies can be a challenging endeavor — even for seasoned professionals.

In this article, we will shed some light on what a career in UX looks like, where the UX process comes into play, why UX maturity matters, and what different roles and responsibilities are involved in the process.

UX Design Process

UX is all about solving problems for stakeholders. It is a set of principles, methods, and techniques used to find the “sweet spot” between business goals, user needs, and various constraints to create solutions that meet functional requirements and provide an enjoyable experience that promotes business success.

The Process is the structure that UX practitioners use to help them find that sweet spot, it ensures that what is being built is a product that people will “actually” want to use, and gives the whole team a clear vision of the goals and direction of the project.

In its most simplistic form, the process consists of four iterative steps that happen before the final prototype is sent to developers to be built.

Typical UX Design Steps Involved in Developing a Product

The Research and Define stages aim to understand the root causes of the problem at hand to define the appropriate solutions, this involves researching competitors, interviewing users, and identifying opportunities.

At the Design stage, UX Designers create solutions to the problems uncovered by the research, the output comes in the form of a prototype that is prepped for testing to Validate how effective the designs are, this stage involves continuous testing and alterations on the design before delivering the final prototype for development.

Design Process Models

There are several models that aim to provide designers, project managers, and creative directors with a tool to set up, frame, structure, run, or manage design projects and challenges, each offering a unique perspective on the design process.

These frameworks not only facilitate a systematic approach but also act as guides to navigate the complexities inherent in the creative and problem-solving aspects of design. They play a crucial role in streamlining workflows, fostering collaboration, and ultimately ensuring the delivery of user-centric and effective design solutions.

1. The Double Diamond

Perhaps the most famous model popularized by the British Design Council, it adapts the divergence-convergence framework that represents a process of exploring an issue more widely or deeply (Divergent Thinking) and then taking focused action (Convergent Thinking).

The model suggests 4 phases to its lifecycle: Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver, otherwise known as the 4Ds of the Design Process. Dan Nessler provided a detailed exploration of each of these steps, shedding light on the intricacies involved in bringing a design from conception to fruition.

The Double Diamond Model by Dan Nessler, 2019

In his presentation, Nessler highlights the specific tasks and considerations encapsulated within each phase, offering valuable insights into how designers can navigate and optimize their workflow throughout the entire design lifecycle.

2. Human-Centered Design

Human-Centered Design (HCD) is all about cultivating deep empathy with the people you’re designing for and with. It is based on a process and a set of techniques that emphasize involving end-users throughout the design process, ensuring their needs and preferences guide decision-making.

The process was created by IDEO specifically to serve non-governmental organizations and social enterprises that work with impoverished communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The process comprises three phases: listening, creating, and doing.

IDEO's Human-Centered Design Model

There are three lenses the HCD process works from: Desirability, Feasibility, and Viability. It is necessary to identify a range of what is desirable through the analysis of the needs and pain points of the end user, and the proposed solutions must be viewed through the lenses of feasibility and viability against contemporary technical, functional, and economical constraints.

The process is initiated with a focus on gathering stories and inspiration from the end users, participants work together to further understand the problem space, and ideate frameworks, opportunities, and solutions. The final stage involves realizing the solution through rapid prototyping and testing before handing over the designs for implementation.

3. Design Thinking Process

Stanford d.school's Design Thinking Process

While not exclusively a UX model, the Design Thinking Process involves empathizing with users, defining problems, ideating solutions, prototyping, and testing. Its history extends back to the 1950s-60s with roots in the study of design cognition.

Design Thinking is characterized as a highly iterative, non-linear approach to solving “wicked” problems, and it has evolved to become a strategic tool that has found applications not only in traditional design disciplines but also in business, education, healthcare, and technology.

Its problem-solving framework and the strong emphasis on understanding the users ensure that the final product is functional, intuitive, and tailored to the users' actual experiences and expectations. It allows designers to establish a focused point-of-view that guides their ideation and solution-generation efforts, while the iterative nature of its approach fosters creativity, reduces the risk of creating solutions that miss the mark, and ultimately leads to a more successful user experience.

Design Roles

UX encompasses a range of diverse roles and responsibilities shouldered by designers throughout the design process. Spanning from generalist roles to more specialized positions, these roles often exhibit overlapping scopes and they continually evolve in tandem with the evolving comprehension of the optimal design process — part of the reason for this is that UX is a fairly new field.

UX roles can be segmented into three categories:

• Generalists: A generalist works across multiple stages of the UX design process like a product designer, and possesses a broad skill set that spans various aspects of user experience. With a holistic understanding of the end-to-end design process, generalists are adept at identifying and solving challenges at different stages, and their adaptability makes them valuable contributors to projects where a comprehensive approach to user experience is paramount.

• Specialists: Most commonly found in UX Mature organizations where UX is considered integral to the operation, a specialist works on a specific area of UX such as research or visual design. They’ll have titles like UX researcher or UI designer. They contribute in-depth knowledge and advanced skills to their designated field, ensuring a high level of proficiency in their area of specialization, and offer nuanced solutions, innovative insights, and advanced techniques that elevate the overall quality of the user experience.

How do the different roles fit in the UX process?

UX is a collaborative team effort, demanding varied roles at different stages of the process. It adapts to business needs, ensuring fluidity and responsiveness, and each role brings unique expertise, forming a cohesive synergy crucial for delivering outstanding user-centric solutions.

1. UX Research

Successful products solve genuine problems for users, and the aim of the research is to identify the problem that a product or service needs to solve.

UX Research level of involvement in the Design Process

The UX Researcher is the owner of the research stage, whose responsibilities include using methods like interviews, surveys, and focus groups to analyze the research data to uncover what the main problems are, defining the scope of the problems to make sure the right things are prioritized, and communicating insights to the team.

A UX Researcher should be comfortable collecting quantitative and qualitative data through a variety of techniques including user interviews, surveys, and usability testing. A researcher must also have the ability to analyze the gathered data and communicate insights and recommendations to the other UX team members.

2. UX Design

Every team member helps solve user problems, and the UX designers play the most pivotal part. UX designers tend to come with the widest set of skills and responsibilities that champion user-centric solutions throughout the project.

UX Designers Responsibilities accross the Design Process

Simply put, this means they know how to research user needs at the beginning of the project, outline the scope of a project’s features and content, define the navigation and information hierarchy, create wireframes and prototypes, and test their designs to see how well they perform.

UX designers are responsible for focusing on the big picture and working with all stakeholders (users, researchers, business owners,…etc.), this requires them to possess a high degree of empathy in order to understand things from each individual’s perspective.

3. UI Design

UI designers play a pivotal role in crafting the visual elements and structure of digital interfaces, their primary task revolves around conceptualizing and designing all the screens within a digital platform while ensuring seamless cohesion between each interface component. This entails careful attention to detail regarding the individual screen layout and the overall integration of these screens, ensuring a unified and intuitive user experience.

UI Designer role during the Design Process

Their responsibilities extend to developing high-fidelity prototypes that serve as visual blueprints, portraying how the user interface will appear and function. Typically occurring in the latter stages of the UX process, their work encapsulates the aesthetic aspects of a product. To achieve this, UI designers must adeptly align their designs with established brand guidelines, ensuring consistency and brand identity throughout the interface.

The UI design process necessitates a balance between creativity and adherence to brand aesthetics. Given their focus on visual elements, UI designers must possess a keen eye for design principles, including color theory, typography, and layout. This expertise allows them to create visually appealing interfaces that not only meet brand standards but also provide an engaging and cohesive user experience.

4. Content Design

Content designers are the voice of the product, they typically work in two different areas: UX writing and Content Strategy. Their focus is on creating copy and microscopy for the whole product, ensuring that the right words appear in the right tone at the right time. This includes writing crucial content like tooltips, error messages, and notifications.

Content Designers activity level in the Design Process

Good content writing presents complex ideas in a simple and informative form, helping users find what they’re looking for and feel in control when using the interface. All while ensuring that the content feeds into the overall vision and brand of the organization.

In addition to crafting functional and helpful copy, content designers rely on user insights to tailor their text. Their focus remains on providing information and guidance rather than employing persuasive language, ensuring that every word enhances the user's experience and supports their journey through the interface.

UX Maturity and Impact

One of the most significant influences that determines the design process and the integrated role is the overall UX maturity in the organization. UX maturity refers to the level of integration, effectiveness, and understanding of user experience principles, it signifies the extent to which an organization comprehends, values, and implements UX methodologies and practices. It’s not about how big the team is or how long it’s in place, it’s about how advanced their understanding of UX is. Is UX essential or a nice-to-have?

The UX Maturity Model populated by Nielsen Norman Group defines six stages that provide a framework to assess an organization’s UX-related strengths and weaknesses, each stage describes the presence of UX in different organizational circumstances, from companies that engaged in absolutely no user research to ones that achieved peak focus:

Nielsen Norman Group's UX Maturity Model

UX mature organizations like HubSpot understand what skills are required at each stage of the design process, such organizations tend to have a dedicated team for research, content, and design, in addition to having roles such as product managers and UX strategists that are designated to manage the process, resources, and the overall trajectory of the project. Even more so, some companies would have dedicated roles that are solely focused on one area of research like quantitative research for example.

UX immature organizations often lack a dedicated focus on user experience and don’t see the value of dedicating people to niche areas. In such organizations, design decisions might be arbitrary, based more on assumptions than data-driven insights and UX roles might not be clearly defined or integrated, leading to fragmented responsibilities and unrealistic expectations of what UX designers do. Some companies for example expect UX designers to code and take care of the visual design in marketing.

Understanding the organization’s UX maturity is important to identify strengths and weaknesses, uphold and reward what’s done well, and acknowledge and improve what is not. Even when UX work seems fine, there are probably things the organization could be doing better to improve their product- or service-creation process, people’s work, its credibility, and customers’ and users’ experiences.

In conclusion, UX maturity significantly impacts how organizations approach design and user experience, it shapes the methodologies, roles, and processes involved in crafting user-centric solutions. Organizations that prioritize and invest in enhancing their UX maturity tend to deliver more successful, innovative, and user-friendly products and services, ultimately resulting in increased user satisfaction and business success.

Further Reading:

• “How to Apply a Design Thinking, HCD, UX or any Creative Process from Scratch” by Dan Nessler

• “What is the UX Design Process? A Step-by-Step Guide” by Louise Bruton

• “IDEO Human-Centered Design (HCD) Design Process” by Juan Fernando Pacheco

• “The 6 Levels of UX Maturity” by Kara Pernice, Sarah Gibbons, Kate Moran, and Kathryn Whitenton

• “Navigating the UX Landscape: What a UX Career Looks Like in 2021” by UX Design Institute