What exactly does a UI designer do, job responsibilities and required abilities?

Research interface----Graphic UI designer

Most UI workers in China are currently engaged in this industry. Some people also call them artists, but in fact they are not art workers in a simple sense, but product appearance designers of software products.

Most of these designers graduated from art colleges, and most of them have art design education background, such as industrial appearance design, decoration design, information multimedia design, etc.

Study the relationship between people and interfaces---interaction designer, interaction designer

Before the emergence of graphical interfaces, UI designers have long referred to interaction designers. The work content of an interaction designer is to design the operating process, tree structure, software structure and operating specifications (spec) of the software, etc. What needs to be done before coding a software product is interaction design, and establishing interaction models and interaction specifications.

Interaction designers generally have a background as software engineers.

Researcher----User experience engineer

Any product needs to be tested in order to ensure quality. The coding of the software needs to be tested, and the natural UI design also needs to be tested. test. This test has nothing to do with coding. It mainly tests the rationality of the interaction design and the aesthetics of the graphic design. Testing methods generally use focus groups and target user questionnaires to measure the rationality of UI design. This position is very important. Without this position, the quality of UI design can only be judged by the experience of the designer or the aesthetics of the leader, which will bring serious risks to the enterprise.

User research engineers are generally more suitable with a background in psychology and humanities.

To sum up, UI designers are: software graphic designers, interaction designers and user research engineers.

Professional knowledge reserve, design thinking and skills

1. User experience design knowledge points. Ask the candidate several professional questions (including user research methods, usability knowledge, user thinking, emotional design, web design common sense, mobile design specifications, mobile Internet characteristics, etc.) to examine his theoretical knowledge reserve of user experience design.

2. Design methods and processes. The main purpose is to ask whether the other party understands a main process of carrying out design work (user needs and product needs - competitive product analysis - demand refinement - information architecture - page layout - functional task process and interaction details - testing/walk-through); examine his understanding of users Macroscopic understanding of experience design systems and the design thinking they should have;

3. Product awareness and design thinking. Pattern: As a designer, whether you can rise to the product level to look at problems, and whether you have or are willing to study the direction of the product and the logic behind its functions; Thinking: whether you can actually use user experience methods and principles to guide the design; The ability to transform requirements into designs.

4. Design expression and skill situations. Mainly the use of design tools, such as PS, AI, Axure, and Sketch/AE, etc., mainly to examine whether they have the basic skills to start work immediately, as well as the hands-on ability of design expression; the degree of detail and standardization of the output.

Project and practical experience

1. Project and practical sharing. Which projects to participate in independently? Take a key project to describe the main process, explain in detail the transformation process from demand to design, and the main innovation points. It mainly examines his ability to grasp demand, design awareness and thinking, and innovation ability;

2. Responsibilities and abilities. Understand the responsibilities of interaction designers and their role and contribution in team collaboration, and examine what they have really done and how much effort they have put into it.

3. Growth and harvest. Let the applicant talk about his improvement in professional knowledge and skills after experiencing the project, as well as his design experience. It mainly assesses his analysis and summary ability, as well as his actual improvement in understanding, ability and experience. Whether he wants to become his own Design perspectives and concepts.

Learning and research abilities

1. Learning approaches and plans. Ask about the channels for acquiring professional knowledge and growth paths, and examine their understanding of the Internet industry and their attention to the cutting-edge design; in addition, judge their enthusiasm for learning and whether they really have their own learning arrangements and plans.

2. User research capabilities. Be familiar with commonly used user research methods and have user awareness; be able to analyze and elaborate on problems based on user needs and usage scenarios; be able to independently carry out user research work, collect feedback and analyze data, and output research reports.

3. Market and competitive product sharing capabilities. Understand the Internet industry, be familiar with the market and competing products of the projects you participate in, have your favorite applications and be well aware of their core functions and design pros and cons, and have complete (experience) research reports on relevant aspects.

Project and work ability

1. Ability to think independently and solve problems independently. Whether you are good at thinking and discovering problems; whether you have your own unique views and insights on phenomena, problems and things; whether you can think independently when encountering problems, and whether you can discuss with others with your insights.

2. Subjective initiative and execution ability. How to treat some elementary design tasks, whether you can complete it well; whether you can complete the work assigned by the teacher or supervisor on time. Can you take the initiative to discover and solve some experience problems on the product and promote implementation?

3. Communication and teamwork. Examine whether they are good at communicating and collaborating with others at work, whether they have communication skills such as promotion, debate, persuasion, and organizational coordination and promotion capabilities;

4. Responsibility.

Examine whether they love this job? Are they willing to devote themselves to the work? Do they have a certain degree of loyalty to the company?