How should UI designers make career plans?

Nowadays, the market has higher and higher requirements for UI design, and the requirements for junior UI designers are becoming more and more strict. If you do not maintain the habit of continuing to learn after entering the UI industry, you are likely to be replaced by new people, and your path to promotion may also be difficult. So how does UI design develop?

Most technical positions have two paths. One is to specialize in technology. After working in technical positions for many years, you can choose a direction to study in depth, and then become an expert in the industry to provide technical support to the enterprise. The other way is to take management, continue to accumulate project experience, and then consciously cultivate your own management capabilities, and finally become a team manager.

Below, we will analyze the development path of UI design from dedicated career development to different development directions to industry choices. 1. Let’s take a look at the path to professional advancement that most UI designers take all the way to the end.

1. Junior UI designer: Junior UI design requires you to understand design, have a certain understanding of interaction design and operations, and be able to complete the design tasks delivered by the company.

2. Intermediate UI designer: Everyone’s growth rate and opportunities in the industry are different. Some people may take one to two years to grow rapidly and meet the requirements of a mature UI design. Going from junior to senior level is not only the accumulation of working years, but also the accumulation of project experience and design experience. During this process, you also need to continuously improve your design knowledge in the work industry, because different industry backgrounds may have different design requirements.

3. Senior UI designer: It is a difficult process to move from intermediate to senior level. Some UI designers stay at intermediate UI design. No matter how many years they work, all they accumulate is more project experience. Many intermediate UI designs require H5 interface design in addition to mobile and web design, and even require familiarity with the front-end (HTML, CSS). These are all necessary to continuously improve oneself according to market demand.

4. Senior UI Design/Design Director: After accumulating rich project experience, if you have strong technical skills and management capabilities, you can basically participate in the development of a company if you go into design at this time. The product style has changed. At this stage, you not only need to understand design and interaction, be able to do user research, and grasp popular trends, but you are also required to understand management and be able to lead the design team to produce the company's product concepts and creativity to provide support for the company's decision-making.

The above UI design advancement path is only one of the UI design career plans, and of course it is also a very specific one. However, it is not difficult to see from the above path that the market's requirements for UI designers are getting higher and higher, and companies are more inclined to recruit composite UI design talents.

So, if you want to take this dedicated career development path, you must study UI design in depth, be able to adapt to market demand to improve your other skills, and integrate your design concepts into Express it on the product and gain recognition from users.

As for your current situation, you have been working for three years and have accumulated project experience. Can you think about which stage you have reached?

The times are changing, and the requirements are also changing, so in order to adapt to the requirements of the times, we must continue to learn. But what direction do you need to work towards? One is to combine your own skill mastery, check for omissions and fill in the gaps according to the requirements of the market, and then improve them. If you want a detailed plan, I don’t think anyone can make a development plan that exactly suits you.