Why Transition to UX Designer

It was long ago I worked in a multinational company for 5 yrs as a graphic designer when I first heard of UX Design. I really thought of UXD as something that isn't for me. Until I got an invitation to work for a Swiss based software development startup company as a Senior Marketing Designer. It was a tough work since I'm doing 2 roles as a designer that does marketing stuff and designer for development (working with devs). It was then that I got introduced to do a UX and UI related work where I was tasked to do UI designs for a certain mobile and web app. It was then I realized that Interface designing alone is not enough to come up with a good output but it was needed to study the overall experience of the user when interacting with your design. I was also told by my bosses that eventually my salary would be higher because of my role transition since being a user experience designer is paid higher than a regular designer.

According to Payscale US - UX Designers earn almost twice of that of the average graphic designer. E.g. a graphic designer in the US receives $42,000 while UX designers receives $74,000. 

UX Designers also are high in demand, since UX Design is closely related to business, companies prefer to keep the (UX design) job within the organisation rather than outsourcing them.

Transition to User Experience Design

How it all started

My background was in graphics designing and I have spent 4 years preparing for a job as a UX designer. This includes studying new skills that were required for the role and preparing a new design portfolio that shows the type of output that is about. Even though that I have undergone a very long time of training, my role in the company I worked was still in an associate level despite I was a senior designer on my previous job. It was a good thing though that I have a good mentors that helped and guided me to become one of the good UX designers in my team right now.

What made me enjoy UX Design

I realize that it was not designing alone that made me love UX design, it was the other skills and roles that you do when you are a UX designer. There can be up to 3-4 roles that u can do as a UX designer (Visual Designer, Interaction Designer, Researcher, and Information Architect) and I enjoyed doing all of them.

With the continuous change in technology, UX/UI design is highly in demand to help develop innovative products for users. And also, big companies are creating products that will help ease internal tasks. The reason why many graphic designers are willing to make a transition to UX design roles. Also, UX designers are highly paid compared to a regular designer.