r/uxcareerquestions

I’ve been working in UI design for many years, but I still see companies using the titles “Product Designer” and “UI/UX Designer” interchangeably. From an industry perspective, what actually separates these two roles in terms of responsibilities, thinking process, and business involvement?

Would love to hear how designers, recruiters, or product teams define the difference in real-world projects.

Hi everyone,

I did a ux design certificate recently and I am still looking for an internship. I want to make UX researcher as my main profile and I was wondering if combining a sociology degree will put me ahead of other candidates in the field or nah?

I read in the world economic forum future of jobs that skills like analytical thinking, creative thinking, empathy are growing skills when seeking for employees now.

Because of AI literally exploding human centric work is becoming more valuable.

I guess I just want to get opinions from people in the field, what do you guys think would this benefit me ? I will start my degree soon.

I’m planning to take on freelance design work, but I’ve heard others say solo/freelance designers can become the single point of failure for design rationale.

Not because we’re doing anything wrong, but because so much of the “why” behind a design lives in our heads. As a result, a client, engineer, or PM has to constantly go back and forth with the designer to ask why a flow works a certain way, why one pattern was chosen over another, or why an alternative was rejected.

If this is an issue, then I’d assume it would also be really valuable for designers to log their decision making as they go.

For people who work as a solo founding designer or freelancer:

• Is this constant back and forth a big issue and have any of you guys faced it?
• How important/valuable is it to keep a decision log for my design work as a freelancer/solo designer
  • Does it mostly help with client/stakeholder communication, or does having these also help substantially improve design judgment/taste over time?
  • I have also heard that many designers don't feel the need to log decisions, but does this ever become a big problem in the future?

I’m trying to understand whether decision logs are valuable in helping designers build better judgment/taste over time, or whether they mostly become documentation nobody looks at again. Thank you guys in advance!

I am a UI/UX desigenr in my current company since last 3 years with a decent pay with total experience of 6 years.

I do posses several design domain experience spans across UI/UX, Graphic design, Motion design, Video editing, Web development and 3D design. I have hands on experience on several tools for the domains I mentioned earlier.

Now my biggest problem is I LACKED DEPTH, not because I focussed on multiple design domains but honestly the companies I worked so far, the projects I designed so far has no such scope to dig the design field deep (Specially UX) to learn. I am very good at visual design but when it comes to UX I really lack depth, which is clearly understandable for me when I attend interviews.

I am not blaming the companies and projects I worked with so far but my ultimate goal is to bag the high pay job and demands skill depth way more than what I currently hold. Whatever the skill range I have developed so far is out of my complete personal initiative and projects, companies litterally got nothing to make me learn from them.

I really want to be a part of big design teams, work on complex projects that dramatically uplift my profile weight but not finding a way to get there. There are online courses and all I dont think they alone matter.

One thing I seriously believe is..I HAVE GOT POTENTIAL but WRONG ENVIRONEMENTS RUINING IT.

Hello community,
I have been working as a digital designer for almost 10 years and I am very skilled when it comes to creating eye-catching user interfaces.

In the last couple of years, I have been also focusing more on UX, finished a bootcamp and all. Since then I have created two different portfolios, UX/UI only. I have had 0 job offers. It's been 2 years.

Since I am also familiar with frontend, I tend to navigate towards gamification. A lot of products profit from introducing game elements. And again, I can showcase my UI skills here.

I have a few older projects I think of reusing (mostly branding). I believe they're very strong ideas and could also show my problem solving in a different area.

Is this a good path to go with? To include UX/UI projects that are focused around gamification and a few additional branding projects? Would it come off as juvenile?
Can the people who have more experience with this please chime in and offer their advice?

Thank you in advance and have a nice day🚀

Maybe I’m overthinking this, but I’m job hunting as a product designer and I’m not sure what’s expected anymore: should I just have a website portfolio, or also a separate deck / Figma presentation for interviews?

My current portfolio is pretty basic, because I am under NDA I cannot have detailed case studies in website. and I recently saw that some candidates were sharing detailed Figma case-study decks instead of just a website. Since most of my stronger work is in a confidential enterprise role, I’m wondering what’s more normal now, especially if you’re trying to move into a more design-mature company.

I’ve only had one design interview before, and it was years ago at a company with no real design team. I’m now trying to switch to a better org with stronger pay and an actual design culture, so I want to understand what format is most likely to get traction.

Would a strong website still be enough, or do most people now keep both a website and an interview deck?

It’s been 4 months since I started searching for a UX/UI Design job without real results.
Sometimes I ask myself: is the problem me, the market, the competition, or AI?

Every morning I open LinkedIn looking for opportunities, and honestly, the market feels harder than ever.
Everyone talks about AI and how it should become your “friend” instead of your enemy, and that’s exactly what I’m trying to do.

I built my own portfolio website, I keep learning and improving myself, but sometimes I feel frustrated, lonely, and mentally tired from trying so hard without clear results.

Some companies contacted me for internships, but deep inside I feel like some of them just want someone temporary and then say goodbye after the period ends.

I’m not writing this just to complain.
I genuinely want to know:
Are other people feeling the same way? And does UX/UI still have a future in the coming years?

I've recently been laid off and i'm struggling to find direction. I'm sad that my niche might not exist anymore and i'm looking for some support and advice if possible.

My Background

- 4 Year Bachelors in interaction design from a good school.
- 4 month UX internship during school, small start-up
- 1 year frontend dev with some ui/ux responsibilities, small start-up, in crypto
- 2 Years at a design agency, ui/ux/frontend designing and building wordpress-killer type sites with next and headless CMSs. Nothing super feature-driven in a backend sense, more content driven with a focus on brand presence, aesthetics, clear communication, scalability and a self-serve future for the client.

The Problem

I feel like I'm at a crossroads right now where I'm being told by some of my peers that I might have to make a choice between my coding skills and my design skills. Which for me would mean dropping frontend dev. I'm just not interested in becoming full stack, I'm more interested in design.

They tell me that UX/Frontend is a less important niche now than broader ux/design skills, or deeper dev skills. But then I have others telling me that being multidisciplinary between dev and design can be very desirable for agencies with more creative work!

Outside of my career I love 3D art and visuals, producing music, and human connection/mental health.

Interests

In that last job I was the whole web creation pipeline in one person. From client interviews, to distilling findings, to wireframing, to presentations and critiques, to hi fi design, to final development and launch. Everything except supporting UI design with my team's graphics and brand designer. Sadly that means all of my design research was just competitor analysis and secondary research. But despite not being able to user test, I still applied my UX thinking and design methods all the time to stay sharp and interested in my work. I mostly focused them on clear language writing, info arch / section mapping, interaction design, and of course final dev feel.

I liked that. Quite a lot actually. The cycles between design and dev kept my life interesting. Dev was fun and relaxing with interesting problem solving. Design pushed me in a lot of ways to always want to be better and impress the client with something flashy and useable. It always made me happy to make a client happy.

I love:

- Info arch, section mapping
- Good storytelling through both language and visuals
- Creative problem solving
- Finding fun or interesting ways to elevate a brand's presence
- Unique custom components
- Executing those components in the frontend
- Creative and unique websites
- Working with different brands with new aesthetics and requirements

Dislikes

What I don't like is feeling like a big fish in a small pond. No one around me did what I did. In my whole career I've never had true peers to guide me with code or design review and I'm kinda sick of it. I feel its making me atrophy.

I also hate AI deeply. I avoid it like the plague for the critical thinking side of UX like research interview prep, research synthesis, or design first-passes. I only reach for it to find design reference, add ideas after the design foundation has been laid, accelerate development, prototype and test designs, other mindless stuff, etc.

I hate being my own boss. I really don't want to freelance without gaining more real world industry experience. I feel I'm only learning from myself right now and I want to learn from others.

What Now

I'm scared my niche might not exist anymore. I'm worried I might not be strong enough of a UX/UI designer to excel solely in that, and that my value came from being more of a UX thinker with ui and strong frontend skills. Maybe I'm being hard on myself, but I know things are competitive out there.

Pivoting to pure UX or UX Research could be cool, it was my original passion before finding myself in frontend jobs because I was good at them. But I just don't know anymore. This is coming from a bit of a low point mental health-wise but I just see a future of my brain atrophying with AI if I stay in this industry. I'm here for interesting problems to solve and critical thinking. I want to become a master of my craft and be proud of what I make.

If you have any thoughts or insights on a direction I should lean, or a way to market myself that could help me find the work I'm interested in, or any other general advice, then your help and input is massively appreciated.

Thank you so much for your time even if you just skimmed, and good luck to everyone out there feeling lost right now. I see you, and I know we'll figure it out.

Hiya! I've been thinking about a career transition into qualitative research that will eventually lead to behavioral science (I know that's broad, I'm not sure exactly what it would look like).

Generally, I love topics on human connection, I love talking to people and observing behavioral patterns, finding out why they do what they do, how their motivations or emotions impact their behavior, love listening to Hidden Brain, Esther Perel etc etc. Now with AI, I've also been very interested in how AI will continue to shape human behavior - scary and fascinating at the same time.

I've taken a course on UX design but that wasn't quite it for me. I'm wondering if anyone has ideas on how to pivot into qualitative research or a similar field, I'm happy to volunteer or take hourly research assistant positions so I can get a taste of the work before considering any further investment. I'd love any other suggestions.

For context, I've been in tech (operations and program management) the las ~7 years, but the market is a zoo, and I'm also at a point where I'd like my professional life to feel more coherent with who I am.

Thanks in advance!

I am 27 year old looking for job opportunities. I have done my b.tech 6 years and graduated in 2022. Initially I tried to do masters in USA but my visa was rejected 4 times, then i started preparing for government exams but found no luck here as well. Im right now exploring different career options and came across product designer/ UI UX designer. I would like to know what are the chances that I will build a good career in this and what are the qualifications that most companies look out for designers today for fresher roles. Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Hi!

For a university assignment, my group and I created a small prototype of a browser game inspired by games like The Impossible Quiz. We’re currently looking for people to test it and give feedback through a short survey afterxwards. The game is focused on tricky questions.

Playtime: few minutes

Survey length: around 2–3 minutes

Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks to anyone willing to try it out!

PS: Only playable on laptop/desktop or larger screen