What is the current status of UI design and is the UI design market saturated? What kind of UI design talents are needed in the market? How can I find a job if I learn UI design? This series of questions must be plagued by many want to cross into the UI design industry and dare not cross into the small partners, we slowly analyze a wave of these issues.
A, UI design market demand
This year, most of us at home during the isolation period may be a state, "" Gwu Palsy "" in all corners of the home to play! cell phone, so much so that the microblogging hot search often appears ** software crashed. Home quarantine period, Internet users through the network online learning, collaborative office, live shopping, telemedicine, etc., Internet companies in the epidemic prevention and control period angrily brushed a wave of presence. After the epidemic, the traditional industry must have been not a small impact, enterprises want to get reborn combined with the development of Internet thinking is imminent, the Internet industry will seize this time to expand their business map. In addition to the arrival of the 5G era, the Internet industry continues to be a big hit, will certainly also lead to the development of related jobs.
In the age of the Internet, the vast majority of businesses realize how important it is to attract more potential customers through online information. The impression that these potential customers have of your company and its products depends largely on how much effort you put into your website design. Enterprise stations and e-commerce platforms are also essential communication platforms and C-end independent trading platforms for enterprises in the Internet environment, which is the mainstream under the Internet industry. This is still only part of the web UI design development needs, with the popularization of smart phones and the advent of the 5G era, the demand for APP is even more incalculable.
Then in the end UI design is saturated? What are the employment prospects?
Image source: job friend set
Image source: job friend set
In the job site search UI related positions, there are a large number of enterprises in the recruitment of UI design, so is it not intuitively illustrate that the UI design market is not saturated.Second, the status of the UI design industry
By the impact of the epidemic, many industries have been affected by varying degrees of salary, but the UI design industry salary treatment has not been affected. As can be seen from the picture, the salary of UI design is increasing with the growth of working years. In addition, from 2016 to now, the salary of UI design is also increasing year by year. ?
Chart of UI Design Salary Changes ? Image Source: jobmate collection
As we all know, most colleges and universities do not have majors for UI design at present, but the related majors are graphic design, visual communication design, computer art design, computer multimedia technology, computer animation design, graphic design, web design and so on. If you want to engage in UI design work after graduation, most of the UI designers are from these majors over or zero basic training to the profession. Many UI designers do not have a professional background, and there is no continuous learning in the work, resulting in their own development in the UI design industry is very limited, so what is the cause of this? Let's take Beijing UI design recruitment as an example, to see the path of most UI designers:
(1) Junior UI designer: For junior UI designers, mainly for fresh graduates or just change the line of UI designers, its recruitment requirements are also very simple, you can use the basic tools, have aesthetics can be. If you have some excellent works before applying for the junior position, and have some knowledge of interaction design and operation, then you can cross the threshold of reserve UI design and formally enter the UI design industry.
(2) Intermediate UI designers: everyone in the industry grows at different speeds and opportunities, some people may spend a year to two years to grow quickly, with a mature UI design requirements. In contrast to newcomers just starting out in the industry, hiring will require work experience as well as a solid foundation in design.
(3) Senior UI designer: from intermediate to senior is a difficult process, some UI designers are stuck in the intermediate UI design, no matter how many years of work, accumulated only more project experience. More than three years of experience can independently complete the UI design process, which is a reflection of the UI designer's project experience. In addition to mobile, web design also requires H5 interface design, and even require familiarity with the front-end (HTML, CSS), these are in the work of the market demand based on the embodiment of the continuous improvement of their knowledge system.
(4) senior UI design / design director: after a long road of advancement, in the continuous enrichment of project experience, UI design technology and even management knowledge and then do the design, basically can be involved in the development of a company's product style towards. At this stage, not only do you need to understand the design, understand the interaction, be able to do user research, grasp the trend, but also requires you to understand the management, can lead the design team in the company's product conception and creativity, to the company's decision-making to provide support.
The above road to UI design advancement is just one of the UI design career planning, and of course it is also a very specialized one. When you get started in the UI design industry, you can also go in the direction of product, UE and so on. But it is not difficult to see from the above path, the market for UI designers more and more demanding, for the recruitment of junior UI designers is also less and less, companies are more inclined to recruit UI design talent with technical skills.
? Third, at present, the necessary skills of UI designers
The Internet just started a new rise, there are not a lot of professional UI design on the market, most of the UI designers from the graphic design and other positions transferred. In those days, the requirements for UI design were not high, as long as you could make pictures, and there was no emphasis on the user's human experience, interaction design and so on.
Nowadays, in this era of face value, a good product not only has to have a beautiful interface, but also can maximize the efficiency of the user's operation, through the tone of the user's operating habits, the color or graphic clear product features and product content of the primary and secondary display, to reduce the user's operating burden. These also reflect the need for UI designers who understand interaction, psychology and other solid design skills in today's era.
From the road of advancement of UI design can also be seen, in order to be in this industry in the long term development, full link UI design is your best choice. So what are the essential skills for a full-link UI designer?
(1) Hand-drawn illustrations: Creative ideas are important for UI design, but this is only one aspect, and the ability to accurately express their creative ideas through different ways and means is another. For designers with a foundation in art, there are more forms of expression to express their ideas, such as the commonly used hand-drawn, illustration, realistic icons and so on.
Designers with art skills understand lines, shading relationships, structural relationships, basic modeling, perspective relationships, etc. Having this kind of thinking can help us quickly grasp the key points of drawing graphics, icons, and anthropomorphic style works in our design work. Every mature designer, good ideas and ideas must not come first from the computer, but first from the book, hand-drawn is the best creative and inspirational performance and expression, develop the habit of hand-drawn and will hand-drawn this thing can be more expanding the designer's thinking, the graphic needs of your rapid presentation of sketches on the rapid evolution of graphic attempts to compare and contrast, and thus improve work efficiency.
From the UI product progression path is not difficult to see, the higher the level of UI design the more is required to have a rich art background. Because illustration is the current design trend, the illustration and design flexibility, complement each other in order to comply with the current user's visual experience. The following are some examples of the skills required for this program. (2) design foundation: UI design also belongs to the design profession, so you must master the design principles, plane composition, color composition, three-dimensional composition (i.e., the three major components) and other design theories. With these can be flexible to how to go according to different industries and different people to locate the brand color, analysis of Logo graphic form and temperament, image abstraction and deformation of positive and negative type combination, letter and graphic combination and so on.
(3) design tools: with the basic knowledge, to the design of the actual need to use the power of tools. UI design is a special need for hands-on work, so the design tools are UI design must master the skills. Design tools, and the same kind of tools are interchangeable, such as mac can use sketch, no mac can also use ps. Another example of prototyping tools on the facsimile, Axure, JustinMind, etc., so there are a few representative of the following tools I chose to do a brief introduction.
1. PS, Adobe Photoshop, is developed and distributed by Adobe Systems image processing software. I believe that the design industry is not a small partner of its reputation, but also design professionals must master the design tools. Photoshop mainly deals with digital images composed of pixels, which focuses on the processing of images.
2. AI, Adobe illustrator, is an industry-standard vector illustration software for publishing, multimedia, and online images. With its powerful features and considerate user interface, it is the choice of most designers for vector editing software.
3. AE, Adobe After Effects, a graphics video processing software from Adobe. Nowadays, kinetic design is becoming more and more common in the UI design interface, and many domestic Internet companies have begun to pay attention to kinetic design. Dynamic effect design in the product can give users a good visual experience, better express the characteristics of the product, so that the product operation experience is more fluent.
4. Axure, it is a professional rapid prototyping tool, it can quickly create the application or Web site wireframes, flowcharts, prototyping diagrams. As a professional prototyping tool, it can quickly and efficiently create prototypes, while supporting multi-person collaborative design and version control management. Axure is not only a tool for UI designers to master, in the Internet industry also requires product managers to be familiar with the use of the tool.
The above selection of a few representative tools to give you a brief introduction, the introduction of the content is not deep enough and not detailed enough to cover the design tools are not enough. Or that is to say that there are thousands of tools, each type of tool to choose a tool for in-depth study, that will be able to flexibly change the use of this type of tool. If you want to carry out in-depth study is not here to see a sentence or two will be, the most critical or hands-on test of your hands-on ability to go to the actual operation of more tools to become your design road to the plus point it.(4) UI design: mastered the design basis and tools to use, but also need to master the industry web design, mobile design specifications, methods, processes and so on to really start doing UI design. For different industry background of the enterprise, for the web page UI design, client UI design, e-commerce UI design and certainly not the same needs. Refer to the following chart to learn to supplement the knowledge of UI design, to study in depth how to use the tools to perfectly express their own design ideas as well as product features, highlights, characteristics.
(5) Other technologies: the so-called full-link UI designer is to participate in the entire product life cycle. From demand analysis to demand review, user research, emotional board combing to interaction design, visual design to visual review, UI walk-through, acceptance to user research, this system of work need to designers understand, design part of the whole will.
(6) comprehensive soft power: in the UI design involved in the project process, UI design and product, interaction designers, development, testing, and other types of roles in the project need to communicate, so a qualified UI design should be good at communicating, have a good team spirit.
UI designers' ability to communicate and express themselves is very important, in the team, how you can express their design concepts and ideas clearly and logically, in order to let the design be understood by people don't agree. At the same time, effective communication in the project can accelerate the project progress and improve work efficiency.
A project is never something that can be accomplished by one person alone, but by working with others to accomplish the goal in a unified and effective way, you can get real recognition for your work.
Products are constantly being iterated, which also requires UI designers to be good at summarizing and analyzing problems. After each product launch, collect the user, test the problem, and then continue to improve their own design.
UI status analysis to this point, if you are really interested in UI design, not clear that they want to cross into this field, then try not to think, try to learn, in-depth understanding and then to judge. I hope the above answer is helpful to you.