User Experience (UX) Design is the process of creating digital products and experiences with the user in mind, and it is driving today's best companies. In fact, 87 percent of managers have said in recent surveys that hiring UX Designers is their top priority, while 75 percent plan to double the number of UX Designers on their teams within the next five years.
The findings from our survey illustrate a fast-growing field, which is really starting to understand its importance in the global business world. Here are some of the major findings from the Digital Skills Survey.
Unlike the other disciplines covered by the Digital Skills Survey, a majority of Designers started their career in the field. 63 percent of design respondents, in fact, have always been a Designer, which may say something about the skills needed for the profession, and possibly the passion required to succeed.
Like other disciplines, however, the majority of Designers seem to work in small groups, with 77 percent of respondents either working independently or on teams of 10 or fewer employees.
84 percent of design respondents said they designed primarily for the web, with the majority of their time focused on the design stage of the creative process. Interestingly, user testing is the stage design respondents are the least focused on.
When it comes to brainstorming for our design respondents, nothing beats the good old fashioned pen and paper. 87 percent of Designers used these more traditional tools to get their creative juices flowing, although it should be noted that 72 percent also made use of digital tools.
Sketch and Illustrator were the most popular tools for wireframing, with 66 and 44 percent of respondents citing their use.
Similarly, 63 percent of respondents said they used Sketch for interface design, beating out Photoshop, which was cited by 42 percent.
Sketch also came up in favorite tools for prototyping, but this time it came in second to InVision, which is used by 58 percent of respondents.
Designers, as it turns out, differ from Marketers, Developers, and Data Scientists when it comes to project management platforms. 38 percent use Jira, with another 35 percent citing Trello for their project management needs.
Like other disciplines in the survey, email and Slack came in as the most popular forms of team communication, with 76 and 64 percent of respondents citing them as their preferred methods.
A slim majority of Designers (34 percent) believe the design literacy within their organization is at an intermediate level. Interestingly, Designers rate out-of-team skills literacy higher than Marketers do, but lower than Developers do.
When it came to professional development, Designers were very similar to Data Professionals, in that they seemed to prefer a more personal touch to education. 77 percent, in fact, had participated in workshops, seminars, or conferences.
Designers also seem to rely on a number of different learning resources, with respondents citing blogs, digital skills training, online forums, and colleagues as common sources of new knowledge.
Voice-based interfaces and AR/VR may dominate the discussion about the future of tech, but as of yet, it hasn't played a role in the lives of Designers. 89 percent have not yet worked on projects involved voice-based interfaces, and 85 percent have yet to design for the AR/VR space.
Much like professionals in the other disciplines covered by the Digital Skills Survey, Designers cited artificial intelligence and machine learning as two of the trends that will have a significant impact in the next five to 10 years.