Career

When a website is excellently designed, we tend not to pay attention to the reasons why it’s so great—we simply enjoy it. On the other hand, if a website is difficult to use or frustrating, we’re more likely to take note of exactly what is making our experience so bad. This phenomenon has a name: It’s called the negativity bias, and simply put, it’s the sociological explanation for why we’re more likely to notice a negative experience than a positive one.1 It turns out that negative experiences require more thought for us to process, as they take us away from the experience we expected and demand a shift or adjustment in our thinking and action.2 Unsurprisingly, these moments are more likely to stick with us than a moment that went perfectly according to plan.

There’s an old adage nearly everyone’s heard: “Work a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” As true as this sentiment may be, the facts about employment suggest that a majority of people are not working jobs they love. In fact, far from it.

Today’s interactive designers are tasked with consistently achieving something more than aesthetically striking creative. In today’s marketplace, digital media is king—and the evolving need for digital marketing is far more complex than that of more traditional marketing channels. Designers must consider the different journeys being undertaken by those for whom they are designing. They must design with the knowledge that 30 percent of all commerce is conducted on a mobile phone and let the platform a person may be using inform their work.1

The experience one has when interacting with technology is fundamentally human. Our digital lives—from navigating a tablet to paying at a bank kiosk—have become so ubiquitous, interwoven and essential to the way we interact with the world and others, that it’s almost hard to remember what life was like before these technologies existed. Simply put, we depend on technology to move our lives forward. It plays a critical role in our individual storylines as well as our collective narrative.

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Today, when a person explains that they work as a user experience (UX) designer, chances are that more people understand what that means than they would have a decade earlier.1 As technology and innovation become more and more interwoven into the fabric of business, UX design is becoming an increasingly ubiquitous function.

Websites, eCommerce sites, email campaigns, eReaders, mobile apps and more—if you’ve used a screen or a keyboard lately, you’ve touched the work of someone with a job in user experience design (UXD).

As history marches forward, certain technologies are inevitably left behind in favor of what’s most beneficial to society in the moment or in the future. While leaving behind what’s no longer beneficial is important to technology and innovation, it also renders certain industries and careers as outdated—no matter how important they may have been at one time.

The geographic information science (GISc) field is a diverse and rapidly growing industry in which some roles are projected to grow by 14% by 2026,1 which makes the role of a GISc technician all the more vital. As we watch natural disasters unfold and the effects of human interference take shape on our planet, the need for GISc expertise and spatial technology prowess is featured daily, worldwide. Additional GISc experience can help environmental protection professionals make significant impacts in solving major global crises like water resources or climate change.

Like many, you may be interested in user experience design (UXD) as a concept. Yet, you may be in a different field and unable to see a clear connection of how your career could ever transition into UX design.

What makes someone a repeat visitor to a website or motivates them to share it with their networks via social channels? There isn’t one correct answer to either of these questions, because there is a multi-layered, strategic approach to attracting and converting people into frequent visitors. Generally speaking, the best way to achieve this goal is to provide the site audience with valuable, relevant content.

So you’re a UXD professional tasked with building a website for a client that will not only draw people in, but keep them clicking around on the digital property for as long as possible. You’re aware that the Internet has caused people to consume vast amounts of information simultaneously, and a byproduct of this is that your site visitors have extremely short attention spans.

Incorporating video and a well-written, frequently updated blog can help attract the attention of consumers and potentially convert them into viable leads. Having a website that leverages social media integration can also help raise visibility and boost traffic.

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Since you made it to this post, you’ve most likely heard of user experience design (UXD). You may even have a clear understanding of what it means already. For those who don’t, however, a UX designer is a person who works to make a platform or product as user-friendly, enjoyable and useful as possible for end users. This involves seamlessly integrating digital systems and technology into both traditional products and new, innovative products.

It’s no secret that we live in a digital world. The Internet has forever shifted the way that we listen to music, watch videos, read the news and connect with people from all over the world. When it comes to marketing and advertising, brands often try to make an impact with consumers using a variety of media, while hosting them all on a single website.

From the technology in your car and computer to the technology in your phone and television, user experience design (UXD) is an integral component of our daily lives. As society continues to rely more and more on digital experiences, there will continue to be an increase in UX designer jobs, as businesses need well-trained experts who understand the effect of user interactions within our digital world.

Have you ever considered a career as a User Experience Designer (UXD)? UXD is one of the fastest-growing career fields in the United States. Check out these facts about a career as a UXD professional!