UX Career Path
What’s the difference between a junior and principal user experience designer? Impact.
While one’s core skills and talents within their discipline is important, their ability to collaborate with others, take ownership, and general emotional intelligence greatly influence one’s potential impact. The radar plots highlight my thoughts around how one can evaluate the level of designers by evaluating their impact, emphasized by the area within the radar plot.
Note that any skills (content design, information architecture, interaction design, motion design/animation, user research, visualization design, visual design) can be plotted against the primary X & Y axes. The softer skills (as articulated by 12 competencies of Emotional Intelligence are plotted against the more minor axes).
Junior UX Designer
Business Impact: MED
The Junior UX Designer is new in her field, but already exhibits clear talent in her core area of expertise and show competency in her secondary expertise. She working to improve her soft skills in this team-based environment to grow her impact overtime.
Core Skills May Include:
Information Architecture
Interaction Design
Motion Design / Animation Prototyping
User Research
Visualization Design
Visual Design
UX Designer
Business Impact: MED
The UX Designer exhibits strength in her field of expertise, resulting in a notable contribution to the business. Her core area of design/research is strong, and she is growing (T-ing out) in other areas of design as well. She is team and achievement oriented, which grow her impact.
Core Skills May Include:
Information Architecture
Interaction Design
Motion Design / Animation Prototyping
User Research
Visualization Design
Visual Design
Senior UX Designer
Business Impact: MED-HIGH
The Senior UX Designer is an expert in her field and has a sizable and growing impact across the business. She is recognized for her design and/or user research skills within the company. As an individual contributor, she shows promise and is developing skills in leadership, inspiration, and mentoring domains.
Core Skills May Include:
Information Architecture
Interaction Design
Motion Design / Animation Prototyping
User Research
Visualization Design
Visual Design
Principal UX Designer
Business Impact: HIGH
The principal UX Designer is an expert and has a broad net of impact across the business. Because of her unique mix of UX design skills, appetite for complexity, and her high emotional IQ, she is able to successfully navigate and influence the direction of ambiguously defined and difficult situations with a high degree of awareness, positivity, and clear impact.
Core Skills May Include:
Information Architecture
Interaction Design
Motion Design / Animation Prototyping
User Research
Visualization Design
Visual Design
The UX Rockstar
Business Impact: LOW
The “design rockstar” may excel at all of her core skills, yet has very minimal impact due to her lack of soft skills or “emotional intelligence.” This profile is for illustrative purposes only.
Core Skills May Include:
Information Architecture
Interaction Design
Motion Design / Animation Prototyping
User Research
Visualization Design
Visual Design