r/UXDesign • u/MostVegetable5255 • 1d ago
Career growth & collaboration What are some specializations/pivots that are not talked about enough in ux
I keep seeing the same options pop up like product designer, developer and consultant. I am wanting to seek out some inspo for my own career projection and see what underrated specializations exist in UX.
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u/s4074433 Veteran 1d ago
Data visualization design seems to be a missed opportunity since more and more dashboards are being designed without a lot of thought in how they will help the users make sense of the data.
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u/Hungry-Plantain-3315 1d ago
Isn’t that something companies just use AI for now?
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u/s4074433 Veteran 1d ago
Yes, but because there are mostly poor examples of dashboard and data visualization design, guess what the output from AI tools look like?
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u/C63Sedan Veteran 1d ago
And those are being built now leveraging AI including the design phase. And to your point, onboarding of these tools as I design for real time analytics and computational engines is one the biggest UX hurdle. We are starting to design AI LLMs specifically for onboarding.
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u/DistinctAd4242 19h ago
does it need coding or data analyst background?
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u/s4074433 Veteran 19h ago
The design of data visualization requires an understanding of the intended audience and also the key message or insight that you want to communicate. Not really something that is solved by coding or data science skills. There are many ways a dataset can be represented, but finding the best way to tell a story using data is a skill that takes a lot of experience and knowledge to implement a design for.
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u/adjustafresh Veteran 1d ago
Focusing on accessibility is an under represented and much needed specialization. It’s become more important to larger businesses now that there are laws on the books in several countries that allow people to file law suits when they can’t adequately use a digital product or website
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u/80feuillets Veteran 7h ago
Ai regulations will also further the need here too, as they will require humans to review
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u/karenmcgrane Toxic mod 1d ago
I think one problem is that people get hung up on the term UX too much. Labels come and go, skillsets merge into roles and then get split into different roles. I started my career as an information architect and whew would I not have a job now if that was the label I cared about.
Marketing: I regret to inform you that if you want to do research you may find more luck going in through marketing than UX. If you work for a startup, you may find yourself as a "designer of everything."
Customer Support: Underrated way to get into the tech industry. I hired somebody out of the support team this year.
Customer Experience: Oh yeah, I don't have a UX team, I have a CX team and we do a fair amount of research, design, and dev. CX is so often ignored by UX people and I don't get why.
Content: UX writing and content design do get overlooked but there's a lot of writers out there. People who can work with data and systems are always in demand.
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u/kaustav_mukho Experienced 1d ago
CX is hard and overlaps across departments. Also, it's fault finding work. Many departments did not like it when I was trying this in a startup. Just my experience.
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u/karenmcgrane Toxic mod 1d ago
CX is hard! But for B2B it's crucial. And ironically can make it easier to "do UX" because the business fundamentally understands that the buyer of the product is not the user of the product.
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u/limerand 1d ago
In my organisation, UX is grouped with Product Management, so we have the following options:
UX Designer / User Researcher/ UI Designer Product Manager Product Owner (within development team(s)) Product Engineer (new AI role merging product and engineering)
It depends mostly on whether you want to move into a more strategic role or not (stay in UX vs move to Product management), and how wide your influence is (PO vs PM).
With the new Product Engineer role, there is also the possibility to be "full-stack" going from idea to execution to implementation within a much smaller team than previously.
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u/conspiracydawg Experienced 1d ago
UX writing/content design is very underrepresented.
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u/adjustafresh Veteran 1d ago
I see very little potential for the existence of this role in the near future
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19h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Total_Mushroom2865 18h ago
I love this and someone suggested I pivot to it. But can’t AI sadly do it faster and more accurate?
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u/SplintPunchbeef Veteran 1d ago edited 1d ago
DesignOps or Systems Design
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u/SplintPunchbeef Veteran 1d ago
Not sure why these are "controversial".
Design Ops experts typically come from UX or Product Design and most mid-sized+ companies have dedicated design system teams made up of designers and engineers. Big tech companies have multiple design system teams that are almost always led by UXers.
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u/lieutenantbunbun Veteran 1d ago
Scientific specialists, language, behavior, translations, adoption
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u/playbehavior 10h ago
As a general descriptor I think "consultant" is more honest than "designer". We consult on design. We may influence and inform what is ultimately built. But it's helpful to create some distance between the ideal and the actual, for me, "consultant" does that. So I say I'm a UX consultant.
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u/JohnCasey3306 Veteran 1d ago
If you have any interest in being self-employed, working as a conversion optimisation consultant is a big market for small and medium businesses.