User experience (UX) design—the field responsible for a platform’s smooth (and hopefully, delightful) functionality—is evolving at a rapid clip. New specializations are emerging all the time in areas like user research, design, copywriting and product strategy. Should things continue the way they’re headed, these opportunities will only continue to grow. In the AI era, UX design is fast becoming one of the most sought-after professions.
In fact, it’s looking like the AI takeover could be a good thing for UX designers: it creates demand for people who can build sophisticated, AI-powered digital products. (I should know, I’m a product and UX designer myself.) As a result, expect talent battles for top product designers to be hyper competitive—and that could mean an increase in both hourly rates and total compensation.
If you're a seasoned UX’er and want to see where you can take your career next, this guide is for you. It outlines the top six careers within the UX world, their tasks and salary expectations, and has practical tips on leveraging your AI skills and getting a better UX design salary for your next gig.
See the day-to-day tasks and salaries of these UX design jobs:
1. UX designer
Legendary designer and researcher Don Norman first coined the term "user experience" in the 1990s to describe all aspects of the user's interaction with the company and its products. But more specifically, a UX designer is responsible for creating a smooth interaction between the user and the product. The goal of user experience design is fundamental to any product: to create functional, reliable, usable and enjoyable products.
UX designers need to find the sweet spot between user needs and business needs, and they have to consider all elements that make up the user experience in order to make that happen. As a result, they often bridge the gap between the product team and stakeholders. Typically, UX designers report to design directors or a chief design officer.
Daily tasks of UX designer include:
Learning the business requirements of a product. Learn the business goals and conduct competitor analysis to understand the product niche and identify opportunities.
Conduct user research. Find out who the target users are and understand what their needs are in relation to a product that is designed.
Defining the information architecture of a future product. Label content and create meaningful content structures for users.
Designing scenarios of interaction. When UX designers solve a particular design problem, they need to consider the user’s entire journey. It helps them better understand how a product fits in the user's daily life and define more realistic scenarios of interaction, or user personas.
Creating wireframes or low-fidelity mockups. Set out the bare-bones blueprints for the future product, and help guide UI designers so that they can turn the low-fidelity design into a pixel-perfect mockup.
Conducting usability testing. Collect feedback from actual or potential users on how easy or hard it is to use a product and find areas of improvement.
Salary
As with most jobs on our list, a UX designer salary varies based on how much experience you have and the company you work for and your location. If you have a senior UX designer role (i.e., 3-5 years experience) and work in large tech companies, you can negotiate a better salary. The average salary for a UX Designer is $116k per year in the United States, according to Glassdoor, with a salary range between $81k and $165k per year. Zip Recruiter shows a $98,816 per year salary, ranging between $45k to $155k.
2. UI designer
A UI designer defines a product's look and feel and creates its user interface—the point of interaction between the user and a product. This medium can be visual (like a graphical user interface), vocal (like a voice-based user interface) or haptic (like a tactile user interface). When it comes to websites and mobile apps, UI designers design the actual screen or page layouts and interactive elements, like animated effects. If you’re wowed by a site design, you have them to thank.
UI designers typically work closely with UX designers. UX designers prepare low-fidelity wireframes, and UI designers turn them into high-fidelity designs that are both consistent and aesthetic. UI designers also work closely with developers to turn mockups or prototypes into fully-fledged products.
Daily tasks of UI designer include:
Conducting design research. Look into the design solutions already available on the market to find the design direction for the future product.
Crafting high-fidelity mockups for individual screens. Create the pixel-perfect design of future pages and screens and turn them into working prototypes by adding any needed animated effects and visual transitions.
Creating responsive design. Adapt the final design to various screens and resolutions.
Handing off design to the development team. Support developers with the implementation of the design, and create style guides and design systems.
How can UI designers use AI to become more lucrative candidates?
You’ll have to master your generative design skills for a competitive advantage over other UI designers. You’ve likely heard of generative AI at this point; generative design is an emerging UI design field that uses AI tools like Midjourney and Open AI’s Dall-E 3 to generate graphic assets like images, graphics, icons and UI designs. (I’ve used tools like these to generate code for user registration forms, for instance.) Wix Studio has AI tools like an image, text and code creator available in its editor.
Generative design is super valuable during ideation: it can help clear mental blocks and speed up the process at the same time. You can use AI to create variations of a design by inputting specific prompts, and then use these designs as inspiration in the product ideation stage.
Salary
The average salary for a UI Designer is $99k per year in the United States, ranging from $76k and $129k, according to Glassdoor. As you can see, it's slightly less than UX designer salary, but it's vital to mention that design-driven companies like Apple are willing to pay more than average for UI designers. Indeed shows slightly lower average salary for UI designers— $89k per year.
3. UX/UI designer
To create the best possible product, UX and UI design need to go hand-in-hand and complement each other. But with two different people responsible for two domains, it can be really hard to find a balance between them.
At first glance, a UX/UI designer role seems like an obvious solution, since this person has a versatile skill set that could, in theory, tackle both roles in a cohesive way. But both UX and UI design are complex fields, and in real life, it’s hard to find someone who has the same level of expertise in both areas. So while most UX/UI designers will have some of the daily tasks of both roles, their expertise will lean more towards one or the other.
Salary
According to Glassdoor, the average salary for a UX/UI designer is $93k per year in the United States (ranging between $72k and $122k).
You may wonder why UX/UI designers earn less than UX designers (despite the fact that UX/UI designers have more responsibilities). That’s because UX/UI designers tend to be more popular within small and mid-sized companies, because larger companies tend to separate the UX and UI design roles. And that means a UX/UI designer salary is limited by the budgets of smaller companies.
But the role is a good stepping stone if you want to gain more practical experience in two different specializations. If you continue to build on this experience, you can become a strong candidate for a senior UX or senior UI designer role a few years down the road.
4. UX writer
In Bill Gates’ now-famous 1996 essay, "Content is King," the computer programmer put his chips on the written word. "Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet," Gates wrote. It's still relevant today. The quality of content defines the quality of the user experience, and the quality of user experience defines whether or not the users will want to use your product again.
The UX writer role is relatively new; it emerged in response to a growing need for user-focused content in digital products. UX writers are responsible for in-product text that’s clear, easy to understand, and that significantly improves a user’s product experience. They should use plain language, avoid jargon, simplify complex concepts, and make sure there’s a consistent tone of voice. Put simply, write text that you’d like to read.
Sometimes the role of UX writer overlaps with marketing writer roles, so you should know the difference. A UX writer creates content for people who already use a product (like writing content to improve the experience of existing customers). A marketing writer writes promo copy for potential customers (like writing text for ad campaigns).
The UX writer role is most relevant to large companies with dedicated design departments. In small and midsize companies, UX designers also tend to work on content.
Daily tasks of UX writer include:
Conducting user research. Understand who the user is, what they read and how they speak. This information helps UX writers find the relevant tone and voice.
Defining the product tone of voice. Define the product’s communication style. A proper tone of voice improves user experience, since it feels more natural for the target audience.
Managing content development. Write both microcopy (like short sentences such as labels and help text) and macrocopy (like informational messages in products and non-promo text on website pages).
Salary
According to Glassdoor, the average UX writer salary in the US is $91k (ranging between $69K and $124k). Interestingly, the UX/UI designer salary is almost equal to the UX writer salary. Zip recruiter gives a slightly different average salary—$81k per year. The salary ranges from $28k to $137k. That’s an incredibly huge range, so be sure to check the salary for your specific area and level of expertise.
Will ChatGPT and other AI chatbots kill the UX writer role?
There’s a worry in the design world that AI tools will make some roles redundant, and that AI chill is especially strong among UX writers.
It’s easy to see why this segment of the industry might see tools like ChatGPT as a threat— AI chatbots can generate text in no time. And it’s true, ChatGPT can be a helpful resource. But I don’t see it replacing UX writers any time soon.
That’s because a UX writer doesn’t just generate text. Seasoned UX writers understand the subtle nuances of the product they're working on. The role is strategic. It requires understanding user needs, creating a cohesive and engaging user experience and adapting content based on user feedback.
Like UI designers, UX writers should add AI tools to their toolboxes. Tools like ChatGPT can help UX writers work faster and find new ways to communicate with users. And if there’s generated text you don’t like, modify it with a follow-up prompt, or simply leave it in the dustbin of chatbot history.
5. UX researcher
Research is a cornerstone of product design: it's pretty much impossible to create a product that will perform well in the market if you don't invest in it. That’s where UX researchers come in. They dedicate their entire time to researching the functionality of a product; learning user behavior and finding out what kinds of problems and pain points users come up against and how to solve them.
Successful UX researchers typically have strong data analysis skills, and might have a background in psychology (or a similar field) so they can conduct research and analyze data to the letter, helping the team reach critical product design decisions.
UX researchers work closely with all other team members, including UX designers, UI designers and UX writers, and share insights about user behavior with them.
Daily tasks of UX researcher include:
Mapping user research. Conduct rich research to identify target users and the problems they face. User interviews, usability testing and online surveys are just a few tools that UX researchers use to better learn about users.
Competitor analysis. Conduct market research by analyzing the experience of other products available on the market, and identifying their strengths and weaknesses. They then use that information to create a more compelling experience for their own users.
Mapping out user journey. Help the team consider all aspects of the user's journey, including all channels, aka where interactions between a user and the product takes place. (If your product is a website, for instance, then a channel would be a mobile phone with a browser).
Creating reports and conducting presentations. Analyze findings and distill them into actionable suggestions.
Salary
UX researcher salary in the US ranges from $96K to $145k with an average of $117k per year (according to Glassdoor). Indeed gives $76k as an average salary for UX researcher in the US.
How can UX researchers differentiate themselves using AI?
Time to market is a critical metric in product design. The faster you bring your concept to market, the higher the chance you’ll acquire large customer segments.
One new way UX researchers can decrease that time is by using AI tools to analyze large data segments, which speeds up the analysis process and helps find product insights faster.
My favorite tool for this is Claude. You can upload up to 150,000 words, or 500 pages, of text content. That means you could upload a novel-sized document, like hundreds of user interview transcripts, to an AI chatbot and ask it to summarize the document. It can be a huge time-saver.
6. UX strategist
The role of the UX strategist varies drastically depending on the organization. Generally, the UX strategist position is a multi-faceted role that combines product design and project management.
Like UX designers, UX strategists work at the intersection of user needs and business goals. Typically, a UX strategist has a UX design background, and can act as a user advocate: communicating user needs to business stakeholders at the company, so that they better understand how important it is to have great UX.
Daily tasks of UX strategist include:
Work closely with stakeholders to define product goals. The UX strategist understands business goals and connects them to users' needs through product design.
Collaboration and communication with product team members. The UX strategist builds bridges between different departments, like development and design, and communicates product design decisions.
Planning design activities. These could include user research, UI design, prototyping and usability testing to name a few.
Salary
A UX strategist salary ranges from $99K to $148K, with an average of $121k per year, according to Glassdoor.
Ziprecruiter is a smidge higher, with $139k per year as the average salary for UX strategists.
Tips for getting the UX design salary you want
Now when you have a better understanding of UX design fields, let’s get into some practical tips to help you get a better UX design salary.
Use these actionable tips to negotiate a better salary:
Research salaries in your area. The salary you can expect will depend largely on where you live. Large metropolitan areas or tech hubs like San Francisco or New York offer more career opportunities and larger salaries.
Look at several different sources. Review Glassdoor, Indeed, Zip Recruiter and LinkedIn to get a richer sense of the competitive salary range in your area.
Diversify your skill set. Your level of expertise plays a tremendous role in how much money you can expect. Generally, the more experience you have in across design disciplines, the more valuable as a professional you become for a company that will hire you, especially if it is looking for versatile and adaptable designers.
Gain practical experience working with AI. AI tools are quickly becoming an essential part of designers' tookit. You need to bake AI tools in your design process and practice prompt engineering (the art and craft of writing effective prompts).
If you're working as a UX writer, try ChatGPT and Claude. If practicing UI design, try Midjourney and Dall-e 3 for idea generation.
Create a strong portfolio. Think of your portfolio as an investment you make in yourself. The better you showcase your projects, the better your opportunity for a higher salary. Now, the format. A website is easy to share and makes your work searchable—potential clients can come to you. A PDF of your work can be curated for specific clients or interviews. It doesn’t hurt to have both.
Improve your communication and organizational skills. Both are essential tools of a UX professional's toolkit. Communication defines the success (or failure) of any design process. Try a free course, like this one by Coursera, to get started.
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