What is UX Design & Front-End Development?
User experience (UX) design is the process that design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. This involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability and function.
A UX Designer is focused on all aspects of a product’s development, including design, usability, function, and even branding and marketing. Their work touches the entire end-to-end journey of a user’s interaction with a product and includes identifying new opportunities for the product and business.
A front end developer has one general responsibility: to ensure that website visitors can easily interact with the page. They do this through the combination of design, technology and programming to code a website’s appearance, as well as taking care of debugging.
What 3rd level courses are available?
Universities and colleges in Ireland are offering courses in UX Design & Front-End Development in the following subject areas:
- UX Design: How to become a UX Designer – Learn what the relevant tools are for UX Designers as well as the ins & outs of building your career in UX Design.
- UX Design for Beginners – Gain an in-depth understanding of tools and techniques for effective usage of UX design and learn how to apply mental models and mapping, how to avoid common UX mistakes and apply UX and usability principles.
- UI/UX & Web Design using Adobe XD – Learn how to apply UI UX design tool and create the user interface and streamline the user experience.
- User Experience UX: Computer Design & Rapid Prototyping – This course is about learning how to counteract and avoid all the common mistakes in web design.
- Diploma in Front End Web Development – Upskill your existing skills as a web developer to a more advanced level including Client-Side JavaScript Programming for the web and a solid foundation in HTML and CSS code.
Studying UX Design & Front-End Development
There are many courses in UX Design & Front-End Development that may take place over a few days, weeks or even 1 year to 4 years depending on the course and modules selected. There are also part-time courses and night courses available so you can be sure to fit in your studies no matter what your schedule is like.
Courses will cover theory work through lectures, assignments, tutorials and taught modules. Assessments will take place on a continuous basis with written examinations and practical assignments combined in order to achieve a qualification.
You could also consider work experience or a work shadow in the industry. Your web design experience doesn’t need to be extensive and any experience, whether paid or voluntary, is useful. You could design websites in your own time for family or friends or embark on a summer internship or a placement year. The important thing is to develop a portfolio of work that can be shown to prospective employers and to keep up to date with the latest trends in web design.
Relevant work experience is a good way of demonstrating a genuine interest in the field and is regarded favourably by employers. Work Experience will not only give you the opportunity to obtain a deeper knowledge and understanding of the industry, but it will also give you a chance to do some essential networking with other industry professionals and gain valuable contacts for the future.
Career options
After completing a UX Design & Front-End Development course you will be able to get started in a career that uses specific knowledge of website design and development.
As web design is a multi-faceted role, the first few years of your career will probably be spent developing the variety of skills required to do the job. Being involved in the technical and graphical aspects of pages, you’ll determine not only the look of the website but how it works as well. You may also be responsible for the maintenance of an existing site.
The variety of industries that might employ web designers is potentially very large, as any organisation that has a website may recruit a web designer to work in-house or as a freelancer.
The main difference between employers is the type of work that might be expected. For example, working for a design agency will mean working on a variety of projects, with a range of clients in different industries. So the work will be very changeable and varied while working for an in-house team may mean less variation as you could be working on just one large website.
Working hours will depend on whether you are self-employed, employed by a company with set business hours or if you are contracted to various businesses or companies. You will generally work 9 am to 5 pm, Monday to Friday, but you might be required to work extra hours in the evenings or on weekends to meet deadlines. Some jobs may involve being on-call to deal with unexpected problems that need solving at any time, day or night.
As the equipment required to be a web designer is simply a computer, software and high-speed internet, you can work from almost any location. This lends itself very well to freelance work, being self-employed and working from home.
Related jobs include:
- UX designer
- UX researcher
- Applications developer
- Game developer
- Multimedia programmer
- Multimedia specialist
- SEO specialist
- Web content manager
- Web designer
- Web developer
- Database administrator
- Information systems manager
- IT sales professional
- Software engineer
- Software tester
- Systems analyst
- Technical author
Further study
After completing a course in UX Design & Front-End Development you may choose to pursue further study in a specialist field to increase your knowledge base and skill set. Postgraduate study can also be used as a means to change career focus or to gain professional qualifications required to practise in certain career areas such as Graphics, User interface design, Interactive design and Information architecture.
FAQ
What is the difference between UI and UX design?
While UI (User Interface) generally deals with the interaction between users and computer systems, software and applications, UX (User Experience) deals more generally with a user’s overall experience with a brand, product or service.
Where can I study UX Design & Front-End Development?
Explore your options here
Did You Know?
- The average attention span has decreased from 12 to 8 seconds, which means that as a web developer you will need to deliver the content to the audience in the shortest amount of time possible. Otherwise, you risk having a high bounce rate and the potential customer leaving to get what they need elsewhere.
- 73% of visitors are heavily influenced by video. YouTube has aided the explosion of online video, and some consumers opt for video over text where possible.
- Website experts know that a text-heavy page is great for SEO, but too much text is counter-productive for actual human readers. Huge chunks of text can look daunting to visitors. Instead, try using lists, bolding, and descriptive headers to make the text easier to skim.
- 50% of referral website visitors initially use the menu so it is very important that your menu does a great job of helping new visitors orient themselves. A cumbersome navigational menu can be highly frustrating and cause visitors to leave.
- 2.9 billion Google searches are executed every day.
Comments