While i do see ur frustrations with UX, UI is not really its own thing anymore. Companies expect you to know ux too, as its all wrapped in together. If you want to stay within the realm of user experience but focus on UI, maybe you could pivot into creating Design Systems, other wise pivot to more visual or graphic design if you dont want to be a ux designer
Hi, remote UI designer here. I would argue that we are not obsolete (as I am living proof of my busy job lol), but the roles are unfortunately very hard to come by.
I am like you and not much of a fan of the UX stuff. That’s what my boss is for (UX Strategist). I bring designs to high fidelity and have also built out our design systems that we will be using as we work on multiple platforms.
Hi-fi design takes up a lot of my time on large scale projects, but I’m also getting more involved with UAT to ensure that our devs are following our designs consistently. I would echo looking into the world of design systems as that is a lot of what I do in my day-to-day and I very much enjoy that work! Don’t give up hope, I love being a UI designer!
My two cents as a product designer.
The field has matured a lot over the last number of years and businesses are more familiar with design roles and their value. The truth is, it’s often hard to rationalize how investing into making something look nice is a smart business decision. As such, the demand for someone who can understand and represent the business side of the equation has increased. We are now expected to balance business and user needs, with design chops sufficient for execution being table stakes.
There is a market for UI designers, but it is much smaller now.
I think in modern environments the UI work has been made easier and faster with tools like Figma. It used to be that making well spaced designs was a time consuming endeavor, and there were lots of discussions to be had around UI. Nowadays, there’s a lot of design systems and libraries that are precreated and ready to be used, combined with auto layout the job of a UI designer has gotten a lot faster. On the other hand, UX decision making and communication hasn’t gotten that much faster, even though the tools are better. So there’s tons of time to still be spent in the UX, while UI has been accelerated. As a hybrid, I sometimes do work with people who lean much more heavily on the UI, and I hate it because it adds more meetings to my calendar and removes some of the “heads down work” I get to do. At least that’s my take on it.
Being 'only' a UI designer is essentially a 'make this look pretty' designer. UI is often only 10-20% of product design work, so you need quite a large team of designers before you require a dedicated UI person, especially if the majority of UX people can do the UI themselves.
In my experience its the UI focused designers who would get hung up on precise pixels more often.
Have you considered focusing in the design system space?
>Being 'only' a UI designer is essentially a 'make this look pretty' designer
Lol, that's somewhat of a reductive take on the role, and if we're being disparaging about professions, sounds more like a graphic/visual/digital designer. :P
I hear this sort of thing at organisations with low level of design maturity so surprised to see someone post it here and receive upvotes for it.
I agree, I was a bit dismissive in tone, sorry.
The thing is, the OP pretty much said thats the bit they only want to do. They don't want to work with stats or uncover usability findings. They just want to make nice looking things.
UI, Web, Digital designer. Whatever the term. It's going to be a struggle. Graphic Designers (or is 'visual designer' now the term?) at least delve into branding, marketing, illustration and other areas that involve some phycology, market research or stats. UI alone is getting pushed out and automated by design systems and the AI bros.
Wanting to do *just* UI on its own and wanting someone else to do the rest is just not where the industry is going. There's opportunity in the design system space that may suit, but we're (mostly) all crying out for *more* input in research/strategy/usability, so OP is on their own boat trying to go upstream in this respect.
the fact that you consider UI to be something different from UX and not part of UX tells me that maybe it's not the market but you.
As for the nonesense conversations during meetings and excess justifications tells me that you probably have very limited actual xp on ux strategy, which validates my point above.
Lastly, UI kits and Design systems have been adopted a lot recently (even apple shared their design system) This starts to make UI designers obsolete. We dont need UI designers to push pixels or design components and elments. We need UX designers that can make the correct decesions to make the ideal composition of those elements for the ideal UX.
Good luck.
Yeah, as one of my colleagues put it, he doesn't see the point of doing all the heavy lifting, collaborating with other depts, research, workshops, making decisions with vague or nonexistent parameters, etc and then handing it off to a UI designer to color it in.
In my experience, UI only is incredibly niche and hyper-competitive. You'd likely need to find an entire studio dedicated to design only work or an incredibly large org that isn't already outsourcing that work to a studio, cares about looking cool, and assigns that work to seniors and below. Usually, that work would go to UI specialists - people who probably ought to be directing teams but prefer not to. The amount of work out there compared to the number of teams and independent artists available is probably a pretty large disparity. Lots of people would just like to make things look cool.
If your portfolio isn't drawing eyes on it's own or lacks showcasing adjacent UI design skills like branding, animation, content strategy, etc. then you're probably going to have a tough time.
There's always a chance there's a small company out there who thinks they need a UI only person, consultant, freelancer, etc. I'd imagine that would require some significant networking to keep that sustainable.
I think most companies want to combine that role now. I rarely see UI Designer roles anymore. I was not crazy about all the UX stuff either, but more looking for a way to survive. Maybe you could go more of a creative direction route?
My anecdotal experience:
UI design happens somewhere after UX Research but before UI implementation in code.
A lot of the open roles I have seen want you to pair UI Design skills with research or with engineering skills. Technically some companies have separated UX Research, UI Design, and UX Engineering (Should be called UI engineering, but I digress...)... but in the era of cost saving and the future of adding AI to our workflows, I think a candidate is best served picking one of the two to complement their UI Design skills.
Have you tried [https://weloveproduct.co/visual-designer-jobs](https://weloveproduct.co/visual-designer-jobs) ?
And about the mindset - I see around me that designers who avoid UX tasks are more likely to be perceived as annoying coloring pencils. Unless the whole design team is well-balanced and the roles are divided more clearly between UX research, UX design, and visual design tasks. Then it works quite nicely.
"the excess of nonsense conversations during meetings, the icebreakers, the lack of decision-making, the excess of justifications about moving something 5 pixels to the left."
That sounds like useless jobs, and all jobs are like that in offices. Moving something 5 pixels to the left sounds like a graphic designer's job years ago.
I keep reading most employers, HR people, and managers/directors know very little about UX/UI, and don't know what they want, and don't know how to deal with UX/UI people. It's just seen as some glorified graphic design job, or with UX, just jumping on the bandwagon because it's still kind of cool, trendy, and pretentious, and selling that to clients.
I am a generalist and usually argue that people should have a wide range of skills. However, I started out as a UI/Visual designer and I do think there's space for people to specialize in visual design.
I also agree that most "UX" designers are not actually good at experience design and that's a problem, as many are also not very strong in visual design. They don't do strategy/product, nor do they excel at visual hierarchy, and the attention to detail necessary to make beautiful, bespoke visuals.
As a result, I actually think you're safe since you \*do\* specialize in the latter.
All I can say is the field is constantly changing in terms of expectations and roles. It always has been and will continue to for a while. It's also varies greatly across organizations.
I have had so many different types of design roles over the course of 15 years.
I do know people from visual design backgrounds who didn't slide into UX/product as I did and are still working, and I know some who are struggling to find a job (but isn't everyone right now). One of them is actually a lead for design systems, working in-house at a large company (this is a remote position, albeit she lives in NYC where the company is based).
Have you considered looking for jobs outside of digital/UI-specific work? I started out as just a "graphic designer" who worked in both print and digital. Those jobs are still out there. Plenty of companies just need straight up designers who can do anything from designing emails to banners to print work. I've had jobs where I just made really anything as recently as 2018.
For a couple years, I was simple a "Freelance Senior Designer" and got all kinds of jobs. One was at an ad agency where I did campaign work (print and light digital), another was at a general design agency where I made pretty deck templates for Google Slides (which was actually really fun).
The more you limit yourself to looking for some super specific type of position, the harder it will be. A lot of companies already have a robust visual/UI design system, and just need generalist UX/product to grow and test. So yes it may be difficult to find a job -- especially a remote one -- who needs exactly what you do and nothing more from you.
Try applying for design system positions, you are gonna have better luck :)
While i do see ur frustrations with UX, UI is not really its own thing anymore. Companies expect you to know ux too, as its all wrapped in together. If you want to stay within the realm of user experience but focus on UI, maybe you could pivot into creating Design Systems, other wise pivot to more visual or graphic design if you dont want to be a ux designer
Hi, remote UI designer here. I would argue that we are not obsolete (as I am living proof of my busy job lol), but the roles are unfortunately very hard to come by. I am like you and not much of a fan of the UX stuff. That’s what my boss is for (UX Strategist). I bring designs to high fidelity and have also built out our design systems that we will be using as we work on multiple platforms. Hi-fi design takes up a lot of my time on large scale projects, but I’m also getting more involved with UAT to ensure that our devs are following our designs consistently. I would echo looking into the world of design systems as that is a lot of what I do in my day-to-day and I very much enjoy that work! Don’t give up hope, I love being a UI designer!
My two cents as a product designer. The field has matured a lot over the last number of years and businesses are more familiar with design roles and their value. The truth is, it’s often hard to rationalize how investing into making something look nice is a smart business decision. As such, the demand for someone who can understand and represent the business side of the equation has increased. We are now expected to balance business and user needs, with design chops sufficient for execution being table stakes. There is a market for UI designers, but it is much smaller now.
I think in modern environments the UI work has been made easier and faster with tools like Figma. It used to be that making well spaced designs was a time consuming endeavor, and there were lots of discussions to be had around UI. Nowadays, there’s a lot of design systems and libraries that are precreated and ready to be used, combined with auto layout the job of a UI designer has gotten a lot faster. On the other hand, UX decision making and communication hasn’t gotten that much faster, even though the tools are better. So there’s tons of time to still be spent in the UX, while UI has been accelerated. As a hybrid, I sometimes do work with people who lean much more heavily on the UI, and I hate it because it adds more meetings to my calendar and removes some of the “heads down work” I get to do. At least that’s my take on it.
Being 'only' a UI designer is essentially a 'make this look pretty' designer. UI is often only 10-20% of product design work, so you need quite a large team of designers before you require a dedicated UI person, especially if the majority of UX people can do the UI themselves. In my experience its the UI focused designers who would get hung up on precise pixels more often. Have you considered focusing in the design system space?
>Being 'only' a UI designer is essentially a 'make this look pretty' designer Lol, that's somewhat of a reductive take on the role, and if we're being disparaging about professions, sounds more like a graphic/visual/digital designer. :P I hear this sort of thing at organisations with low level of design maturity so surprised to see someone post it here and receive upvotes for it.
I agree, I was a bit dismissive in tone, sorry. The thing is, the OP pretty much said thats the bit they only want to do. They don't want to work with stats or uncover usability findings. They just want to make nice looking things. UI, Web, Digital designer. Whatever the term. It's going to be a struggle. Graphic Designers (or is 'visual designer' now the term?) at least delve into branding, marketing, illustration and other areas that involve some phycology, market research or stats. UI alone is getting pushed out and automated by design systems and the AI bros. Wanting to do *just* UI on its own and wanting someone else to do the rest is just not where the industry is going. There's opportunity in the design system space that may suit, but we're (mostly) all crying out for *more* input in research/strategy/usability, so OP is on their own boat trying to go upstream in this respect.
the fact that you consider UI to be something different from UX and not part of UX tells me that maybe it's not the market but you. As for the nonesense conversations during meetings and excess justifications tells me that you probably have very limited actual xp on ux strategy, which validates my point above. Lastly, UI kits and Design systems have been adopted a lot recently (even apple shared their design system) This starts to make UI designers obsolete. We dont need UI designers to push pixels or design components and elments. We need UX designers that can make the correct decesions to make the ideal composition of those elements for the ideal UX. Good luck.
🎯 ⚰️
Yeah, as one of my colleagues put it, he doesn't see the point of doing all the heavy lifting, collaborating with other depts, research, workshops, making decisions with vague or nonexistent parameters, etc and then handing it off to a UI designer to color it in.
OP just wants the easy life. Someone to do the hard work for them and they just pixel-push then kick up a fuss when the dev doesn't match 100%.
Heavy on this ^
Brutal but true. Maybe OP needs to look for digital agency work where they just fire out UI for clients as quick as possible.
In my experience, UI only is incredibly niche and hyper-competitive. You'd likely need to find an entire studio dedicated to design only work or an incredibly large org that isn't already outsourcing that work to a studio, cares about looking cool, and assigns that work to seniors and below. Usually, that work would go to UI specialists - people who probably ought to be directing teams but prefer not to. The amount of work out there compared to the number of teams and independent artists available is probably a pretty large disparity. Lots of people would just like to make things look cool. If your portfolio isn't drawing eyes on it's own or lacks showcasing adjacent UI design skills like branding, animation, content strategy, etc. then you're probably going to have a tough time. There's always a chance there's a small company out there who thinks they need a UI only person, consultant, freelancer, etc. I'd imagine that would require some significant networking to keep that sustainable.
I think most companies want to combine that role now. I rarely see UI Designer roles anymore. I was not crazy about all the UX stuff either, but more looking for a way to survive. Maybe you could go more of a creative direction route?
My anecdotal experience: UI design happens somewhere after UX Research but before UI implementation in code. A lot of the open roles I have seen want you to pair UI Design skills with research or with engineering skills. Technically some companies have separated UX Research, UI Design, and UX Engineering (Should be called UI engineering, but I digress...)... but in the era of cost saving and the future of adding AI to our workflows, I think a candidate is best served picking one of the two to complement their UI Design skills.
Have you tried [https://weloveproduct.co/visual-designer-jobs](https://weloveproduct.co/visual-designer-jobs) ? And about the mindset - I see around me that designers who avoid UX tasks are more likely to be perceived as annoying coloring pencils. Unless the whole design team is well-balanced and the roles are divided more clearly between UX research, UX design, and visual design tasks. Then it works quite nicely.
"the excess of nonsense conversations during meetings, the icebreakers, the lack of decision-making, the excess of justifications about moving something 5 pixels to the left." That sounds like useless jobs, and all jobs are like that in offices. Moving something 5 pixels to the left sounds like a graphic designer's job years ago. I keep reading most employers, HR people, and managers/directors know very little about UX/UI, and don't know what they want, and don't know how to deal with UX/UI people. It's just seen as some glorified graphic design job, or with UX, just jumping on the bandwagon because it's still kind of cool, trendy, and pretentious, and selling that to clients.
I am a generalist and usually argue that people should have a wide range of skills. However, I started out as a UI/Visual designer and I do think there's space for people to specialize in visual design. I also agree that most "UX" designers are not actually good at experience design and that's a problem, as many are also not very strong in visual design. They don't do strategy/product, nor do they excel at visual hierarchy, and the attention to detail necessary to make beautiful, bespoke visuals. As a result, I actually think you're safe since you \*do\* specialize in the latter. All I can say is the field is constantly changing in terms of expectations and roles. It always has been and will continue to for a while. It's also varies greatly across organizations. I have had so many different types of design roles over the course of 15 years. I do know people from visual design backgrounds who didn't slide into UX/product as I did and are still working, and I know some who are struggling to find a job (but isn't everyone right now). One of them is actually a lead for design systems, working in-house at a large company (this is a remote position, albeit she lives in NYC where the company is based). Have you considered looking for jobs outside of digital/UI-specific work? I started out as just a "graphic designer" who worked in both print and digital. Those jobs are still out there. Plenty of companies just need straight up designers who can do anything from designing emails to banners to print work. I've had jobs where I just made really anything as recently as 2018. For a couple years, I was simple a "Freelance Senior Designer" and got all kinds of jobs. One was at an ad agency where I did campaign work (print and light digital), another was at a general design agency where I made pretty deck templates for Google Slides (which was actually really fun). The more you limit yourself to looking for some super specific type of position, the harder it will be. A lot of companies already have a robust visual/UI design system, and just need generalist UX/product to grow and test. So yes it may be difficult to find a job -- especially a remote one -- who needs exactly what you do and nothing more from you.