UX Designer Job Description

Key skills

Responsibilities

• • Plan and conduct user research studies including interviews, usability tests, and surveys
• • Synthesize research findings into personas, journey maps, and prioritized insight reports
• • Design user flows and information architecture that minimize cognitive load and task completion time
• • Create wireframes and interactive prototypes at appropriate fidelity for testing and stakeholder alignment
• • Conduct heuristic evaluations and identify usability problems in existing and new product areas
• • Define and track usability metrics such as task completion rate, time on task, and error rate
• • Ensure all designed experiences meet accessibility standards and inclusive design principles
• • Advocate for user needs in product planning discussions and push back on decisions that compromise usability

Requirements

• • 3+ years of UX design experience with a research-heavy portfolio
• • Demonstrable experience planning and executing a range of user research methods in a product context
• • Strong information architecture and user flow design skills, with evidence of simplifying complex workflows
• • Proficiency in wireframing and prototyping tools with a focus on communicating structure and interaction
• • Experience conducting usability tests, synthesizing findings, and translating them into design improvements
• • Clear communication skills for presenting research findings and design rationale to non-design stakeholders

Nice to have

• • Experience with quantitative usability research, including task-based benchmarking studies
• • Knowledge of eye-tracking or other biometric usability measurement methods
• • Background in cognitive psychology, human-computer interaction, or a related academic discipline
• • Experience with remote unmoderated usability testing platforms such as UserTesting or Maze
• • Experience designing complex enterprise or data-dense workflows where information architecture is the primary challenge
• • A track record of running and defending a research repository that keeps insights reusable across teams

What to look for in a great UX Designer

The best UX designers are methodologically rigorous and intellectually humble — they design hypotheses, not solutions, and they let user evidence change their minds. In portfolio reviews, look for candidates who describe the research that informed their design decisions, not just the final screens. Strong UX hires are comfortable with ambiguity and can structure a research plan for a poorly defined problem. They also balance idealism with pragmatism: they know the difference between a usability problem that will cause users to churn and one that is a minor inconvenience, and they prioritize accordingly.

Interview questions to ask a UX Designer

Ask the candidate to walk through a research study they designed and ran: what methods they chose, how they recruited participants, what they found, and what design decisions changed as a result. Ask them to critique the information architecture of a section of your product or a competitor's — observe how they structure the critique and what usability principles they reference. Ask how they would handle a situation where their research findings contradict the preferences of a senior stakeholder. Include a scenario exercise: ask them to plan a quick research sprint for a specific, ambiguous product question — this tests their ability to scope, choose methods, and define success criteria under time pressure.

Where to source UX Designers

UXPA (User Experience Professionals Association) and IxDA (Interaction Design Association) communities surface practitioners with strong methodological foundations. Nielsen Norman Group alumni networks and training communities attract UX professionals with structured research training. Academic programs in human-computer interaction, cognitive science, and information science produce strong UX researcher candidates. LinkedIn searches filtering by specific research methods (usability testing, contextual inquiry, tree testing) help identify specialists. Look for candidates who have published case studies describing their full research process — this is a much stronger signal than visual portfolio pieces for UX-focused roles.

Red flags when hiring a UX Designer

A portfolio full of polished screens but no research is the most common warning sign. If a candidate cannot explain what problem a project solved, who the users were, and how they validated the solution, you are likely looking at a visual designer mislabelled as UX. Watch for people who describe usability tests they never ran, or who present redesigns without evidence the original was broken. Vague answers to "what did you learn that surprised you" suggest research was decorative rather than decision-making. Also be wary of designers who dismiss accessibility or treat developer constraints as someone else's problem, since UX intent that cannot ship helps nobody.

Structuring the UX Designer interview loop

A strong loop separates research thinking from craft. Start with a portfolio walkthrough where the candidate picks two projects and narrates the problem, method, and outcome. Follow with a whiteboard or take-home exercise that gives a fuzzy user problem rather than a UI to prettify, so you can watch them ask questions, map a flow, and justify trade-offs. Add a research-methods conversation covering when they would run a diary study versus a quick usability test. Finally, include a cross-functional session with an engineer and a product manager to check how they handle pushback and scope. Score each stage against research rigour, systems thinking, and collaboration, not aesthetics alone.