Whereas previously the main requirement for a designer was knowledge of composition, typography, and layout, now design has moved to digital. In terms of composition and graphic solutions, the same rules apply here. But the digital environment poses new challenges to the designer, and to solve them you need specialists who understand not only the design, but also the technology.
Web designer
A web designer can be called a universal specialist. His tasks include developing layouts for web pages, and he can come up with a small landing page, and draw the design of an entire online store. It all depends on his experience and skills. The owners of large projects are turning to web designers if they want to supplement their project with new pages, consistent with the basic layout. It is also web designers who make promotional pages and websites of small companies.
For this work, the web designer must know the basic graphic editors, as well as knowing the basics of layout, to understand how the layout will work in a browser. Some web designers know how to layout themselves, and this is a very useful skill. At the same time, a web designer may not know how to analyze and research – all the necessary data he receives from customers, and some are only important to the appearance of the site.
UX/UI designer
UX/UI is a term from the digital environment, although it describes phenomena that came from the offline world. Until recently, there was only the concept of “ergonomics” – the convenience of human use of industrial design objects. For example, a chair should be comfortable and an iron should lie well in the hand. UX stands for User Experience, and we can say that UX is responsible for the ergonomics of digital products.
Product designer.
We are all used to convenient services that help solve many simple everyday problems over the phone or computer: find out the weather forecast, order food delivery from the supermarket, study online or even control the robot vacuum cleaner without leaving the couch. A product designer is someone who designs digital products that solve user problems and bring profit to the business.
Unlike the professionals listed above, a product designer is less directly involved in drawing layouts. He supervises prototyping, MVP (Minimal Viable Product) development – the initial version of a product which has only basic functions, and its further development. He also does research and analytics that help identify user experience design flaws and make the product more usable at the start.
The Product Designer is the center of the product team: he serves as a liaison between the design, development, and marketing departments, conducts meetings and appointments, and tracks project milestones. This is a management position, so this job requires a large pool of knowledge.
