What a UX Career Looks Like Today

Summary: Our latest research on UX careers looks into specialization, explores unique backgrounds of practitioners entering the field, and details the skills and responsibilities needed to work in UX today.

We recently published the 2nd edition of our User Experience Careers report, 7 years after the 1st edition was published. Our report is free and a gift to the UX community.

The 2nd edition is based on several research studies carried out in 2019 and is based on responses from over 700 UX professionals . They included an online survey completed by 693 people, 2 focus groups, and 17 remote, semi-structured interviews, all carried out with UX professionals around the world.

What Hasn’t Changed?

UX practitioners are just as satisfied with their careers as they were in 2013; career satisfaction got an identical rating of 5.4 on a 1–7 scale (where 1 was completely dissatisfied, and 7 was completely satisfied). (The 95% confidence interval was from 5.27 to 5.46.) The comments around career satisfaction were grouped into these main reasons why people love their career in UX: