Demography and background
Basic demography
Most of our respondents live in Budapest, the Hungarian capital. This should not mean that almost all Hungarian UX professionals live in Budapest, however, this indicates that most our findings are somewhat distorted because of the overrepresentation of people living in the capital.
As a curiosity, the survey was also responded by a few people working outside of Hungary. Their responses might distort averages, too, but it was considered wherever it was relevant.
| Residency | |
|---|---|
| In Budapest | 87,58% |
| In Hungary, outside of Budapest | 6,54% |
| Outside of Hungary | 5,88% |
The average age of the respondents is 31 years, 70% of them being between 25 and 35. We don't have many under 25 but 20% is over 35.
| Age distribution | |
|---|---|
| Under 25 years | 7,33% |
| 25-30 years | 36,67% |
| 31-35 years | 34,67% |
| 36-40 years | 12,67% |
| 41-45 years | 7,33% |
| Over 45 years | 1,33% |
Education and background
UX professionals typically have higher education, however, there is 23% who started working right after high school. The bottom line is, you don't necessarily need a degree to work in UX in Hungary, however, studying is always good for your career, of course.
| Highest level of education | |
|---|---|
| High school | 23,38% |
| Bachelor's degree | 22,08% |
| Master's degree | 45,45% |
| Postgraduate education | 6,49% |
| PhD | 2,60% |
UX people have a really diverse background based on their original field of study. Design, art, IT, and engineering are popular areas, however, if we look at the bigger picture, economics is the most popular background (including marketing, business studies, and so on).
The main takeaway here is that basically anyone can become a UX designer, it's not the background but rather the affinity and determination that matters. Among the repondents we have linguists, lawyers, political scientists, historians and even a cook and a locksmith!
| What was your original field of study? | |
|---|---|
| Design (media design, graphic design, industrial design, fine art, multimedia) | 26,57% |
| IT (programming, IT engineering) | 26,57% |
| Engineering (telecommunication, mechanical engineering, design engineering, industrial product design, architecture, technical engineering, typography) | 17,48% |
| Economics | 17,48% |
| Marketing | 9,09% |
| Communication (media, journalism) | 6,29% |
| Business (e-business, commerce, finance) | 5,59% |
| Liberal arts (cultural antropology, aesthetics) | 4,20% |
| Teaching | 4,20% |
| Psychology | 2,80% |
| Sociology | 2,80% |
Besides the studies, we were curious to learn what our respondents worked before becoming UX professionals. It comes as no surprise that the most popular previous job is graphic designer, followed by developers and project managers. Interestingly, quality assurance is relatively frequent as well. And when it comes to previous jobs, the complete list is super diverse again: we have former architects, teachers, PR people, writers, journalists, business analysts, HR people, economists, data analysts, researchers, typographers, financiers, and technicians.
| What job did you have prior to UX? | |
|---|---|
| Designer (web, graphic, print) | 48,82% |
| Developer (frontend, backend, full-stack, architect) | 20,47% |
| Project manager | 16,54% |
| Marketing professional | 7,09% |
| QA (tester, QA engineer, reliability engineer) | 3,94% |
| Consultant | 3,15% |
Sources of self-education
Unsuprisingly, respondents turn to the internet to learn about their profession: online magazines, blogs, and articles were mentioned by most. At the same time, two thirds of the participants claimed to learn from colleagues or friends which means the UX community is really supportive. Many UX professionals also read books and attend meetups to gain new skills.
Note that although not many named local courses as the source of knowledge, the number of such respondents still indicate that we have 33 respondents who became UX practitioners after attending one of the Hungarian UX courses.
| Where do you primarily seek out new skills? | |
|---|---|
| In blogs, online | 98,05% |
| From fellow UX people | 66,88% |
| In books | 60,39% |
| At meetups and events | 53,90% |
| In online courses | 43,51% |
| At conferences | 43,51% |
| In local (in-person) courses | 21,43% |
| At in-person courses abroad | 9,74% |
As reliable sources of information, participants named a few publication platforms (Medium.com, Behance, social media, and newsletters) and some specific sites as well. Traditional UX magazines are still popular (like A List Apart, UX Booth, Smashing Magazine, NNGroup articles) accompanied by product blogs (like InVision, Marvel, or Usabilla blog) and recently launched publications (like UXDesign.cc and UX Movement).
It's worth separately summarizing the following Hungarian sources mentioned in the study:
- UX Budapest Facebook group
- UX Studio blog
- Users First blog
- Hungarian UI/UX Designers Facebook group
- Mito Weekly newsletter
Activities, methods, and tools
Most of our respondents work as full-time employees, however, many of them have other responsibilities besides UX. Such respondents work as graphic designers, project managers, product designers and developers, however, and are consultants, researchers, and e-commerce professionals as well. It's also not unusual that managers take on UX responsibilities.
| Which employment type describes your position best? | |
|---|---|
| I'm a full-time UX employee | 46,26% |
| I'm a full-time employee with not just UX responsibilities | 38,10% |
| I only do UX as a hobby and in pet projects | 8,84% |
| I'm a UX freelancer | 6,80% |
Looking at experiences, the UX profession still seems pretty young in our region, with 80% having 6 years of experience or less. Repondents have 4 years of experience on average, and only a few people have been working in the UX area for more than 10 years.
| How long have you been working in the UX field? | |
|---|---|
| For less than 2 years | 22,52% |
| For 2-3 years | 34,44% |
| For 4-6 years | 26,49% |
| For 7-9 years | 7,95% |
| For 10 years or more | 8,61% |
Regarding activities, UX people design interfaces quite frequently, there's only 10% who never does this. Results are pretty similar for designing products and services which means that UX people are now supposed to have a holistic approach rather than just designing screens. A bit disappointing news might be that less than half of the respondents report having done any user research in the last two years.
| What responsibilities have you typically had in the last 2 years? | |
|---|---|
| Designing information architecture and/or user interfaces | 87,58% |
| Product or service design | 71,24% |
| Research | 46,41% |
| Account management with clients or partners | 37,91% |
| Team or general management | 26,80% |
| Education, mentoring (in courses or within team) | 24,18% |
| Workshop facilitation | 24,18% |
Research
Diving deeper into user research shows that more than 90% does usability testing from time to time, which sounds amazing (in contrast with the results of the previous question). The second most popular research method is analyzing users' data, followed by user interviewing. Heuristic research and card sorting are only done occasionally, however, almost half of the respondents have done them at least once in the last two years.
| How often have you done the following research tasks in the last 2 years? | Frquently | Occasionnally | Never |
|---|---|---|---|
| Usability testing | 46,71% | 45,39% | 7,89% |
| User data analysis | 34,87% | 46,05% | 19,08% |
| User interviewing | 30,26% | 51,97% | 17,76% |
| (Web)analytics | 30,26% | 43,42% | 26,32% |
| Stakeholder interviewing | 24,16% | 45,64% | 30,20% |
| Heuristic analysis | 17,22% | 43,05% | 39,74% |
| Remote user testing | 16,11% | 29,53% | 54,36% |
| Card sorting | 4,76% | 46,26% | 48,98% |
We expected a variety of tools and our respondents did not disappoint us as they mentioned dozens of methods, apps, and tools. The most common research platform is Google Analytics, used by half of the respondents. Hotjar got the second place, used by every third UX professional, even though it was only launched two years ago.
We should note that there's no single best tool according to the participants, most respondents use a few research tools together. A typical combination is Google Analytics and Hotjar, used by 25%.
| What tools do you use for use research? | |
|---|---|
| Google Analytics | 46,67% |
| Hotjar | 37,14% |
| InVision | 17,14% |
| Paper and pencil | 15,24% |
| OptimalSort | 12,38% |
| Optimal Workshop | 9,52% |
| Axure | 9,52% |
| Google Forms | 8,57% |
| Skype | 8,57% |
| Camtasia | 7,62% |
| Lookback | 7,62% |
| Post-it | 6,67% |
| Google Docs | 5,71% |
| Self-developed tool | 5,71% |
| UsabilityHub | 5,71% |
| UserTesting.com | 5,71% |
| QuickTime | 5,71% |
| Google Hangouts | 4,76% |
Here's a complete list of research tools mentioned in the responses along with links:
Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Marketing Cloud, Adobe XD, App Annie, Axure, Balsamiq, Camtasia, Capturly, Checkvist, Clicktale, Coggle, Confluence, Countly, Crazy Egg, Draw.io, Dscout, Ethn.io, Eye Tribe, Framer, FullStory, GatherContent, Google Analytics, Google Docs, Google Forms, Google Hangouts, Google Spreadsheet, GoToMeeting, Highlight, Hotjar, InVision, Koncept, Lookback, Loop11, MailChimp, Marvel, Maxymiser, Microsoft Excel, Mixpanel, Mouseflow, Movavi, Open Broadcaster Software, Optimal Workshop, Optimizely, PingPong, POP, Principle, RealtimeBoard, Reframer, Respondent.io, ScreenFlow, Sketch, Skype, Smartlook, Snagit, SPSS, SurveyMonkey, TeamViewer, Testbirds, Tobii, Trello, Typeform, UberConference, UsabilityHub, Usabilla, UserInterviews.com, UserTesting.com, UXPin, Validately, Vysor, Zoom.us
Design
When it comes to designing, web UI is still the number one responsibility of the UX designers, followed by prototyping. Since 90% claimed that they create prototypes at least occasionally, it's safe to say that the time of static mockups is now over. Mobile app design is really popular, and, surprisingly, way more people design native desktop apps than tablet ones. The "most occasional" design responsibility is copywriting that is done by half of the respondents from time to time.
Accessibility is a niche area for now (60% never works on that), however, in many teams it may not even be considered a UX responsibility. Designing non-digital experiences is a specific area, too, only a few people get to work on that area.
| How often have you done the following design activities in the last 2 years? | Frequently | Occasionally | Never |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web UI design | 69,74% | 20,39% | 9,87% |
| Prototyping | 59,60% | 33,11% | 7,28% |
| Information architecture | 42,76% | 46,05% | 11,18% |
| Product design | 47,02% | 32,45% | 20,53% |
| Interaction design | 39,19% | 43,24% | 17,57% |
| Mobil app design | 33,11% | 48,34% | 18,54% |
| Desktop app design | 42,38% | 23,84% | 33,77% |
| Copywriting | 23,03% | 55,26% | 21,71% |
| Service design | 17,22% | 39,07% | 43,71% |
| Tablet app design | 13,51% | 45,27% | 41,22% |
| Accessibility | 2,65% | 36,42% | 60,93% |
| Designing non-digital experiences | 6,00% | 26,00% | 68,00% |
For interface design, Sketch officially became the most popular software, it is now used by more than Photoshop or Axure. Respondents agree again that there's no perfect tool and most of them combine at least two when designing. Actually, Sketch with Photoshop is a popular combo, perhaps because they supplement each other, perhaps because older assets are still maintained in Photoshop. Anyway, let's not write off the Adobe products just yet.
| What tools and softwares do you use for user interface design? | |
|---|---|
| Sketch | 54,81% |
| Adobe Photoshop | 41,48% |
| Adobe Illustrator | 32,59% |
| Axure | 31,11% |
| Paper and pencil | 14,07% |
| Balsamiq | 9,63% |
| Adobe CC | 5,93% |
| Adobe XD | 5,93% |
| Microsoft Visio | 3,70% |
A comprehensive list of all the design tools mentioned by the respondents:
Adobe After Effects, Adobe Draw, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe XD, Affinity Designer, Axialis IconWorkshop, Axure, Balsamiq, Cacoo, Draw.io, Figma, Framer, Gimp, Inkscape, InVision, iRise, Microsoft Visio, MockFlow, Moqups, NinjaMock, OmniGraffle, Paint.net, Principle, Proto.io, ProtoSketch, Qt Form Designer, Sketch, UXPin
Prototyping
Good old Axure is still the most commonly used tool in this area, however, InVision and Marvel has definitely gained some significant market share recently.
It goes without saying that respondents like combinations in prototyping tools as well but they typically use fewer tools for prototyping than for designing or researching.
| What tools and softwares do you use for prototyping? | |
|---|---|
| Axure | 47,45% |
| InVision | 45,26% |
| Marvel | 22,63% |
| Paper and pencil | 13,14% |
| Principle | 12,41% |
| Sketch | 8,76% |
| HTML/CSS/JS | 8,03% |
| Balsamiq | 7,30% |
| Framer | 6,57% |
| Pixate | 5,84% |
| Proto.io | 5,84% |
| UXPin | 5,84% |
| Adobe XD | 4,38% |
| Adobe Illustrator | 3,65% |
| Adobe Photoshop | 3,65% |
| Flinto | 3,65% |
Here are all the prototyping tools mentioned:
Adobe Animate, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe XD, Affinity Designer, Axure, Balsamiq, Flinto, Framer, Hype, Inkscape, InVision, iRise, Justinmind, Marvel, Microsoft Powerpoint, Microsoft Visual Studio, MockFlow, Moqups, Origami, Pixate, POP, Principle, Proto.io, Qt, Sketch, UXPin, WireframeSketcher, Xcode, yEd, Zeplin
Output
All the aforementioned tools are primarily used to design desktop user interfaces, mostly for the web. Designing for mobile is almost as popular as desktop which might mean that the responsive design is a must now and everything has to be designed for different screen sizes.
Some respondents claimed to design for other platforms such as TVs and wearables, and a few even mentioned game consols, VR, and car interfaces.
| For which platforms have you designed in the last 2 years? | |
|---|---|
| Desktop | 95,36% |
| Mobile | 85,43% |
| Tablet | 66,23% |
| Non-digital | 21,19% |
| What type of products have you worked on in the last 2 years? | |
|---|---|
| Web sites or apps | 92,00% |
| Native apps | 62,67% |
It's important to understand that UX design isn't equal to wireframing and output types underscored that message. Wireframe is still an important artifact of UX design but 75% of the respondents also write specifications, 65% creates visual design or presentations and 25% of the UX professionals even write code.
| What's the typical output of your work? | |
|---|---|
| Wireframe | 86,18% |
| Documents (specification or study) | 75,00% |
| Visual design | 66,45% |
| Presentation | 65,13% |
| HTML/CSS/JS | 25,00% |
Workplaces and teams
Most respondents work for product companies, engineering companies or agencies of various sizes. The majority work in UX teams, only 15% claimed to be the only UX professional at their companies. The typical UX team size is 3 people but there are quite a few UX teams with 10 people or more.
| Which of the following describes your workplace the best? | |
|---|---|
| Company working on their own product(s) | 59,54% |
| Engineering company | 32,06% |
| Agency / Studio | 28,24% |
| E-commerce company | 4,58% |
| Media company | 3,05% |
| Non-profit company | 2,29% |
| Government | 2,29% |
| How many colleagues do you have? | |
|---|---|
| 1-10 | 12,98% |
| 11-50 | 28,24% |
| 51-200 | 30,53% |
| 201-500 | 7,63% |
| More than 500 | 20,61% |
| How many UX colleagues do you have? | |
|---|---|
| 1-3 | 49,6% |
| 4-6 | 16,5% |
| 7-10 | 18,9% |
| More than 10 | 14,9% |
Job titles and positions
Most of the respondents are "mid-level" UX professionals. The most significant change in positions since 2014 is the growth of the junior segment (because those who started to work in UX since 2014 are typically juniors) and that the average experience has slightly decreased.
| Which of the following describes your position best? | 2017 | 2014 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Junior UX designer | 23,18% | 35 people | 16,7% | 17 people |
| UX designer | 35,76% | 54 people | 41,2% | 42 people |
| Senior UX designer | 21,19% | 32 people | 23,5% | 24 people |
| UX lead | 11,26% | 17 people | 18,6% | 19 people |
| UX manager or director | 8,61% | 13 people | ||
| Which of the following describes your position best? (By number of respondents) | 2017 | 2014 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Junior UX designer | 35 people | 17 people | +106% |
| UX designer | 54 people | 42 people | +29% |
| Senior UX designer | 32 people | 24 people | +33% |
| UX lead | 30 people | 19 people | +58% |
| UX manager or director |
| Average experience (years) | 2017 | 2014 |
|---|---|---|
| Junior UX designer | 2,2 | 2,4 |
| UX designer | 2,7 | 3,5 |
| Senior UX designer | 6,8 | 6,4 |
| UX lead | 5,5 | 5,9 |
| UX manager or director | 5,8 év |
Diverse titles
Respondents have virtually all possible titles. Design related ones are the most common but UX is a common keyword, too: UX designer, UI designer, Visual designer, Product designer, Experience designer, Head of Design, Head of UX, Design Strategist, Graphic designer, UX Researcher, UX Strategist, Creative Director, UX Architect, Digital Art Director, and so on. Researcher titles are surprisingly rare, we had only 5 respondents with those.
| Frequency of the most important keywords in the titles | |
|---|---|
| Design or designer | 64% |
| UX | 49% |
| UI | 15% |
| Product | 12% |
| Research | 3,5% |
Many respondents are not "officially" UX professionals but they are still responsible for the user experience. Such positions include Project manager, Product manager, Front-end developer, UI developer, Scrum Master, Consultant, E-Business Development Manager, and in some companies the General Manager (CEO or Co-owner) takes on UX responsibilities.
Various projects
Only 13% reported that they are working on the same project over and over again so UX does not seem a boring job at all from this perspective.
| Which of the following describes your job best? | |
|---|---|
| I work on different products, clients, and projects | 51,30% |
| I work on the same product/client but on various projects | 35,71% |
| I mostly work on only one project | 12,99% |
Working hours
Working hours seem pretty average as respondents work for 40.6 hours per week on average. It's only the manager segment that shows some divergence with their 48 weekly working hours.
| How much do you work per week (on average)? | |
|---|---|
| Junior UX designer | 38,3 hours |
| UX designer | 40,4 hours |
| Senior UX designer | 40,7 hours |
| UX lead | 40,6 hours |
| UX manager or director | 48,0 hours |
By working place types, people at engineering companies claim to work the most (41.6 hours per week) and freelancers work the less for only 37.7 hours per week.
Respondents spend 6 hours on meetings per week on average. The more senior position means more meetings, managers have more than 9 hours of meetings each week.
| How much time do you spend on meetings per week (on average)? | |
|---|---|
| Junior UX designer | 4,2 hours |
| UX designer | 5,3 hours |
| Senior UX designer | 7,9 hours |
| UX lead | 9,2 hours |
| UX manager or director | 9,3 hours |
Salary
More than half of the respondents have a monthly net income between HUF 241,000 and HUF 480,000 (that is, the monthly net salary is typically between 770 EUR and 1537 EUR). The estimated average net salary per month is HUF 398,000 (~ 1275 EUR) that is 11% higher than in 2014.
| What is your monthly NET income? | 2017 | 2014 |
|---|---|---|
| Less than HUF 120,000 (~ 384 EUR) | - | 6,86% |
| HUF 120,000 - 240,000 (~ 384-768 EUR) | 11,11% | 15,69% |
| HUF 241,000 - 360,000 (~ 770-1152 EUR) | 27,45% | 33,33% |
| HUF 361,000 - 480,000 (~ 1156-1537 EUR) | 27,45% | 16,67% |
| HUF 481,000 - 600,000 (~ 1540-1922 EUR) | 8,50% | 11,76% |
| HUF 601,000 - 720,000 (~ 1925-2306 EUR) | 5,23% | 5.88% |
| Over HUF 720,000 (~ 2306 EUR) | 9,80% | |
| Wouldn't like to disclose | 9,15% | 9,80% |
Oviously, the more senior position means a higher salary but there are exceptions, too. The average salary of UX managers and directors is for example lower than that of the UX leads. The reason for this might be that UX manager and director respondents typically work for smaller companies which has a negative impact on the average salary of this position.
Interestingly, senior UX designers don't earn more than they did in 2014, probably because they segment grew by 33% and new members of this segment have lower salaries.
| Average net salary by positions | 2017 | 2014 | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Junior UX designer | HUF 292,000 | HUF 252,000 | +15,8% |
| UX designer | HUF 360,000 | HUF 296,000 | +21,6% |
| Senior UX designer | HUF 455,000 | HUF 451,000 | +<1% |
| UX lead | HUF 577,000 | HUF 454,000 | +11-27% |
| UX manager or director | HUF 504,000 |
As a rule of thumb we can say that bigger companies offer higher salaries but companies with 1-10 employes break this pattern. For the small companies we mostly had manager and director respondents, hence the higher average salary there.
| Average net salary by company size | |
|---|---|
| 1-10 people | HUF 396,000 |
| 11-50 people | HUF 349,000 |
| 51-200 people | HUF 384,000 |
| 201-500 people | HUF 386,000 |
| 500+ people | HUF 491,000 |
10 freelancer repondents disclosed their salaries and they earn well above the average (net HUF 513,000 per month).
Although only a handful or respondents work outside of Budapest, we still assume that there are significant regional differences in the salaries.
| Average net salary by region | ||
|---|---|---|
| Works in Budapest | HUF 397,000 | 115 respondents |
| Works outside of Budapest, in Hungary | HUF 255,000 | 8 respondents |
| Works outside of Hungary | HUF 555,000 | 8 respondents |
What UX people want
Satisfaction
Based on the results, UX folks don't complain much but there are two areas where the general satisfaction has changed since 2014: respondents are happier with their salaries but less satisfied with their workplaces and work environments. Respondents are not really satisfied with their self-improvement opportunities which is a critical area for them.
| How satisfied are you with...? | Very satisfied | Somewhat satisfied | Somewhat unsatisfied | Very unsatisfied |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Workplace and work environment | 39,9% | 35,9% | 15,7% | 8,5% |
| The projects you're working on | 22,7% | 55,2% | 18,2% | 3,9% |
| The output of your work | 15,6% | 55,2% | 25,3% | 3,9% |
| Your salary | 21,6% | 51,6% | 21,6% | 5,2% |
| Your development opportunities | 24,2% | 35,3% | 29,4% | 11,1% |
| Very or somewhat satisfied | 2017 | 2014 |
|---|---|---|
| Workplace and work environment | 75,8% | 81,4% |
| The projects you're working on | 77,9% | 78,4% |
| The output of your work | 70,8% | 69,6% |
| Your salary | 73,2% | 62,8% |
| Your development opportunities | 59,5% | - |
Benefits
Besides salaries, we were also curious to learn about other benefits – what respondents are given and what they appreciate. As it turned out, companies prefer material benefits (bonus, cafeteria plans, etc.) but UX professionals think tranings and courses are the most precious benefits.
| What benefits does your employer grant you? | |
|---|---|
| Cafeteria plan | 31% |
| Bonus | 21% |
| Health care services | 19% |
| Education support (workshops, courses, etc.) | 18% |
| SZÉP card (electronic voucher for holidays and hot meals) | 17% |
| Conference budget | 16% |
| Travel budget (flights, travel discounts, public transportation passes, accounting for car usage, etc.) | 15% |
| What benefits would be the most valuable to you? | |
|---|---|
| Education support (workshops, courses, etc.) | 27% |
| Conference budget | 18% |
| Travel budget (flights, travel discounts, public transportation passes, accounting for car usage, etc.) | 16% |
| Health care services | 12% |
| Flexible vacation policy | 10% |
Learning and self-improving
Respondents were asked how they'd like to improve and what skills they'd like to acquire (both inside and outside of UX discipline). Although a typical UX professional apparently wants to learn "everything", the most popular area seems to be research skills (from user interviewing to big data analysis).
| What UX area would you like to learn more about or how would you like to improve yourself? | |
|---|---|
| User research (testing, interviewing, analytics, big data) | 30,71% |
| Psychology | 25,98% |
| Front-end development | 25,20% |
| Other programming | 14,96% |
| Communication (negotiation, collaboration, presenting) | 13,39% |
| Graphic design | 11,81% |
| Management (leadership, organizational development, project management) | 9,45% |
| Interaction design | 8,66% |
| UI design | 7,09% |
| Service design | 6,30% |
| Methodology | 5,51% |
Self-fulfillment
Respondents were asked if there are any responsibilities that they'd like to do more at work (but they don't have the opportunity to do so) and we got more than 40 different answers for that. The most common area was user research (which is aligned with the fact that designers were overrepresented, with assumably less research tasks), followed by a long tail of dozens of options.
Some mentioned specific tasks (e.g. user interviews, usability testing, data mining, graphic design, front-end development, prototyping, UI design, workshop facilitation, etc.), some would like to redesign how they work (e.g. need more focused work, less administration, bigger responsibilities, team work), some wish for specific projects (e.g. machine learning, virtual reality, accessiblity, social responsibility, hardware design, etc.).
| What are some things that you would like to do more at work but there’s no opportunity? | |
|---|---|
| More research (user interviews, usability test, data analysis, ethnography, etc.) | 27% |
| More UX responsibilities | 10% |
| Service design | 9% |
| Self development | 8% |
| Product design, working on my own product | 7% |
| Mobil app design | 5% |
| Front-end development | 4% |
| Graphic design | 4% |
| Management | 4% |
"What would make you consider changing jobs?", we asked provovatively. Apparently, it's the opportunity to learn and improve themselves (it's more important than salary) which is perfectly aligned with the other responses about how self-improvement is a cornerstone of this profession.
| What would make you consider changing jobs at the moment? | |
|---|---|
| The opportunity to learn and develop myself | 74% |
| Better salary | 55% |
| More professional team | 52% |
| Career promotion (bigger responsibility, manager role) | 46% |
| The opportunity to work abroad | 43% |
Love projects
We also asked what a dream project would be for our respondents. Surprisingly, many consider that they already work on dream projects they love – otherwise they'd be working somewhere else.
That being said, the majority was able to mention at least one love project:
- An important pattern is the meaning of work, that is, working on something meaningful and useful.
- Working on a product they truly own is a common desire.
- Many would like to work on something with significant social impact. Redesigning government websites and health care services came up frequently, and someone even wants to design State 2.0.
- It's a common dream to work on something used by millions, be it a popular product (such as Airbnb or Spotify) or a whole platform like Facebook or Android.
- Designing physical products or games (from video games to board games) also comes up in the responses from time to time.
Summarising all these patterns makes up the following cornerstones:
- The majority would like to work on long term product development
- where the product is something meaningful
- and the project has a huge impact and offers tons of challenge.
- This requires a dedicated and ever improving team,
- where creativity is embraced
- and there's a possibility to experiment with new and exciting technologies.
Someone gave a pretty well designed definition to all of this:
If MIT and Gates Foundation jointly were going to save the world with something high-tech, ideally somewhere in South-East Asia or Amazonia – I would like to be the part of the team.
Here are the most frequently mentioned industries:
- Automobiles
- Industrial interfaces
- Space tech
- Government and public administration
- Games
- Internet of Things
- Virtual Reality
- Airlines
- Smart homes
And finally, another dream project definition that probably resonates with every service designer:
Service design that is not just all about the reduction of costs.