UX Budapest Census 2017

We surveyed the Hungarian UX community to learn more about who we are, what we do, and how we work. We conducted the same research in 2014 so we also wanted to track some changes. The online survey ran between 20 December, 2016 and 19 January, 2017 and was responded by 154 UX professionals.

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.

Number of respondents: 153
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.

Number of respondents: 150
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.

Number of respondents: 154
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!

Number of respondents: 143 (top responses with at least 4 respondents)
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.

Number of respondents: 127 (top responses with at least 4 respondents)
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.

Number of respondents: 154
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:

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.

Number of respondents: 147
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.

Number of respondents: 151
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.

Number of respondents: 153
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.

Number of respondents: 152
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%.

Number of respondents: 105 (top tools mentioned by at least 5 respondents)
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.

Number of respondents: 152
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.

Number of respondents: 135 (top tools, mentioned by at least 5 respondents)
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.

Number of respondents: 137 (top tools, mentioned by at least 5 respondents)
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.

Number of respondents: 151
For which platforms have you designed in the last 2 years?
Desktop 95,36%
Mobile 85,43%
Tablet 66,23%
Non-digital 21,19%
Number of respondents: 151
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.

Number of respondents: 152
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.

Number of respondents: 131
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%
Number of respondents: 131
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%
Number of respondents: 127
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.

Number of respondents: 151 (in 2017) and 102 (in 2014)
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
Number of respondents: 151 (in 2017) and 102 (in 2014)
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
Number of respondents: 151
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.

Number of respondents: 142
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.

Number of respondents: 154
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.

Number of respondents: 151
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.

Number of respondents: 147
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.

Number of respondents: 153
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.

Number of respondents: 131
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.

Number of respondents: 131
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.

Number of respondents: 131
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.

Number of respondents: 154
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%
Number of respondents: 154
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.

Number of respondents: 103
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%
Number of respondents: 99
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).

Number of respondents: 135 (top responses with at least 7 respondents)
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.).

Number of respondents: 99
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.

Number of respondents: 138
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:

Summarising all these patterns makes up the following cornerstones:

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:

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.