Finding my place within the different design fields was challenging, especially for someone who had never attended a design school (I'm self-taught). I did my research about it and got even more confused.

I can't imagine that task for startup founders in the pre-product or product-market fit stage looking for someone to fill that gap. The terminology around different types of design fields may get confusing.

One problem with this is that these design fields sometimes overlap responsibilities and processes, which causes confusion for founders and non-designers.

To make our points clear, we'll use the design thinking process as the spectrum for us to identify where each role does its magic.

In this article, we will focus on five types of roles. These are the ones that are highly on-demand for startups nowadays:

• UX Designer

• Product Designer

• UI Designer

• UX Researcher

• UX Unicorn (yep, this exists 😎)

So, let's get started.

Design thinking - what is it?

Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test.

Source: Interaction Design Foundation

As you can see, all the design process stages are connected; sometimes, they can overlap and change their course depending on the outcomes of the previous step. That is why sometimes it is so hard to define and separate each. The best way we understood this was by seeing the big picture and dividing each role based on their contribution to the process. And it looks like this:

Discover what type of designer you need

Considering this design process and your company's goals and values, what will help you assess your current design needs? Start by identifying which tasks are the most time-consuming or the ones that no one seems to complete correctly. Depending on those problems and the gaps you need to fill, you can decide what design specialist will help you most.

UX Designer

These designers are considered more generalists. They cover a little of everything in the design process. They are the ones that understand your users' needs, ideate to solve their problems, prototype designs, and test them with users. As you can see, they are involved in all five phases of the design thinking process.

Depending on your Startup's stage and design team size, UX Designers play a crucial role. If you already have a team of UX Researchers and UI Designers, they will work between these two roles. Otherwise, they would be in charge of handling the five-step design process.

Primary core skills you should be looking for:

• Analysis and application of user research.

• Designing user flows, making wireframes, and building prototypes.

• User Interface Design.

• Performing usability tests.

Product Designers

Product Designers are responsible for leading the design thinking process end-to-end by meeting users' needs and setting product goals and roadmap. Their job is to prototype and test hypotheses to ensure successful product development that meets your business goals.

This role overlaps with the UX Designer role; the key difference is that they pay exceptional attention to the product on top of the UX. Product Designers are involved in all five phases of the design thinking process and the company's product roadmap.

Primary core skills you should be looking for:

• Analysis and application of user research.

• Designing user flows, making wireframes, and building prototypes.

• User Interface Design.

• Performing usability tests.

• Planning the product's roadmap.

• Working across multiple teams, engineering, and marketing, to ensure the implementation of the designs.

User Interface Designers

Now, we've narrowed it down in terms of specialization. UI designers transform UX goals into easy-to-use and accessible user interfaces while creating and maintaining the design system. They implement brand guidelines into their designs and other design concepts to develop pleasant graphical interfaces.

Sometimes, people think that UI Designers are just in charge of the visual design of a product, but they are wrong. Even though they're experts on design principles, color, and typography, they still have the mastery to create an aesthetically pleasing, smooth experience that meets the UX needs.

Primary core skills you should be looking for:

• Transforming UX needs into a beautiful and usable interface.

• Managing and maintaining brand guidelines.

• Graphic Design Principles.

• Knowledge of how to use essential industry tools.

UX Researcher

As well to UI designers, UX Researchers are considered specialists. They are responsible for collecting and analyzing qualitative and quantitative data generating actionable insights, and improving the product development process by empathizing with the user, defining the problem to solve, and validating possible solutions.

The critical soft skill here is empathy. By empathizing with the users, they will gain a holistic approach to their needs and help outline what the product should solve. That's why they are involved at the beginning of the design process as well as at the end.

Primary core skills you should be looking for:

• Analysis of user behavior through research methods.

• Synthesizing key findings and coming up with actionable insights.

• Performing usability tests.

• Working across teams.

• Informing product goals and the product roadmap by showcasing the research findings.

Are you looking for a UX Unicorn?

Someone is labeled as a unicorn if they possess the skills required for the role and additional skills in others, which multiply the value they contribute to your Startup. The UX Unicorn is a UX Designer who has experience in design but also in frontend engineering.

These types of people are hard to find, but if you are lucky enough, you got someone that could be able to take your design process to another level.

Primary core skills you should be looking for:

• All of the ones mentioned in the UX Designer section.

• Developing user interfaces with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

• Coding good practices and git knowledge.

So, which role are you going to look for at your Startup?

Now that we've explained the five main types of roles you might be looking for, you should have a better idea of what your team needs.

Assess the position you chose at https://www.wearewannabe.com/companies, and don't hesitate to contact us; we will be happy to help you in this process.