UX designers are Programmers are one of the most important roles in the field of application design and development or the field of web design and development. These two roles complement each other and together they lead to a well-structured and efficient website or application. People starting in these two fields often wonder why are UX Designers paid so high when compared with Programmers. In this article we will discuss if this statement is true and if yes, what are the reasons why UX Designers are paid so high when compared with Programmers.
Table of Content
UX Designer
UX Designer is a professional in the field of web design who is responsible for designing the interactions and the overall look and feel of a website, application or product. The role of a UX designer is to ensure that the website, mobile app, or software is user-friendly.
Role and the responsibilities of a UX designer may vary from company to company, some companies focus on UX designers to design the overall prototype as well while some are more focused on user research and consumer strategy part.
Responsibilities of a UX Designer
- User research: User research is the key responsibility of a UX designer. a UX designer has to prepare for the research, write the interview guidelines and scripts, and create documents that outline how research should be conducted step by step.
- Research analysis and presentation: It is the responsibility of a UX designer to then take detailed notes of the research. there’s a lot of information that will be gathered so the role of UX developers is to analyze the information, understand the trend, and organize data using tools to identify trends and patterns in that data.
- Workshops: In most of the companies, workshops are a responsibility for a UX designer where people from different areas of the business to come together and generate ideas and decide where the focus should be.
- Wireframes and prototypes: Creating wireframe and prototypes is the sole responsibility of a UX designer. Wireframes are detailed structural sketches that illustrate a concept.
- Creative and innovative design solutions: A UX designer is expected to develop creative and innovative design solutions, to design the screens of the User Interface and create different visual touch points and establish the interactivity with them.
Programmer
A Programmer is a professional in the field of software development responsible for coding or creating software and applications as well as optimizing the previously written code. Programmers are responsible to bring the design created by UI/UX Designers into real life.
Role and the responsibilities of a Programmer may vary from company to company, but in most of the cases programmers are working on creating a piece of software for the company. A Programmer is expected to be proficient at Programming Languages like C++, Java, Python etc.
Responsibilities of a Programmer
- Development: The main responsibility of a programmer is to develop an application, a website or new feature for the application or website. A Programmer has to code the new feature in the programming language used by the
- Debugging: Debugging refers to the process of figuring out what is wrong in the code and fixing that issue. Debugging is also the responsibility of a programmer where the Programmer fixes the issues in the code base.
- Managing Databases: This may vary from company to company but if the team is storing users data in the database, it becomes the responsibility of the programmers to manage the data in the database.
- Efficient Solutions: Coming up with efficient solution is also the responsibility of a Programmer. A Programmer not just have be come up with a solution and code it, he/his may also have to optimize that solution.
- Documentation: Documentation refers to documenting what is written in the code and explaining the code for referencing in the future. Documentation may also include explaining what the tool does in the company’s website and this is also the responsibility of the Programmers.
Why are UX Designers Paid so High Compared to Programmers?
An estimate says that average salary of a UI/UX designer is about $90k in the US while for a Programmer, the average salary is about $64k as of 2024. The salary difference between Programmers and UX designers may vary depending on their company, level of experience, working place, market conditions, etc. But in general these are the reasons why UX Designers are paid more than Programmers:
- Demand and Supply: Demand and Supply is one of the major reasons why UX Designers are paid more than Programmers. Since the Supply of programmers is much more than the demand, they are relatively paid less while the demand of good UX designers mostly exceeds the supply.
- Leverage: UX Designer’s decision have a larger impact on the final project hence they have a better leverage with their work, this is an important reason why UX Designers are paid more than Programmers.
- Business Value: Business simply pays more to the one with more business value. In most of the cases, UX Designers have higher business value since they design the entire projects, hence are paid more than Programmers.
- Early input in the solution cycle: Designers have the input in the solution cycle earlier than programmers. If the UX Designers don’t hand over the design to the programming team, they will have nothing to work on. Because of this early input in the solution cycle, UX Designers are paid more.
- Frequent Projects: In comparison with Programmers, UX designers can projects more frequently simply because a Programmer may need months to get an application ready meanwhile in that time a UX designer may get a few designs ready. Therefore, since the freelance UX designers take more projects than Programmers, they are paid more because of the more number of projects.
Conclusion
In the field of application development, there are two key roles that are often misunderstood – Programmers and UX designers. People often wonder why are UX Designers paid so high when compared to programmers. While both of them have an important contribution to the process of creating a software or an application, UX designers are often times paid more than Programmers due to the reasons we discussed in this article. We hope that these points helped you understand the two field in much more detailed way.