Design and UX

Ask ten designers what they do and you will hear ten answers, because design in digital work is a cluster of practices rather than one skill. At one end sits evidence: finding out who uses a product, what they are trying to achieve and where they fail. At the other sits craft: the letterform, the colour ramp, the rig on a character's shoulder. In between are decisions about structure and behaviour, the shared kit that keeps a large product consistent, and the obligation to make all of it usable by people who navigate with a keyboard, a screen reader or a magnifier. This hub treats all of that as one field with eleven parts, and each part has its own page.

How the reference bodies slice it

No single authority owns the map, so we read three and let them check each other. Nielsen Norman Group files its articles under areas such as Research Methods, User Testing, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Visual Design, Prototyping and Accessibility, a practitioner's view organised by the question in front of you. The Interaction Design Foundation's literature runs wider, into colour theory, Gestalt perception, graphic design, service design and design thinking, closer to how a school would teach it. SFIA 9, a skills framework employers often draw on when writing job descriptions, groups six skills under user-centred design: user research, customer experience, accessibility and inclusion, UX analysis, UX design and UX evaluation. It files graphic design under content management and animation development under systems development, a quiet reminder that visual craft and motion are often hired outside the UX team altogether.

The role column shows where the weight falls, not a fence. In a small company one person holds four of those titles before lunch; in a large one the researcher may never open a layout file. Job advertisements blur the edges further, and a request for a UX/UI designer usually means a product designer expected to carry visual craft as well.

What a portfolio proves that a certificate cannot

Design is one of the few fields in digital work with no gatekeeping exam that recruiters filter on. What gets read is the case study: a real problem, what you learnt about the people who had it, the options you rejected and why, what broke when someone tried your prototype, and what you changed afterwards. A certificate shows that you finished a syllabus. A portfolio shows judgement, and judgement is what a hiring manager is paying for. Three well-argued projects beat twelve polished screens, because a screen without its reasoning tells a reviewer only that you can operate a tool.

The right first door depends on the work you already do, since each background arrives holding half of one topic.

• Career changers do best on a structured route that forces finished projects. Google's UX Design certificate is the one such programme we list: it runs from research and wireframes to tested prototypes and ends in three portfolio pieces, which matter more than the credential it awards.
• Developers begin with design systems and accessibility, where code and design already share a vocabulary, then learn enough visual design to stop guessing about spacing and type. The build side lives under web development.
• Marketers begin with UX research and web design, because landing pages fail for the same reasons interfaces do, then add graphic design for the assets they commission. Campaign work sits in the marketing silo, with content marketing as the closest neighbour.
• Founders and no-code builders begin with web design and licensing, since a bought template or typeface is usually their first design decision. The builders themselves are covered under no-code and low-code.

The glossary entries this silo leans on, from design system to font licensing, each take a position instead of only defining a term. When a project needs ready-made material, the design assets pillar explains what a licence permits and digital assets lists the marketplaces we have examined.