When Apple originally introduced the App Store in 2008, it wasn’t going to allow any other company to create apps for the platform. Luckily, they made the right decision of letting this thought go and allow other developers to develop a plethora of apps – which led to them earn $10 Billion in the first year. Google also started their own android market in the same year, now commonly known as the Play Store, which boasts of hosting more than 2.47 million apps.
These platforms created an ecosystem of tech-companies and independent developers who created beautiful, problem-solving apps of all kinds giving birth to an important industry which is still steadily growing today.
More importantly, this gave birth to one of the most emerging careers of the digital age – UI/UX Designers. Find out if building a career in UI/UX is a good option by reading this article.
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Who is a UX/UI designer?
For every app an entrepreneur/company thinks of, there is a team of UI/UX designers who work on the app to make it usable. UI/UX designers ensure that the app that is being created is easy to understand, easy to use, and is aesthetically pleasing.
In 2023, mobile apps are projected to generate more than $935 billion dollars in revenue. That is why entrepreneurs today see this as the number 1 business opportunity, and every new business idea or digitisation of an existing business creates the need for UI/UX Designers.
With the introduction of Jio, the internet spread like wildfire across India, thanks to the cheap services. The number of internet users in India is said to grow to 666.4 million in 2023. Thanks to cheap smartphones, the number of smartphone users in India is expected to rise by 84% to 859 million by 2022.
People in India installed more mobile apps in 2019 than any other country, accounting for 4.5 billion app installs in the first quarter alone. App Annie forecasts that by 2022, India will have 37.2 billion downloads a year, a growth rate of 207% – which makes it by far the fastest growing app market in the world. In 2018, 38% of Indians used more than 6 apps on a daily basis.
The shift to digital is helping retailers acquire new customers, engage better with existing ones, reduce costs, and improve employee morale. India’s retail market is expected to grow to $1.2 trillion by 2021 from $795 billion in 2017, the report says. This will also be driven by e-commerce market growth to $84 billion in 2021 from $24 billion in 2017. Since stats show that 88% of online shoppers say they wouldn’t return to a website after having a bad user experience, many companies – small and big; are focusing on having well-designed user experiences through their websites and apps.
Let’s explore some reasons that make a career in UI-UX design career a good choice:
You can earn a high pay package
According to the Economic Times, there has been a 3X rise in the salaries of design leaders at consumer tech companies in the past 3 years. Design Leaders at a leading consumer tech company have an average per annum salary of about Rs. 30 lakhs. (42,000 USD)
Big companies are slowly realising the importance of skilled UI-UX designers. Flipkart for, example, increased their product sales to Rs. 3000 crores in 2016 during the Big Billion Days from Rs. 2000 crores in the previous year. One of the factors that contributed to the success of the sale was the complete redesign of the user interface and the user experience of their app. As of August 2019, India had 1.67 million app economy jobs, over a 39% gain since May 2016.
Learning UX can fast-track your entrepreneurial career
What’s better than being able to think of app ideas?
Being able to execute it!
If you know how to create good UI-UX, you can make your own app or website to bring your ideas to fruition.
Think about companies that are worth billions of dollars – Instagram, Oyo, Snapchat, Facebook. All of these started with one big idea, but none of them would have been successful without a well-designed app and website. In-fact the founders for companies like Airbnb, Google and Snapchat are UI/UX designers themselves.
IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association of India) in a statement said “UX/UI in a fast-growing digital-first economy can propel India to be a key player globally in the coming years”. Mobile App incubators have been set up, that allows startups to create apps, with the help of IAMAI. To make sure there is a constant development of the app industry, the IAMAI has teamed up with Google and Paytm, for a programme called Mobile10x. 5 mobile startup hubs will be set up to increase the mobile app revenue to INR 10,000 Cr. from INR 1,000 Cr.
You can work on your own terms as a Freelancers
One of the interesting options as a UI/UX designer is, opting to choose to become a freelancer. India’s freelancer market is the largest in the world, with 10 million people freelancing in 2018. There are various Indian platforms that connect freelancers to companies in need for certain UI/UX work. Paypal released a survey in 2018 that showed that web design and mobile app development freelancers were some of the most sought after.
If you choose to be a freelancer, you will be able to work according to your own hours. More importantly, you can work from anywhere and everywhere – whether it is a cafe, at home or even at the beach. If you want to be a digital nomad, a career in UI-UX is perfect for you.
Be a part of the hottest industry
UI/UX Designers are high in demand, however, the supply side still has a lot of catching up to do. Formally educated designers still are missing out on up to date industry requirements and for UI/UX job-roles. This requires a knowledge of the best industry practices and approach towards this discipline and the latest technologies and software. Companies are desperately looking for designers that can lead them to success into the digital age,
Understanding this, IIDE has created an 11-month Postgraduate programme in Digital Design that will not only teach a complete skill-set for UI/UX Design but will also teach you other design concepts necessary to build brilliant apps and websites. Through the process of Design Thinking, IIDE is able to teach the right way of tackling UI/UX Design. Design is only worthwhile when it works well for users and thanks to UI and UX, a new world has been opened for design.