Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Designer

🎯 Role Definition

A Designer is responsible for crafting intuitive, accessible, and beautiful experiences across web and mobile products. This role blends user-centered design principles, visual design, and interaction design to produce high-fidelity screens, prototypes, and scalable design systems. The Designer partners closely with product managers, engineers, researchers, and stakeholders to translate business goals and user insights into compelling, usable interfaces that drive engagement, conversion, and retention. Strong visual craft, prototyping skills, and experience delivering end-to-end design work from discovery through design handoff and iteration are essential.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Junior Designer / Junior Product Designer
Graphic Designer transitioning to digital/product work
UX/UI Designer Intern or recent graduate in interaction design

Advancement To:

Senior Product Designer
Lead or Principal Designer
Design Manager / Head of Design
Creative Director (for visual/branding-focused paths)

Lateral Moves:

UX Researcher / Design Researcher
Front-end Engineer (interaction-focused)
Brand Strategist / Visual Design Lead
Product Manager (for designers with strong product sensibilities)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Lead end-to-end design of product features by conducting discovery workshops, synthesizing user research, drafting UX flows, and delivering high-fidelity mockups and interactive prototypes that meet business objectives and usability standards.
Create and maintain pixel-perfect visual designs for responsive web and native mobile platforms, ensuring consistent typography, color, spacing, and brand alignment across all product touchpoints.
Own and evolve a scalable design system and component library (tokens, patterns, documentation) that speeds delivery, reduces design debt, and maintains visual and interaction consistency across teams.
Translate user research, analytics, and stakeholder requirements into clear information architectures, wireframes, journey maps, and annotated screens that guide development and measure impact.
Rapidly prototype new interaction concepts and micro-interactions using Figma/Sketch/Adobe XD and tools such as Principle, Framer, or ProtoPie to communicate motion, transitions, and states to engineering teams.
Collaborate closely with product managers to define success metrics, prioritize design work, and align on trade-offs between user needs, technical constraints, and business outcomes.
Facilitate and lead cross-functional design critiques, stakeholder reviews, and usability testing sessions to iterate on concepts and validate solutions before engineering handoff.
Conduct usability testing (remote and in-person), synthesize findings, and apply qualitative and quantitative insights to refine designs and improve conversion, retention, and task completion rates.
Prepare detailed design specs, redlines, and developer-ready assets; coordinate asset handoff and implementation with frontend engineers to ensure fidelity and performant delivery.
Advocate for accessibility and inclusive design by applying WCAG guidelines, writing accessibility notes, and ensuring designs are perceivable, operable, and understandable for diverse users.
Define and instrument design experiments and A/B tests in partnership with analytics to measure the impact of design changes, iterate based on results, and scale successful patterns.
Lead visual identity projects and brand work such as iconography, illustration, and UI motion to strengthen product storytelling and emotional connection with users.
Mentor junior designers through regular feedback, portfolio reviews, and pairing sessions; contribute to hiring, interviewing, and onboarding processes for new design hires.
Partner with engineering to estimate design effort, unblock implementation, and triage design bugs or regressions during QA and release cycles.
Balance creative craft with data-informed decision making by using product analytics, heatmaps, session recordings, and funnel data to identify opportunities and prioritize design improvements.
Create content strategy light artifacts (microcopy, labels, error states, empty states) in collaboration with content designers or product writers to ensure clarity and tone consistency.
Manage multiple design initiatives simultaneously, delivering on schedule while adapting to changing priorities in an agile development environment.
Document design rationale, trade-offs, and user feedback to maintain historical context and accelerate future design iterations and onboarding.
Present design solutions to executive stakeholders with clear storytelling that ties user needs to business impact and technical feasibility.
Continuously research design trends, emerging interaction patterns, and competitor interfaces to propose innovative solutions that differentiate the product.

Secondary Functions

Support cross-functional initiatives such as brand campaigns, marketing landing pages, and in-product promotional experiences to ensure design consistency and conversion optimization.
Assist in the creation and maintenance of onboarding flows, help center UI, and in-app guidance that reduce time-to-value and improve activation metrics.
Participate in roadmap planning and sprint ceremonies to align design delivery with engineering sprints and release milestones.
Create reusable templates, guidelines, and training material to elevate design literacy across product and engineering teams.
Conduct stakeholder interviews and alignment sessions to gather requirements, manage expectations, and communicate design trade-offs.
Coordinate with external agencies, illustrators, or motion designers for specialised creative work while ensuring on-brand output and consistent UX standards.
Help maintain version control and design file hygiene in shared repositories (Figma libraries, Abstract, Zeplin) to improve team collaboration.
Monitor product health dashboards and provide design-driven recommendations for addressing churn, error-prone flows, or accessibility gaps.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Expert in Figma for interface design, prototyping, and design system management; familiarity with FigJam for workshops and whiteboarding.
Proficient with Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator), or equivalent visual design tools for asset creation and high-fidelity mockups.
Strong prototyping skills using tools such as Figma Prototype, Framer, Principle, InVision, or ProtoPie to demonstrate interactions and micro-animations.
Experience building and documenting design systems, component libraries, tokens, and guidelines to ensure consistent UI patterns across products.
Solid understanding of interaction design principles, information architecture, and user-centered design methodologies.
Working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and responsive layout concepts to create realistic designs that are feasible to implement.
Familiarity with accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1+) and practical experience applying accessible patterns for keyboard navigation, color contrast, and screen readers.
Experience conducting user research and usability testing, synthesizing insights, and converting findings into actionable design changes.
Ability to define and measure product metrics, run A/B tests, and interpret analytics to validate design decisions (knowledge of tools like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Amplitude a plus).
Strong capability with version control and collaboration platforms such as Abstract, Zeplin, Figma libraries, or Git for design assets and handoffs.
Knowledge of mobile design guidelines (iOS Human Interface Guidelines and Android Material Design) and best practices for responsive behaviors.
Experience with motion design or animation principles (CSS animations, Lottie) to create engaging and informative transitions.
Familiarity with content and UX writing principles to craft effective microcopy and error handling messaging.

Soft Skills

Excellent verbal and written communication skills for presenting design work, writing design rationale, and clearly documenting decisions.
Strong collaboration and stakeholder management — able to influence product, engineering, and leadership through data-driven storytelling.
Empathy and user advocacy — commitment to deeply understanding user pain points and designing solutions that solve real problems.
Critical thinking and problem-solving under ambiguity; able to break down complex product requirements into actionable design tasks.
Attention to detail and a strong aesthetic sense for layout, color, typography, and visual hierarchy.
Time management and prioritization skills — capable of balancing multiple projects and meeting deadlines in a fast-paced environment.
Adaptability and continuous learning mindset to stay current with design tools, trends, and emerging UX patterns.
Mentorship and coaching abilities to support the growth of junior designers and foster a collaborative team culture.
Resilience and constructive feedback orientation — open to critique and effective at iterating quickly based on feedback.
Business acumen — understands how design choices impact KPIs, revenue, and customer lifetime value.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design, Interaction Design, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Visual Communication, Industrial Design, or equivalent practical experience and portfolio.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree specialized in UX Design, Product Design, HCI, or related fields; certifications in UX, accessibility, or product design are a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Interaction Design / UX Design
Graphic Design / Visual Communication
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Industrial Design / Product Design
Cognitive Psychology / Behavioral Science

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 2–6 years of professional experience in product, UX, or visual design roles for web and mobile platforms.

Preferred:

4+ years building end-to-end digital product experiences with a strong portfolio demonstrating process and impact.
Proven experience maintaining design systems, conducting user research, and delivering product features from concept to production.
Prior collaboration with engineering teams and familiarity with agile development environments.