The Great Potential of UX/UI Design: Practice in Localization

Xintong Liu

UX/UI design has been seen as one of the rising industries with the most attention-grabbing potential in the future. Studies have shown that the average salary of an UX/UI designer is growing rapidly and that the use of UX/UI design is now being adapted in lots of different fields. Xintong Liu, the eCommerce UX Designer at Zoom, has found the importance of localization in her design career.

User Interface (UI) Design refers to the visual elements such as buttons and icons that users interact with when they use a website or an app while User Experience (UX) Design stands for the overall interaction experience users have with the product itself. Large tech companies like Apple and Microsoft are seeing UX/UI design as one of their crucial product strategies.

Unsurprisingly, The average salaries of UX/UI designers are expected to be even higher in the future. The median salary for an UX/UI designer with zero to two years of experience is as high as $82,000 and could be increased to $110,000. Compared with 2020, the average salary increased by 10.1% to $101,126 in 2021 and could still be easily surpassed with the right mix of skills and experience.

The average time to fill an open position is 47 days, which indicates a very high level of demand. Researches have shown that there were around 80,065 UI/UX designer positions posted by employers over the past 12 months and they are predicted to grow 10.9 percent over the next decade. Companies and organizations need these specialists to create the best user experience to stay competitive in the market.

Currently working as the eCommerce UX Designer at Zoom, Xintong Liu understands exactly how important it is to let the audience have the best experience they could ever have especially for companies that's targeting a global audience like Zoom. She pointed out that Localization, a significant section that cannot simply be achieved through translation, is always ignored.

"Localization also affects our design decisions. All the micro copies we want to test on the button works well in English. They all fit into our viewport," Liu said, "However, if you just made a decision based on which one performs better in English, you are running into issues with other languages. Some CTAs in Russian couldn't fit into smaller mobile devices. And that will require our UX designers to think of alternative solutions, such as just a text link CTA, or move some information to other placements so we can keep the CTA short."

Liu believes in adapting international products for a specific region to create relevant and appropriate experiences for users. At the same time, she has proposed a few things that managers should take into account such as increasing localization awareness in business strategy and adjusting design strategy based on the local metrics.

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