In This Article:

Our Research

This study aimed to answer the following high-level research questions:

  • What are the expectations of UX practitioners surrounding career growth, both in their organizations and the field as a whole?
  • How do UX practitioners measure their own growth and progress?
  • How can organizations provide clear paths for UX-career growth?
  • How does having (or not having) a clear path for growth affect the morale of UX practitioners?

Due to the breadth of these questions, several research methods were used:

  • Desk research, involving an analysis of existing career ladders — also referred to as role grids, tracks, levels, or career paths — in UX and adjacent fields
  • Cognitive-mapping sessions with 7 UX practitioners
  • Remote interviews with 4 UX practitioners
  • A survey of 465 UX practitioners

Desk Research

We started by analyzing career ladders from several established organizations in UX and UX-adjacent fields such as engineering and product management. This analysis allowed us to understand how companies defined career progression and see examples of how employees were promoted internally.

Two separate career tracks, splitting off after IC2 into four people-management roles on one track and five individual-contributor roles.
CharlieHR: An example of a career-progression framework that we analyzed as part of our desk research. This framework separated individual-contributor and manager roles into two tracks.

After this initial analysis, we gauged the overall sentiments of existing career ladders with working professionals in the field.

Cognitive Mapping

There were two phases of cognitive mapping:

  1. Unstructured cognitive mapping, where participants created a map from scratch
  2. Structured cognitive mapping, where participants reacted to proposed maps and made changes in real time

All sessions lasted 60 minutes. We selected participants from different backgrounds, including:

  • Wide range of professional experience, ranging from 4 to 20+ years in the field
  • Working on design teams with sizes ranging from 2 to 20+ designers
  • A mix of generalists, specialists, individual contributors, and managers
  • Living in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom

We started with four unstructured sessions, where participants were asked to visualize their career progression thus far and compare it to what they felt was a typical career path. As they discussed career progression, we listened and probed for their thoughts on management versus individual contributor pathways, what they felt they needed to progress from one role to the next, how career progression changed depending on the organization, and how they tracked their progression over time.

The next phase of cognitive mapping required our three participants to react to visuals provided by the research team. They were first asked to list thoughts that came to mind when hearing the words “UX-career progression.” They were then presented with visuals depicting individual-contributor and management career paths in various formats and asked to discuss the pros and cons of each.

The sentiments collected from both phases of cognitive mapping aided in creating questions and visuals for in-depth interviews.

In-Depth Interviews and a Change in Direction

We conducted four in-depth interviews with participants in various stages of their careers: entry-level, generalist, specialized individual contributor, and management. These interviews aimed to understand participants’ attitudes towards standard career ladders.

Two different visualizations of career progression, stacked: one highlighting a split in paths with equal roles on each side and the other a table with numbered levels associated with each role
Participants reacted to both career-ladder visuals.

The overall sentiment from the interviews was that career ladders felt limiting to practitioners and that they dictated a too narrow way to grow in a company or career. Participants felt there wasn’t flexibility to go back and forth between individual contributor and manager roles, and individual contributor roles were less valued than manager roles in terms of salary and impact on an organization.

This insight prompted a change in the scope of our research: we decided to focus less on prescribing career ladders to the industry and more on how to track individual, flexible growth as UX practitioners.

Large-Scale Survey

To understand how practitioners evaluate and think of their own growth in the UX field, we ran a 28-question survey that asked questions about:

  • Current state of their careers
  • Career-related plans
  • Pain points in their career growth
  • How they evaluate success in the field
  • Overall satisfaction with advancement opportunities, tools for assessing growth, and the ability to meet career goals

Responses from the survey helped us understand mental models of UX practitioners and validated much of the feedback received in earlier stages of research.

Conclusion

The journey of this research led us down several paths:

  • Desk research enabled us to understand what progression models the industry currently offers practitioners.
  • Cognitive mapping allowed us to hear how practitioners felt about progression models and how they envision their own career growth.
  • Interviews revealed that traditional career ladders were seen as limiting, prompting us to shift our focus toward promoting individual and flexible growth tracking.
  • A large-scale survey further emphasized the pain points of practitioners when it comes to tracking growth.

The varied methodologies brought a comprehensive understanding of UX career progression, making space for tailored and flexible approaches to career growth.