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User experience designer vs interactive designer

The differences between user experience designers and interactive designers can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 6-12 months to become both a user experience designer and an interactive designer. Additionally, an interactive designer has an average salary of $97,929, which is higher than the $91,159 average annual salary of a user experience designer.

The top three skills for a user experience designer include sketch, UI and user research. The most important skills for an interactive designer are sketch, user experience, and UI.

User experience designer vs interactive designer overview

User Experience DesignerInteractive Designer
Yearly salary$91,159$97,929
Hourly rate$43.83$47.08
Growth rate3%3%
Number of jobs52,58248,136
Job satisfaction--
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 71%Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Average age3838
Years of experience1212

What does a user experience designer do?

A User Experience (UX) designer is an individual who measures and optimizes applications to improve the experience of end-users. His/Her or her duties and responsibilities include considering a design's human-computer interaction element, defining interaction models, and working with creative directors and designers. The key skills for UX designers include strong mathematical and problem-solving skills and excellent information technology and programming skills. Having a bachelor's degree in a design or computing-related subject is an advantage to qualify for the UX designer position.

What does an interactive designer do?

An Interactive Designer takes the business product and transforms it into a product that the user interacts with perfectly. They support engineering efforts to develop designs and get the details right.

User experience designer vs interactive designer salary

User experience designers and interactive designers have different pay scales, as shown below.

User Experience DesignerInteractive Designer
Average salary$91,159$97,929
Salary rangeBetween $65,000 And $127,000Between $67,000 And $141,000
Highest paying CitySan Bruno, CASan Bruno, CA
Highest paying stateWashingtonCalifornia
Best paying companyBitGoMeta
Best paying industryStart-upTechnology

Differences between user experience designer and interactive designer education

There are a few differences between a user experience designer and an interactive designer in terms of educational background:

User Experience DesignerInteractive Designer
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 71%Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Most common majorGraphic DesignGraphic Design
Most common collegeUniversity of PennsylvaniaUniversity of Pennsylvania

User experience designer vs interactive designer demographics

Here are the differences between user experience designers' and interactive designers' demographics:

User Experience DesignerInteractive Designer
Average age3838
Gender ratioMale, 59.6% Female, 40.4%Male, 66.8% Female, 33.2%
Race ratioBlack or African American, 3.4% Unknown, 5.0% Hispanic or Latino, 10.6% Asian, 10.4% White, 70.2% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.4%Black or African American, 3.4% Unknown, 5.0% Hispanic or Latino, 10.6% Asian, 10.4% White, 70.2% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.4%
LGBT Percentage13%13%

Differences between user experience designer and interactive designer duties and responsibilities

User experience designer example responsibilities.

  • Lead Ektron CMS implementations and content migration projects.
  • Lead UX/UI design, personas research and emphatic analysis, participate in user story creation.
  • Lead and administrate the creative direction of WorkFusion crowd computing platform and its iOS apps.
  • Lead design working sessions, create storyboards and a Visio wireframe library for all project elements.
  • Work with the Java developers/programs to achieve timely development and review of assignments to assure on--time project completion.
  • Design and code original and cms-base websites / user interfaces using HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP
  • Show more

Interactive designer example responsibilities.

  • Manage website properties including design, content and marketing using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.
  • Create, implement, and manage web content projects (HTML emails, web sites, digitizing audio/video).
  • Use ASP.NET and XML to automate common workflow tasks due to extremely high volume of designs to be create.
  • Develop a custom object-orient prototyping model in the design of a highly dynamic user interface.
  • Work primarily with JQuery to design/develop full screen overlays and dynamic forms.
  • Develop clean, table-less web sites using valid XHTML and CSS according to standards.
  • Show more

User experience designer vs interactive designer skills

Common user experience designer skills
  • Sketch, 18%
  • UI, 7%
  • User Research, 6%
  • Visual Design, 6%
  • Invision, 4%
  • Interaction Design, 4%
Common interactive designer skills
  • Sketch, 13%
  • User Experience, 7%
  • UI, 6%
  • Interaction Design, 6%
  • Invision, 4%
  • Visual Design, 4%

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