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Finding and defining your design niche, without letting it define you.

Overview

In the modern world of UI/UX and product design, we find more and more that the question arises: to niche or not to niche?

While both have their distinct advantages and disadvantages, today, I want to share with you how you can more readily leverage both to stay ahead of the curve, despite shifting market conditions.

Finding and defining your niche

Every designer is essentially called to start off their journey as a generalist. This is both necessary and important, because it allows you to see the industry from a 30k foot view, and it allows you to understand how all of the pieces fit together.

That being said, generalizing will only get you so far, and as have mentioned in other areas, overspecializing can cost you your career, especially in a market downturn.

So what can we do? We find and define your niche.

Why bother with niches?

It can seem like a bit of a wash when you consider the spread of the average designer’s salary on sites like Glassdoor. Why niche down at all when you could just remain a generalist for the rest of your career?

The reason, at least for me, was simple: I wanted to make more money, and I wanted to solve specific problems.

→ Most of the time (not all of the time) specialists make more than generalists because of their expertise in a particular, high-value area.

The trick then becomes balancing your general skills with your specific skills, but we’ll get to that here in a minute.

What’s your niche?

Essentially, your niche is an area in which you excel within the greater design field. In other words, it’s something that you do specifically and intentionally well.

Some notable niches within UI/UX design

The question generally becomes what do you actually want to focus on as your niche? There are many niches you can get into for UI/UX, including:

• Super hi-fidelity prototyping
• Mixed 2D and 3D interactive design implementations
• Enterprise-level information architecture & content strategy
• AR/VR/MR/XR design
• Blockchain-backed product design
• AI and ML-driven experience design
• the list goes on

The point is that whatever niche you pick to focus on, you want to make sure it has four things going for it:

1. It’s in high demand or will be in high demand.
2. It can be delivered to customers at scale.
3. It’s on the cutting edge of the industry as a whole.
4. There’s virtually no salary information about it.

This means that whatever you’re niching into will be highly desired by the market, there will be money in it, it will be highly valued by employers and clients alike, and it will be very hard to categorize/compare you to other design professionals which means you can charge a lot more.

Your niche is your focus, not your barrier

So back to your general vs specialized skills: how do you choose what to focus on and when to your greatest advantage? The answer here is actually deceptively simple, but overlooked:

• In a bear market (recession), you focus more on being a great generalist.
• In a bull market (expansion), you focus more on being a great specialist.

The reason for this is simple:

• During a bear market, companies cut jobs and consolidate roles into fewer, key professional that shoulder more workload, but in exchange get to access that company’s value during periods of high unemployment.
• During a bull market, companies create jobs, because they are looking to branch out and diversify their offerings to generate more revenue. So they are typically more willing to invest in specialized professionals that can help them move into those market spaces more effectively.

By following the trends of the larger market, and tracking with them, you set yourself up as a generalizing specialist that is able to procure employment much more easily during either a bull or bear market respectively.

The bottom line

So what does all of this mean for you as a designer?

1. Niching into specific areas can be a great way to earn more money, and deliver higher quality solutions where it counts.
2. Your niche is your focus, but not the end of your scope as a design professional because you still possess all the knowledge of a generalist.
3. During a bear market, focus on being a great generalist.
4. During a bull market, focus on being a great specialist.

In this way, you can get clear on what you want to focus on, where you should put your energy to better adapt to market conditions, and set yourself up much better for success in the near and far future.