Interaction Designer

Your days often involve mapping user flows, creating wireframes and interactive prototypes, and testing how interactions feel in practice. You might spend the morning defining the navigation logic for a new feature, then build a clickable prototype in Figma or Principle to test with users in the afternoon. The work sits at the intersection of cognitive psychology, visual design, and technical feasibility — understanding how humans process information and translating that into interface behavior.

Collaboration with engineers tends to be closer and more frequent than in some other design disciplines. Your interaction specs need to be implementable, which means understanding animation curves, state management, and platform capabilities well enough to design interactions that actually ship as intended. The gap between "prototype that feels great" and "production implementation that feels great" is where a lot of the real work happens.

People who thrive here tend to be detail-obsessed but systems-minded. You care deeply about the timing of a loading animation and the feel of a swipe gesture, but you also think about how that interaction fits into the broader product ecosystem. If you find yourself noticing when an app's transitions feel slightly off — and wanting to fix them — you've got the right instinct.