2021 / Latin America / UX Vitals

Mapping the state of UX in Latam with quantitative data

My role

Independent

My contribution

Lean UX

Quantitative research

Data visualization

Visual design

Overview

How is UX design evolving in Latin America? To answer that question I created UX Vitals, a personal project that gathers data on salaries, technical skills and UX maturity in organizations across the region.

Since launching in 2021, the study has collected +4,000 responses across +20 countries.

Over four years, this project has evolved to integrate automation, data visualization and an information architecture designed to make the data understandable and actionable.

UX Vitals homepage with the message “Make career decisions with UX market data in Latam” and key study data.

Experimentation

A personal drive

Latin America lacks public, up-to-date information on UX design practice.

To address that, I launched a personal project of quantitative studies focused on three key areas:

Salaries and job status

Technical skill development

UX maturity of organizations

I decided to approach this project through strategic design, with a lean mindset focused on the community’s real needs.

Lean UX Canvas of the first experiments
Lean UX Canvas
Views of the experiment's post and form
Experiment post and form

A Lean UX experiment

In October 2021, I launched 2 experiments: a salary survey and a form for recruiters to access the results. Both were distributed on social media.

Participants automatically received a basic report with simple visualizations.

  • More than 50 designers participated in the first week, validating interest in this kind of information.
  • Recruiters showed no interest in the reports.

Iteration

Finding what works with data

The salary study included multiple cross-referenced variables (country, experience, company type, gender, role, among others), which required a solid architecture to visualize them without overwhelming the reader.

To understand what generated the most interest, I implemented Google Analytics on the reports to analyze how users interacted with the data and iterate on the architecture.

Iterations of the salary report's information architecture
Sections of the salary report
Project progress metrics report
Internal report

On the other hand, the skills and UX maturity studies demanded translating abstract concepts into models that were understandable for users and manageable for me.

One of the main challenges was the complexity of the data.

Architecture diagram of the systems integrated to generate the skills assessment report
Examples of the scripts that run the automated process

Automating to scale

To sustain the project long-term while keeping quality high, I automated key processes using no-code and low-code tools:

Data collection and processing

Google Forms + Apps Script

Dynamic results visualization

Looker Studio

Custom communication flows

Google Apps Script + Mailerlite API

Content generation

ChatGPT + Claude

Impact and results

Views of the landing pages
Landing pages

+5 years of data

This project not only helped me better understand the design landscape, but also contributed valuable data to the design community.

+4,000

responses collected across +20 countries

68%

annual growth in participants

1.6

studies answered per person on average

60%

of participants registered their email for future studies

The project has been shared organically by professionals at all levels across UX communities in Latin America.