What is the value of UX certification?
How do you learn the methods UX professionals use? A few university programs offer courses in UX or related fields.
Certainly, nothing beats hands-on experience conducting your own usability test on a prototype, running a survey, and interviewing stakeholders.
But how do you demonstrate to others (employers in particular) that you have the knowledge and experience? And how do you do that when you have little related professional experience?
Certifications offer the promise of a credential that could help you get a foot in the door and lead to higher pay. But is there any evidence they do either?
The last time we explored this question was with data from the 2016 UXPA salary survey. Our key conclusions were:
- Overall, certification did not appear to generate higher pay. In fact, the median pay for those with certification was nominally (but not significantly) lower than respondents without certification.
- Certification programs likely enrich practitioners’ knowledge, skills, and job credibility.
- Certification may be helpful when breaking into the UX field, either as a first job or a career change.
In this article, we analyze data from the 2024 UXPA salary survey to see what, if anything, has changed in the value of UX certification.
Of the 444 survey respondents, 151 (34%) reported having some type of certification (up from 24% in 2016), either from a private company (like the Nielsen Norman Group or CFI’s CUA/CXA) or an academic affiliation. Table 1 shows the distribution of their most recently acquired certifications.
| Certification | n | % |
|---|---|---|
| None | 293 | 66% |
| University Academic | 46 | 10% |
| Other | 42 | 9% |
| Nielsen Norman Group | 39 | 9% |
| CUA/CXA | 14 | 3% |
| CUXP/AUXP | 4 | 1% |
| PMP | 4 | 1% |
| CHFP | 2 |
Table 1: Distribution of most recently acquired certifications based on total sample size (n = 444).
University and academic certificates accounted for the greatest portion of certifications (46 of 151, or about 30%). Other certifications with reasonably large group sizes were Nielsen Norman Group (39/151 = 26%) and HFI’s CUA/CXA program (14/151 = 9%).
The Other category included two certifications each for CAPM (Certified Associate in Project Management), CPACC (Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies), and CPUX (Certified Professional for Usability and User Experience) and 36 other certifications that were entered once.
Thirty-five of the 444 respondents did not provide an annual salary, leaving 409 cases for analysis of salaries. Figure 1 shows the median reported salaries for certifications with at least ten responses and, at the right of the graph, overall salaries for those with and without certification.
Figure 1: Median salaries with 95% confidence intervals for certification programs with at least ten responses plus median salary for all responses with and without certifications (right side of figure).
In contrast to our 2017 finding, the median salary for those with certification was a little (but not significantly) higher than for those without certification. Not statistically significant findings like these are likely due to chance fluctuations across years.
As in 2017, salaries for respondents with university academic certifications remained relatively low. The nominal positions of the Nielsen Norman Group and CUA/CXA swapped places from 2017 to 2024 but were not significantly different in either survey.
Other variables might be correlated with the effect of certification on salary, so it’s important to investigate them. Historically, we know that two key drivers of variation in salary are years of experience and education, and in the 2024 survey we also collected information on how long respondents have had their most recent certifications (i.e., certification tenure).
Years of Experience
As shown in Figure 2, there was no overall significant difference between the years of experience for those who had any certification (10.9 years) and those who didn’t (10.0 years). As for reported salaries, the years of experience were nominally higher for certified respondents. The CUA/CXA respondents had significantly more years of experience than the other groups, but unlike the results in 2017, they did not have the highest nominal salaries (Nielsen Norman Group was nominally the highest). In fact, the difference in mean years of experience between Nielsen Norman Group and CUA/CXA was only about two years in 2017 but was about six years in 2024.
Figure 2: Mean years of experience with 95% confidence intervals for certification programs with at least ten responses plus averages for all responses with and without certifications (right side of figure).
Education
In regression analyses conducted with the 2024 and previous surveys, the level of education has consistently been a key driver. Figure 3 shows slight (nonsignificant) differences in salary for certified and noncertified respondents for three key educational levels (Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctorate degrees); nominally higher with certification for Bachelor’s and Doctorate and lower for Master’s. Regardless of certification, as education rises, the salaries increase.
Figure 3: Median salaries with 95% confidence intervals for any certification versus no certification at different levels of education.
Tenure of Most Recent Certification
The 2024 UXPA salary survey included a new question asking respondents how long it had been since their most recent certification. We encouraged UXPA to include this item to see whether time after certification influenced salary differences. Figure 4 shows the median salaries for four certification tenure groups.
Figure 4: Median salaries with 95% confidence intervals for different lengths of time since the most recent certification (some groups combined to improve sample sizes).
The median salaries increased as the number of years since certification increased. Inspection of the confidence intervals indicates a statistically significant difference between the 0–2 and 11+ years groups.
This is consistent with what you’d expect. So, does this mean it just takes time for the value of the certification to start to pay off? Unfortunately, it’s not so straightforward. Increasing salaries with time since obtaining certificates is also consistent with what you’d expect from respondents’ years of UX experience.
To see whether the pattern in Figure 4 is driven more by years of experience or certification tenure, we converted the UX experience and certification tenure categories into single numbers based on the category intervals presented in the survey (e.g., 0–2: 1.0, 3–4: 3.5, 5–7: 6.0, 8–10: 9.0, 11–15: 13.0, 16–20: 18.0, 21+: 25).
We then used these values to investigate their statistical relationship with the reported salaries using a key driver analysis (KDA). In this analysis, the beta weight for years of UX experience was .32 (p p = .84). Together, they accounted for 9% of the variation in salary, but the contribution of years of UX experience to the model (.32) was 16 times that of the nonsignificant contribution of certification tenure (.02).
We had been hopeful that having a measure of certification tenure would improve our understanding of the influence of certification on salary, but it appears to be too closely related to years of experience to stand on its own in this type of regression model.
As one more check on the potential effect of certification on salary focusing only on the group with the least UX experience (0–2 years), we found the effect of certification was not statistically significant (t(42) .33, p = .74), but on average, those with certification reported making about $3,600 more per year (Certification, n = 13: $80,579; No certification, n = 31: $76,948). With such a small sample size, however, the 95% confidence interval around the difference ranged from −$19,000 to +$26,000, so from a statistical perspective, the true difference could well be $0. This means it’s plausible, but not proven, that certification might have some benefit on salary in one’s early years as a UX practitioner.
About a third (49/151) of respondents with certification were looking for a job when they received their most recent certification. In addition to direct analyses of the effect of certification on pay, the 2024 UXPA survey included two additional items to shed some light on how respondents felt about whether certification affected their career (impact on pay and on other aspects of their career).
Perceived Impact of Certification on Pay
As shown in Figure 5, most respondents with certification (58%) did not think it had any impact on their pay. About a quarter of respondents (26%) didn’t know whether there had been an impact, but 16% reported that certification helped to increase their pay. That’s another datapoint that suggests certifications may help a little on the margins in getting a job or improving pay.
Figure 5: Perceived impact of certification on pay.
Perceived Impact of Certification on Career
Of the various ways in which certification was perceived to have affected respondents’ careers (Figure 6), about half (49%) indicated the certification had improved their skills in their current job. About a quarter (23%) felt certification helped them break into the field. For smaller but not insignificant percentages, certification helped 18% get a new job and 9% secure a promotion. This corroborates one other datapoint that found that certifications are largely seen as a “nice to have” but may help in some hiring decisions (especially where a small edge makes the difference between candidates).
Figure 6: Perceived impact of certification on different aspects of respondents’ careers.
Our exploration of the value of UX certification in 2024 while looking back to 2017 has found some consistencies in key findings and some discrepancies.
The overall effect of certification on salary remained nonsignificant. In 2017, the salaries of those without certification were slightly higher than those with certification, but the difference was not statistically significant. In the 2024 UXPA survey, that pattern was nominally reversed (respondents with certificates reported higher pay) but was still not statistically significant.
Salaries were lowest for the university academic certifications. Consistent with the 2017 findings, salaries were lower for respondents with university academic certifications than those with Nielsen Norman Group or CUA/CXA certifications.
There appears to be a disconnect between salaries for the certification groups and their average years of UX experience in 2024, which was not apparent in 2017. In 2017, salaries were about $13,000 higher for CUA/CXA than Nielsen Norman Group. This seemed reasonable given how much more recently the Nielsen Norman Group had started its certification program and how the mean years of UX experience were higher for the CUA/CXA group of certificants. In 2024, the years of experience for CUA/CXA certificants was about six years more than Nielsen Norman Group certificants (from two years in 2017), but the salaries for Nielsen Norman Group certificants were nominally higher than for CUA/CXA. This suggests that differences in years of experience do not fully explain differences in salaries for different types of certifications.
Increased education increases salary regardless of certification. In regression analyses conducted in 2024 and on previous UXPA surveys, level of education has always been a key driver of salary. Comparisons of salaries for Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctorate holders showed nominal differences in salary, sometimes higher and sometimes lower for certified respondents, but never statistically significant.
The apparent effects of certification tenure on salary appear to be completely explained by corresponding years of UX experience. As the number of years since respondents’ most recent certification increases, so does the salary. However, a follow-up key driver (regression) analysis found that when certification tenure and years of UX experience were the sole predictors of salary, the years of UX experience accounted for sixteen times more of the variation in salary than certification tenure (which is not a significant predictor).
Most respondents did not think certification helped to increase their pay. About a quarter of respondents didn’t know whether certification had helped their pay. Only 16% thought certification had helped to increase their pay.
About half of respondents felt that certification improved their skills in their current job. About a quarter of respondents said certification had no impact on their career, but others felt it helped them break into the field (23%), helped them get a new job (18%), or helped them secure a promotion (9%).
Bottom line: Despite a few inconsistencies, the major conclusions from our analyses in 2017 are the same in 2024—UX certification does not guarantee higher pay but can likely help new practitioners break into the field (a little) and help more seasoned practitioners improve their UX skills for applications in their current jobs.
