2016 Design Salary Survey

Tools

THE SURVEY CONTAINED QUESTIONS IN THE FORM OF “do you use this tool in your current role on a regular basis (about every week)?” for more than 100 tools. Not all tools were specific to design—the list included programming languages, work organization tools, and operating systems—and it wasn’t meant to be exhaustive, with “other” answers available.

Mac OS X appears to be the clear choice for those in the design space, with 88% of the sample using Macs, far more than the 38% who use Windows and the 12% who use Linux. Windows users earned less than Mac users: among those who used one (but not both) of these operating systems, Mac users had a median salary of $95K and Windows users had a salary of $78K, while those who used both had a median salary of $88K.

Many of the tools we asked about are for communications, file sharing, or project management. Among the most common are Google Drive (59%), Dropbox (58%), Slack (51%), GitHub (40%), Trello (32%), Evernote (32%), and Basecamp (29%). Of these tools, Slack, GitHub, and Evernote were notable for the higher salaries of their users: the median salary of respondents who used at least one of these tools (69% of the sample) was $100K, $108K for those who used all three (12%), and only $76K for those who did not use any (32%).

Aside from operating systems and communications tools, the most commonly used tool in the sample was pen and paper (with 61% of the sample), followed by Google Analytics (57%) and HTML/CSS (53%). It is perhaps ...