The myth of the "UX designer"

http://elliotnash.me/the-myth-of-the-ux-designer

by bgnm2000 • 13 years ago

51 32 13 years ago

calinet63• 13 years ago

"UX designer" is a bit of an ambiguous phrase, and it gets the correct amount of sarcastic scorn for being a buzzword.

But I think it means something more important: as you say, good UX requires a recognition that everything that goes into your application contributes to the experience. Software design, copy, marketing, UI, etc. etc. Everything. We all know this and understand this.

What UX is, then, is software quality systems engineering. "Everything that goes into the experience" is no longer simply visual design or UI components, but a complex web of inputs and influences to manage in order to ensure quality. A good UI designer has one piece of that puzzle and ensures the visuals and interactions are spot on, but a good UX designer takes all that and more into account and extends their influence to many other areas outside the visual. It's not their job to do all the work, but it is their job to manage the systems in place to ensure the experience is high quality.

Software is getting more complex and more interesting. The "UX designer" moniker is just a response to that; a recognition that UI designers are becoming more holistic and with wider reach. They are becoming quality management systems engineers. This requires more than just UI design, though most UI designers probably naturally have the skills and knowledge to make it happen.

It's a positive development IMHO. You may not like the broad nebulous term UX, but I think if we think of it more as systems design, maybe we can start to pin it down and make it a useful job title.

AJ007• 13 years ago

I see strong parallels between UX designer and game designer. It was not until more recently that it has become generally accepted that everything from time killing mobile games to enterprise software demands good UX. Decades ago game designers figured out that a good UX meant a larger player base and ultimately more sales -- rather than contracts and inescapable legacy lock ins.

UX is about creating a clear, intuitive experience for the user (the front and back end work that makes that possible.) This is done through consistency of patterns, both unique to the application and drawn on existing and historical work (also makes for a good argument against software patents, but that is another issue.) At the very least, this requires some one or a group of people to create an agreed upon design document from the start.

Steve Jobs view of the liberal arts goes a long way in explaining UX. Everything matters. That hardly means every single team member should be an omniscient visionary with hundreds of niche interests.

flyosity• 13 years ago

Another problem with people conflating "UX Designer" with "UI Designer" is that if you put "UX" in a job title hoping to get "UI" folks, you will get the wrong people. I have seen this first-hand now with two companies: the job title was set by someone who didn't really understand the difference and instead of getting qualified visual/interface designers applying for the role we got people who draw boxes and arrows, extremely low-fidelity wireframes, and user researchers. Not people who cranked hard on the actual product, but people who did a lot of "meta" work that only affected the product in passing.

In larger companies there may be a need for "UX" designers like that, but at small companies when people all need to wear multiple hats, you don't just want a wireframer or flow diagrammer... you want a designer who can think about the overall experience, then design it, then create the actual pixels, then hopefully write some front-end code as well. I have yet to meet anyone who considers themselves a "UX Designer" to be able to do any of that.

seanmcdirmid8• 13 years ago

You mean, you got real designers when what you really wanted were production art technicians? Sounds even worse than that: you got interaction designers when you might have been happy with visual designers.

Most good designers don't have time to write code, but some bad/mediocre ones are ok at with it as they are less specialized. It's rare that designers would even have time to write code even if they could or wanted to; usually developers are blocked on them, not vice versa.

So what you want is an interaction+visual designer who can also do production and on top of that can write code. And you probably want them also to be good. Your company is screwed.

nahname2• 13 years ago

The best designers I have worked with write code or wrote code at one point in their career. It is difficult working in a medium you do not understand.

mmatants• 13 years ago

"meta" work that only affected the product in passing

UX is basically a continuation of the project manager role (depending on what a given shop interprets that as). It is meant to steer the entire product design (and I don't mean PSD files) from the ground up, so it's not really "in passing".

Also, most UX people I know do have a decent skill at PS, so I guess they are listening to that concern.

nahname2• 13 years ago

Well put. The user experience is everyone's responsibility. I've seen a number of teams that let the 'UX Specialist' dictate the entire UI. Usually research that does not account for cognitive bias is done in place of testing. Effectively you are basing the entire UI on the opinion of one person. That is always a bad idea.

seanmcdirmid8• 13 years ago

Or a great idea, depending on the person. Design by committee, however, is almost always wrong.

rosspw• 13 years ago

News flash: titles are useless. what does a "CEO" do at a five person startup. You can call them anything you want, but someone needs to be responsible for owning a design process.

normloman• 13 years ago

Bah. Mere semantics. Stop quibbling.

We don't need any more articles like these.

mcguire• 13 years ago

If you aren't going to quibble over semantics, what are you going to quibble over? Syntax?

vvohra87• 13 years ago

He said "Stop quibbling" meaning do not quibble(Argue or raise objections about a trivial matter). Not over semantics, not over syntax. Have meaningful debate and discussion.

mbesto• 13 years ago

UX is quite simply put "the elimination of frustration"

Do you know who is responsible for creating a good user experience?EVERYONE ON YOUR TEAM. EVERYONE.

I understand the sentiment that the OP is trying to bring, but this statement is akin to stating something like "everyone is responsible for the commercial success of the business".

The role of a UX designer (or perhaps a UX Lead in this case) is to take on the responsibility of ensuring that frustrations of the customer are eliminating by all means possible. The problem is that not everyone in your organization - no matter how big or small - has the time to be able to empathize with your customers. So it's slightly disingenuous to assume that everyone bear that responsibility. It's the UX Lead/Designer's responsible to engage with the customer and feed that back in a meaningful way to the people responsible for actually cutting the code that renders the experience.

bgnm20002• 13 years ago

I agree and disagree, only in the sense that - everything impacts a user's experience. The entire team should have that on their mind to a varying degree.

TeeWEE• 13 years ago

I like this explanation. Often you read articles about self proclaimed UX experts talking about their research and thinking about the product is what makes a product have a good UX.

Nope, its the iterative process. Good UX people, Good developers, and short iterative cycles. Not just market research. A good UX guy listens to the developer too.

geebee• 13 years ago

I don't care much about the terms, but my general test is this: would this person be useful on a small team?

A software "architect" who can't be a developer wouldn't be useful on a small team. A "UX" designer who can't create mock ups, wireframes, or actual code (certainly CSS/HTML, let's hope for javascript) wouldn't be useful on a small team.

I have trouble believing that people who wouldn't be useful on a small team would be useful on a large team.

seivan• 13 years ago

JavaScript, Objective-C, Java. Basically anything related to the platform.

An iOS developer who can design and knows how to blend colours and make smaller icons will basically outdo every UI/UX/YADAYADA designer everywhere.

Not to be confused with a graphic designer. That shit is actually difficult.

mrxd2• 13 years ago

Reading this made me wonder if the author really has a good understanding of what's going on in the UX field. Maybe he's run into a few people calling themselves UX designers and then generalizing from a small sample into the entire field? I don't know. Here's some things that I wish everyone understood:

1. UX designers aren't solely in charge of the user experience - Yes, UX designers have been saying that from day one. UX is about breaking down organizational barriers and facilitating collaboration across disciplines. That's fundamental to the concept, because looking at a product from a user's perspective, you don't see organizational divisions, internal politics, fiefdoms dominated by specific disciplines and so on. Users experience a product in a holistic way, but organizations are fragmented into specializations. Poor UX is often the result of organizations optimizing for the efficiency of division of labor without understanding the tradeoff for the end user. That's a fundamental mismatch that UX tries to remedy.

2. UX designers didn't take ownership away from anyone. When the discipline was first emerging, very few people cared. Over the last 15 years, the trend has been UX designers saying things like "How do I get my developers to care about the user's experience?" Now UX is starting to become strategically important, and (some, not all) developers realize that they're getting left behind. That's not UX designers doing it to you, that's a self-inflicted wound. I started as a developer 10 years ago, but quickly realized that UX was the future, and made the switch. UX designers have been banging the drum for 15 years trying to get everyone working together. A lot of developers are only now starting to wake up and realize they need to be involved, but find themselves at a 10-15 year disadvantage. Others stepped up and took ownership over something that no one else cared about and today they have experience, knowledge, skills and a track record in a strategically important area. Sorry about that. We tried to tell you.

3. Elliot comes off pretty naive when he talks about iteration. That's a pretty new idea in software, which has historically been dominated by a requirements-oriented traditional engineering mindset. As a result, some developers talk about iteration like they invented it, but other product design disciplines - architecture, graphic design, film, fashion, industrial design - have been doing iteration for many decades, probably even centuries. You know how designers talk about mockups? Here's the wikipedia definition of a mockup: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mockup

"In manufacturing and design, a mockup, or mock-up, is a scale or full-size model of a design or device, used for teaching, demonstration, design evaluation, promotion, and other purposes. A mockup is a prototype if it provides at least part of the functionality of a system and enables testing of a design. Mock-ups are used by designers mainly to acquire feedback from users."

4. There are still many large barriers to developers participating in the UX process, but the important ones aren't about job titles. Here are some things developers need to deal with when getting involved in UX:

- Lack of career incentives - when you interview for your next job, are you going to be asked any questions about the UX of what you worked on? Is your performance at your current job evaluated in terms of your impact on UX? Do you hold yourself personally accountable for poor UX? If not, then like the chicken and pig fable, you're involved but not committed. It's one thing to say that everyone is responsible for a good UX. It's another to actually hold people (or yourself) responsible.

- Lack of empathy - you're building a product for someone else to use. If you privilege your own preferences and way of working, if you lack the flexibility to adopt the mindset of someone who is very different from you, you won't succeed in UX. You're probably very smart. Don't let that get in the way of empathizing with people who you think are beneath you.

- Lack of skills - you don't need visual design skills to contribute to UX. At a strategic level, UX is about understanding people: what they need and want, what motivates them, what's important to them. The best UX designers are insightful observers of human nature.

- Over-specialization - for some people, their whole lives revolve around their job. Good UX designers are relentlessly curious about a wide range of topics and activities. They don't accept artificial divisions of labor at work, and definitely don't let them carry over into their personal lives. Remember the saying: nothing human is alien to me.

bgnm20002• 13 years ago

I have a feeling you over analyzed what I wrote. I wasn't saying UX isn't important - my job title is literally a UX engineer. The company I work with prides itself on the user experience coming first. So while it may be something I defend first, its something on everyone's mind - and when it isn't it can become a problem.

Steve Jobs for example cared about every little detail that impacted the user experience. He also wanted everyone in his company to care in the same way.

My point is just that while UX designers may be leading the charge, they largely need to get off any "high horse" they're on, and understand an entire team is responsible for a good experience, even if they are the driving force.

mrxd2• 13 years ago

Getting whole teams involved in the process has been standard practice for UX designers for over a decade. For the most part, the problem has been getting non-UX folks to care at all.

What you describe sounds like a scenario where everyone wants to participate, but for some reason the UX designer refuses to collaborate? I've never heard of that happening, and it runs counter to my personal experience and pretty much every UX designer I've ever talked to, so my gut feeling is that you're reacting to a unique situation.

The myth of the "UX designer"

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