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User Experience: a popular digital profession that should mean business
The popular conception about what makes up User Experience (UX) is related to the tactical aspect of UX. Meaning designing/researching components from a user-centric perspective at the interface level. Think of a product- like a mobile app. Now think of all the components and screens it has, the buttons, the interactions. If you select a button or type in information, what will happen on the screen? This screen is commonly referred to as a UI or User Interface. The UI is what the customer or user will interact with throughout the digital aspect of their experience. Tactical research in UX associates closely to the tangible aspects of the user interface. This is what I usually refer to whenever I describe my job to someone who doesn’t know what UX is; tactical research is definitely the easiest to explain.
Right now in the User Experience realm, there are three popular role designations. There’s the UX designer, the UX researcher, and now the T shaped UX/UI designer. There are other subsets too, like UX engineer or UX architect (and others), but these aren’t as ubiquitous as the aforementioned positions (but still important!) These three positions are all pretty similar to each other; a UX Designer could be doing research with users (and at smaller companies they are expected to), and a UX Researcher could be heavy on the…
