Why graphic design and UI seem to have cannibalized the term UX?
UX ≠ UI. User experience is more than a user interface.
UX is the new black and there is no wanna-be-cool company ignoring the term. Due to this, over the past few years, UX has become some kind of a hodgepodge term.
Formally, UX stands for User Experience and according to ISO 9241–210 user experience is defined as “a person’s perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service”.
Two keywords in there: perception — the quality of being aware of things through the physical senses, especially sight — and response — a reply, an answer or a reaction to something.
Our perceptions and responses define our experiences, but nowaways UX is mostly identified with the perception part of the definition.
So, in short, our perceptions and responses define our experiences. However, nowadays UX is mostly identified with the perception part of the definition: UI and graphic design
If you look for job offers involving UX on LinkedIn most of them are tagged as UX/UI and require graphic design skills, such as being able to come with both, low and pixel-perfect prototypes in a minute and mastering Adobe CC, Invision, Sketch… There is no demand for graphic or interface designers anymore, startups have turned them into UX/UI. I have met lots of people calling themselves UX practitioners when they are nothing but graphic designers.
There is no demand for graphic or interface designers anymore, startups have turned them into UX/UI
As I have mentioned above, graphic user interfaces represent only one part of the UX definition: Perception. But why so much talk about UX and then focusing only on one part?.
IMHO what is happening relates to Corporate UX Maturity. Lots of startups are almost taking their first steps in business and it takes a long time and hard work to progress through UX maturity phases, so most of them allow their design team to rely on its own intuition about what constitutes good usability.
Lots of startups are almost taking their first steps in business and it takes a long time and hard work to progress through UX maturity phases.
Furthermore, working on UIs is working on the tangible, whereas UX is intangible. UIs are made of graphical elements, there are rules and graphic design principles reassuring the choices, it is easy to see progress in work and they may seduce someone with their beauty. However, UX is the unknown, there are no fixed rules for feelings and emotions. It’s harder to work on an intangible subject, and we, humans, are inherently lazy, so this may be a reason why startups reduce UX work to UI.
UIs is working on the tangible, whereas UX is the intangible. It’s harder to work on an intangible subject, and we, humans, are inherently lazy, so this may be a reason why startups reduce UX work to UI.
But, as it happens in real life, you can have a crush on somebody on your morning commute (UI) but to love and marry someone requires knowledge, effort and long-term commitment(UX). In the long term, no one wants to marry a beauty without brains.
So, how a product/service can find its own brain? Sometimes it’s just a matter of time, once UI is optimized and reaches its saturation point, the company or the design team should feel the urge to move forward because they have realized that UX is more than UI. Sometimes it is just a UX practitioner fighting to be heard and saying that UX implies thinking through all the stages of a product and make them all work together seamlessly.
It’s time we, UX practitioners, rise our voices to make the startups we work for, progress through their UX maturity.
Be as it may, UX is more than UI and it’s time we, UX practitioners, rise our voices to make the startups we work for, progress through their UX maturity
Don’t forget Don Norman’s wise words: “UX is everything”
