“You are a UX what?”

If you have read some of my previews articles, you know I work in a Financial Institution in one of the islands of the Caribbean. And here, just as in every 3th world country, the role of the UX “whatever” is something completely new as a concept in the the mind of many. Just like most employer are not sure on what we do, they do not know the different concepts inside this roles and what to name them.

There is a quite bit number of different job titles that are used to describe the work of a UX professional; to mention a few:

• UX designer
• UX researcher/designer
• Interaction designer
• UI/UX designer
• Experience designer
• UX engineer
• UX architect
• Experience architect
• Usability engineer
• Usability specialist
• UX specialist
• Product designer
• Digital designer

That’s 13 different job titles. Sure, there might be some slight differences in the type of role, like more of a visual design focus for a digital designer perhaps, but fundamentally we’re talking about the same sort of role. Namely, someone who designs a predominately digital product or service using a user-centred approach. This proliferation of titles is systematic of the identify crisis that I believe the UX industry is increasingly suffering from.

What is “UX”?

Yes, the quotation is needed, just like when someone asks and uses them in a face-to-face conversation half of the time.

Ask 100 people to tell you what ‘UX’ means, and you’ll get 100 different answers. Ask the same 100 people what someone working in UX does, and you’ll also get 100 different answers, if you do get an answer from each.

To some UX means the entirety of the user’s experience, but then others will say that no, that’s ‘CX’ (customer experience), not ‘UX’. Some think that UX really just equals the UI (user interface). Some will say that ‘UX’ purely refers to digital products, but then others will say that a user’s experience encompasses all touchpoints, digital and non-digital. Some will say that UX is primarily about usability, others will say that UX is more about user emotions and feelings. It’s all very confusing; even a little to those whom are UX professionals.

The term ‘UX’ has become an increasingly meaningless label to be attached to anything and everything that involve users and technology. There’s now Mobile UX, Agile UX, Lean UX and Enterprise UX. Usability testing somewhere along the way has become UX testing. The need to label everything with UX is also true of roles. A web designer is now a UX designer, or a UX/UI designer even though they’re no doubt doing exactly the same thing as before (but perhaps with the expectation of getting a better salary, I’m still waiting for it).

This dilution of brand ‘UX’ is damaging because it makes it harder for those outside of the industry to understand what ‘UX’ is all about and what a ‘UX’ professional can bring to a project.

So, what can we do about this? How people use language, terms and labels is, of course, fluid and will naturally change over time. I have started to do a couple of things to help build more of a clear identity for the industry. Here are 3 of them:

1. Stop overusing the term ‘UX’

Firstly, we should stop overusing the term ‘UX’ ourselves and should try to use it in the context in which it was originally intended. When Don Norman first coined the term, it was intended to be shorthand for the User’s eXperience (I think he thought that ‘UX’ sounds better than ‘UE’ or that it will be difficult to separate from ‘UI’) with a system (i.e. computer). As Don Norman has said:

I invented the term (UX) because I thought human interface and usability were too narrow. I wanted to cover all aspects of the person’s experience with the system including industrial design graphics, the interface, the physical interaction and the manual. Since then the term has spread widely, so much so that it is starting to lose its meaning.

Interestingly the term ‘HCI’ (human-computer interaction) actually predates UX, but never really caught on and is largely only used in academia. Using this meaning and context it doesn’t make sense to talk about Agile UX or Lean UX. It doesn’t make sense to talk about UX/UI because they are very different things. We shouldn’t talk about UX as a practice or methodology because it’s not, it’s short hand for the User’s eXperience.

2. Protect the ‘UX’ brand

It’s become very popular to attach UX to job titles, or indeed rebrand roles such as Web designer, or graphic designer to UX designer. We now have UX/UI designers, UX developers, UX copywriters, UX business analysts, even UX data scientists. The thing is, unless a designer with ‘UX’ (or ‘Experience’) in their title is carrying out user-centred design, at best they are miss appropriating the term, at worst they are imposters. Someone with ‘UX’ in their title that has never interacted with users, that are not user-centric in everything they do, really shouldn’t be using that label. We need to reclaim and protect the ‘UX’ brand and call out those misrepresenting it, even try to educate them(send them this article if you think it will help). Perhaps we even need to think about focusing on a different brand altogether…

3. Focus on ‘UCD’, not ‘UX’

The tech industry has spent the last 20 years overusing the term ‘UX’. Rather than try to reclaim brand ‘UX’, I believe that we need to revive and focus on an older brand which I’ve found to resonate much more strongly with people. Not HCI, or usability, but UCD: User-Centred Design (or human-centred design as some folk like to call it).

User-centred design perfectly encapsulates what a UX professional does, or at least should be doing. Namely, using user research and the consideration of user needs and requirements to inspire, influence and steer a design.

UCD is also our key differentiator in the marketplace. It’s our secret sauce, our unique selling point. We should therefore be clearly communicating this through our brand.

What do you think?