If the answer is UX designer, what was the question?
Intermission: I don’t like titles…
Before we continue, I have to get something off my chest. I hate titles, especially job-titles: they are so fluffy and meaningless. Still we attach so much value to a name, title or label. Why?
What’s the first thing you ask when you meet a new person? Their name. What’s the second thing? Their profession.
“I’m Jack, I’m a UX designer”
What do we know about Jack because of that? Is he a nice guy? Can I trust him to do good user tests? Will he help me with my design system? Does Jack know anything about iOS design? Does he run workshops? We don’t know anything about Jack from that sentence, but we make assumptions (“a UX-designer, eh? So you’re good with colours?”, “can you design my business card?”, “give me an icon!”, “you must be so creative”)
What’s worse: when someone doesn’t fit our mental model, we figure he is probably not a good example
The opposite is true as well. When you meet an exception (an interaction designer who’s doing a darn good job in visual design), you reinforce your previous model (“wow, usually you people are not that good at …”).
It’s called the true-scotsman fallacy and once you know it, you’ll see it everywhere. Politicians love it ?
Long story short: I don’t have a function-title on my LinkedIn or my website. But I can’t get away with it everywhere :)
…but we need job-titles, so let’s just get on with it
What does a UX designer do? How’s that different from a UI designer, Interaction designer or Product Designer? And what about those human-experience strategists?
The screenshot below is from a google search on “difference ux design” and yes, these are all different posters explaining the differences between UX/UI/Service/Product/etc-design… That’s not a good sign!