UX role titles stopped making sense a while ago
Over the years I’ve seen more and more titles pop-up that are about user experience (UX) design. Though even saying that may ruffle some feathers, as I said UX. Some folks call it UXD, where they integrate the ‘design’ word into the acronym. Though there are also folks who say and write XD, by thinking purely about ‘experience design’.
The problem here of course, is just like with any naming convention: We can never all fully agree on what something is called, or what that name stands for. Furthermore, if you start thinking about all the languages in the world, that becomes literal. Let’s grab Quebec, in Canada. A province that is forced, by law, to be in both English and French. What this means for job titles is that both languages need to be present in official communications. For studios located there that means in English, the job title may be ‘UX Director’, while in French it is ‘Directrice, Directeur de l’expérience utilisateur·trice (UX)’. From gender neutral to adding genders. It will generally mean the same thing, but are you able to read and understand both? Will the person assign the same meaning to both, depending on their culture and language?
The same has been happening to job titles everywhere, but I particularly notice this in the UX field, because I am in that field. Or am I?
A UX designer, an interaction designer, and an interface designer walk into a bar
The bartender asks: “What do you do for a living?” The UX designer says: “I design a better experience for our users by thinking about what the user wants, and making the interface easy to use.” The interaction designer says: “That’s neat, but I design a better experience for our users by thinking about what the user wants, and making the interface easy to use.” The interface designer says: “Interesting, but I design a better experience for our users by thinking about what the user wants, and making the interface easy to use.”
Let’s run through some of the job titles that I have heard/read/seen the last few years: UX designer, interaction designer, interface designer, UX analyst, experience designer, usability specialist, content strategist, information architect, UX architect, cognitive engineer, human factors specialist, human computer interaction (HCI) designer, UX/UI designer, visual designer, UX researcher, UX strategist, UX writer, product designer, product manager, product owner, and even UX unicorn. There are even more you have probably heard of. Please feel free to share them with me, as I always like to add to this list.
Depending on what your experience and education is like, you will see a lot of overlap between many of these roles, or hardly any. I have seen folks try to nail down what a particular role is like, and be completely convinced that they are right in the role being the meaning that they have attached to it. Then later 4 different companies will roll out job descriptions where they all have the same title, but the responsibilities are wildly different. For example, one company may think a UX designer should be making the final UI art. Another company will say that is the case too, and also that UX designer has to implement everything themselves. A third company will say that is a UX unicorn’s job, and not a regular UX designer’s job. Then the fourth comes up and says a UX designer should only design, while engineers should be the ones implementing, and a specific UI designer will make the final art and redlines. What do you think is the right description for the role? The answer does not matter to everyone else.
“Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.”
The opinion of what you think a UX role is and isn’t, does not matter on the large scale. Where it matters is for your specific case. The community at large, and the community near you, will assign their own meaning. In the end the question always comes down to: What is the problem that needs solving, and what title do we give that? Lately the amount of product designers, product managers, and product owners has significantly increased. So obviously something about the products we use in our daily lives needs to be improved, or so companies are intending. Whenever I talk to someone with one of those titles though, I always have to ask: What does your day-to-day look like? The answer to that question is what matters.
Do they lead a team? Do they have direct responsibility over the final product? Do they have decision making power? Are they one of a few product folks, or the only one on the team? In my experience many folks in ‘product’ roles get to suggest user experiences, but do not get the political willpower or executive power to actually get the time necessary to implement and iterate on those designs. Oftentimes the answer they get from above is ‘Well, then just do what we can in the time available’, but you may as well ask 9 mothers to make a baby in 1 month. Design is still an organic process.
You may say that ‘product owner’ is a specific scrum title, with specific responsibilities within that scrum framework. Or maybe they are part of some kind of ‘agile’ framework that does ‘sprints’? I put those in single quotes because every company you join will have a slight variation of what they think scrum is, what they think agile is, and what they think a sprint should achieve. There are books, courses, and all kinds of ways to teach people these methods. Companies sometimes pay tens of thousands to teach their employees how these methods work. People are set on specific descriptions for all of those words, as otherwise you are ‘not doing it right’. Yet still every company does their own thing. Just as they do with ‘user experience’ roles. Due to this, titles have stopped meaning much. Maybe that’s not a bad thing? It could be nicer if everything was always clear, but everyone having their own interpretation isn’t bad either, as much as it may be entirely unavoidable. That is how evolution and iteration happen, even if there are many dead ends.
All of the above things, whether they are user experience roles, product roles, agile, scrum, sprints, etc, are worthwhile to learn about, think about, and assign some meaning to for yourself. You cannot rely on your own interpretation however, as whatever situation you will find yourself in will have a slight variation of what you think is true. The idea here is to not be rigid in what you think something should be. In the end it will not matter much. UX role titles sometimes do not make sense, and they don’t have to, because the day-to-day and end result is what actually matters. Whether you’re called a UX designer, interaction designer, or a UX unicorn: Do you deliver what is needed so that the user is happy?
What’s in a name?
The title of this post says ‘a while ago’ though. I say that because I recently started reading ‘Interaction Design for Complex Problem Solving’ by Barbara Mirel, which was released in 2004. Even in that book there are a multitude of UX-like roles brought up, with what I see as all kinds of venn diagram overlap depending on your interpretation of the role. So this has been going on for almost 20 years, at least.
It's not about your title. It's about what you know and do. Some of you will already know that. An issue you may be struggling with is that some of those you work with may not know this. Especially if they are leads and managers who have stuck around in one particular place for a long time, and have grown into the assumption that what they think the meaning is, is how it must be everywhere. What they think may be true in their specific situation, and you may have to mold yourself to that particular definition. That can be very uncomfortable, and make you think that a particular role isn’t for you. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that the way they do it is how they do it everywhere! You can do the exact same day-to-day with the same title at 3 different companies, and get wildly different performance reviews for it.
Do not focus on how others categorize you either. If what you are doing is the right thing to you, and you get the end results that are important, than that is what matters. You may be called a senior, or principal, but behind the scenes you're C3, C4, C5, a level 62, an IC5, a G, an L5, a band 7, etc. That matters for responsibilities and pay. The public title sometimes doesn’t matter at all though, as that is a categorization that others may put onto you. As @SwiftOnSecurity said not too long ago:
It is good to have a personal idea of what a role is. You cannot force that idea onto a company, team, or project though. If they want a UX designer who can design, do UI art, and do the final implementation, then alright, that is what they want and expect. Is it realistic? That does not matter to them. They have a particular problem to solve, for a particular budget, and this is how they are trying to do it. They might have to look around for a long, long while, or pay a huge amount of money to that person, but if they choose to do so, then alright. You cannot come into that company, team, or project, and then decide what it is a UX designer does. You will have to find out beforehand, via the interviews, on whether you align on what the vision is for the role. You should find that out then, not after you have joined.
Which brings me to something more personal. A question I have had to keep asking myself for a while now, and for which the answer evolves continually.
What is Tools UX Design?
I first conceived this title back in 2015 for a Game Developers Conference (GDC) talk I was going to give in 2016. I called the role ‘Tool Designer’, because the existing relevant technical title is usually ‘Tool Programmer’. I had hoped it would become a role more folks would do, and that companies would hire for. That mission is actually accomplished, as nowadays I see companies sending out job ads looking for a ‘Tool Designer’, which is fantastic!
However, the issue is that when I, or others, say they are a Tool Designer, they often still get blank looks. You then have to explain what it is you do. Like we saw above: Nobody has the exact same explanation. I’ve spoken about this before, in my talk at the 2018 Game UX Summit in Vancouver, where I went over some of the titles I have seen used before:
You probably noticed that the top of this website says ‘Tools UX Designer’ though. Why that change? I only made it recently, because it does not matter what I think a nice title is. It matters if other folks understand it when they see it or hear about it. Tool UX Designer? Yep, you do the user experience of tools. It’s that slight bit more clear. The only thing still unclear is whether this is physical or digital tools, because there do exist physical tool designers! Thankfully if you are at a software conference, people get the idea quickly because of context.
Recently though, I’ve also tried to think about ‘Workflow Designer’ for an internal role, and ‘Workflow Consultant’ for an external one. I so far have seen that folks understand that title the fastest no matter what industry they are familiar with. Workflow covers UX, UI, end results, the way of working with multiple pieces of software, the ways teams work, how they communicate, the way they organize your desks, etc. Because ‘workflow’ is a more commonly known word in English, it makes sense quickly.
In the book ‘Interaction Design for Complex Problem Solving’, the words used for these kind of situations are ‘complex’ or ‘wicked’. I think ‘wicked’ is very old fashioned, and ‘complex’ could work, but the idea of ‘complexity’ is very easy to frame into many different competing ideas. What is complex to one person, may not be complex to another. What is workflow to one person though, is usually also workflow to another. I’ll keep thinking of better ways to describe this, as of course with anything in UX: It requires iteration.
Media & Entertainment
And it’s not just about titles. Sometimes it’s entire industries. One is Media & Entertainment, which I have heard abbreviated to M&E. I first worked at a games company more than a decade ago, and between then and now I have worked at small studios, big studios, spoke at conferences around the world, and generally spent time with loads of people from around the world. Yet I never once heard someone say that games is a part of M&E. I first heard that referenced to me only this year, 2022. The person telling me I was in M&E was very surprised I had never heard games be spoken of as a part of M&E. I later polled some folks from the games industry around me and 70% said they had never heard the games industry being referenced as part of the M&E industry.
That’s not to say it isn’t. It’s just a matter of perspective. It depends on where and how you professionally grew up. Just as if you grow up in the UK, it’s written colour, and if you grow up in the US it’s written color. Yet you will pronounce it the same way. If you grow up in The Netherlands, you may just interchangeably write them down either way, depending on if your particular spellcheck software appreciates it or not.
In conclusion
Call the role whatever you think fits it. Some folks will understand and apply for that role. Some folks will think it’s not for them. Whatever the company thinks is true, is true, and changing that internally is incredibly hard. Whatever the team thinks is true, is true, and that is just has hard to change. Titles are often for prestige and pay. The end result is what matters. if you delivered a bad product as a senior UX designer, then people will remember the product was bad. If you delivered a good product as a senior UX designer, then people will remember the good product. Your contribution are a part of the whole, and the whole can be incredibly huge. The right questions to ask when wondering about a title are: What is the day to day? What is the end goal and responsibility? Those matter.
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this post, you can find my talks here, and my other posts here. You can also subscribe below to get a notification when I release a new post.