The Designer’s Identity Crisis

We’ve all read online articles, participated in discussions and wrestled with the question. What do I call myself? A UX, UI, UX/UI, UX Dev, Visual, Interaction or Ixd, Web, Full Stack, Product, GUI, Digital or Graphic Designer. Honestly, G-d only knows. If you can find 3 legitimate sources with the exact same vocational description of these terms, I’ll give you a bar of gold.

Firstly, these terms comprise of a combination of abstract concepts like UX or more tangible things like a graphical or sensory output. The biggest culprit in this confusion is ‘User Experience’. It is as descriptive as saying “The physical world, including our bodies, is a response of the observer. We create our bodies as we create the experience of our world.”- Deepak Chopra.

Secondly, the disciplines involved in these roles are so interchangeable it actually renders them useless as titles. “I invented the term because I thought Human Interface and usability were too narrow… Since then, the term has spread widely, so much so that it is starting to lose its meaning.”Don Norman

But, we still need labels, or do we? Hirers love them and we use them to market ourselves. Peter Merholz - UX is Strategy; Not Design

The reason the relationships between these titles and descriptions are so variable and unpredictable is ultimately due to them being defined by hirers with either unrealistic expectations or unfamiliarity with the profession.

The main factor governing your role as a designer is budget. The tighter the budget, the more condensed the designer’s role is. It’s as simple as that.

Smaller companies and startups that have substantial financial backing at stake with the pressure of performance and growth have the luxury to hire split roles that allow designers to concentrate on being a valuable creative drive within a team. It saves them time and allows them focus on producing a great product. In these instances I find developers actually hate it when we dabble in code.

Larger more established companies who have the luxury of feeding off the profits of internal departments can also hire more specific roles in order to build new design departments that can cater for a larger workload within a system.

On the other hand and more often than not, a small company or startup could have a tight budget and expect a designer to produce everything under the sun like conduct UX research, prototype, design and build web sites and user interfaces and have their hand at marketing material including print. The expectation and emphasis is especially heavy on having technical knowledge of an umpteen number of CSS frameworks and on the ability to code. I have yet to see a person be fully competent having being schooled in design and have the ability to produce working products like developers can. It’s normally a front end developer who has harnessed some UI and layout skills. The worst part of it all is that the pay actually stays the same or decreases in these more condensed roles.

Design agencies usually bow to the clients ridiculously tight deadlines and predictably tight budgets making them hire more multi-disciplined designers that can cover digital and print to maximise on profit. Creativity is more valued with less technical ability being required from them.

The UX box is too full and it’s time to open it up and sort it out.

Lastly I would love this debacle to come to an end by creating an official association responsible for defining design disciplines. Unfortunately they are driven by what the market needs and that changes rapidly. With the advancement of design and development hybrid tools, will these roles morph into one or can we savor our millennial ideals and focus on being great at research, creative thinking or technical implementation?