The state of UX design and research roles in 2019 — part 2: the current context.

This article picks up where we left off in part 1: the past. Read it first to understand more about how roles have been defined, and where I’m coming from.

The new context

Eventually, after feeling vaguely unsettled about the state of these role definitions for quite awhile, I sat down and thought out my take on it. I was aided by the opportunity to participate in some work that the Australian Government is current undertaking to uplift digital capability within their workforce, where I got to talk with many digital practitioners, HR specialists and education representatives and get some broader insights about the current (mis)understandings, and the direction the design and research industry is going in.

Full disclosure — they don’t have this any more sorted out than we did previously. In fact, last time I worked with them, they had gone even further down the path of tying seniority to different capabilities. Oh dear.

But that work got me thinking, and it also helped solidify some ideas for me. It helped me go back to that “UX” term we’ve been using, and take a good, hard look at what it meant, and why we keep using it.