Not all designers are visual designers (surprise!).

To most of the world, it seems that designers should either be good at making beautiful images or should just become engineers and learn how to code.

Just like software engineers, though, there are different kinds of designers. Some of us have backgrounds rooted in psychology and make products accessible to people with disabilities, for example. Some of us have backgrounds in architecture and want to influence how people act, think, and feel through their environment. Yet others work to create the right weight of a product in a person’s hand. And of course there are the designers that produce graphics so beautiful, you could just stare at them all day. Because at the core, design is solving problems and creating experiences for people, often using more than just the sense of sight.

Any designer worth his or her salt must be well-versed in several types of design. Your UX designer should be a decent visual designer, or at least have an idea how to make something aesthetically pleasing. But a lot more than just pixel-perfection goes into making something lovely, usable, and marketable, although beauty is immensely important — this is why we’re using Medium instead of Tumblr.

So for the benefit of all those out there who were surprised, what follows is a brief overview of types of designers, and what you should primarily expect them to do.

User Interface (UI) A UI designer’s job is actually to make things look sexy. They are responsible for button shapes, sizes, and graphics — the UI components for a product interface. They often are required to make pixel-perfect mockups or graphic elements and likely also have a hand in brand assets. Typically, this type of design refers to software interfaces on web, mobile, or other devices.

For example, for an iPad, UI designers craft the size, shape, gradient, etc. of each of the icons on the main screen.

Graphic Graphic designers are responsible for the visual style and feel of a particular product or brand, and produce graphic assets to be used across media. Graphic designers work with digital and analog media. They can make things look good in Photoshop and charcoal.

They are also called visual designers. In the iPad example, the graphic designers created the Apple’s brand feel. So all those clean lines and the Helvetica Neue are their fault. There is a lot of crossover with UI design.

User Experience (UX) UX designers produce design that is both sexy and usable. They are responsible to make the workflow and layout best support the product’s goals and accommodate the users’ needs. UX design is often used as an umbrella term for this design area, but in a larger company with a larger design team, they primarily create a workflow and interface that is pleasant and useful. UX designers do the full range of stuff, from the sketching and wireframing to the final visual products based on various metrics and data gathered about the user and intended effect of the product. Typically UX designers have an HCI background, with some code, design, and psychology.

For the iPad, the UX designer would conceptualize the whole experience of using an iPad.

User Researcher Not designers. Researchers are responsible for usability studies and testing, and market research. That data can then be incorporated in future design for a product that more strongly supports the product goals and users’ needs. Design is a tool for research rather than an end unto itself. Researchers often pick up PhDs in HCI (just casually).

Researchers for the iPad would quantify the phenomenological effects of the product over time to determine why or why not people love it and how they use it, to make the iPad an even more beloved and used object. Or whatever the hell that means.

Interaction Designers whose primary question is how people use the product. Interaction designers integrate optimal workflow, emotional needs, and product needs. Their job is to create interesting experiences for the people, which is pretty awesome, and those experiences can be hardware- or software-based.

On an iPad, interaction designers figured out the touch interface and the concept of swiping. You’re welcome.

Motion A rare bird. Can illustrate and use stuff like Adobe After Effects and Quartz Composer to make that cool morph thing your searchbar does when you tap on it. These people are great for adding depth to the workflow, and making sweet presentations. Pay them lots of money.

Product More widely than on platform, product designers figure out how to meet needs with design — how to build what needs to be built next to meet the company’s goals and the users’ needs. They take information from researchers and construct the vision for the interaction and visual designers to take a crack at. Kind of another name for UX designers, but with a focus on how the product fits into the whole business vision.

Just shut up and get an MBA already.

Industrial Now we gettin’ fancy. Product design of objects is what these guys do, and it’s not just for factories anymore. It’s your Nikes and why Apple products are so lovely to touch.

Built Environment Architects and city planners.

UI Engineer Now you should expect some code. It’s like a software dev with design sense. Or a UI designer that can code or is lying about what they actually do (kidding).

Usability Engineer HCI principles, cognitive psychology, and ergonomics and human factors are required. Basically, a researcher taking the research, extracting what it means for the future of the product, and telling everyone how to make it.

Beyond this, you can pretty much combine the words in these job titles and extrapolate what a role entails (usability specialist = usability engineer + researcher). A lot of larger companies have people for each of the functions they need, but then again a lot of places don’t.

Be nice to your designers. Know what they do and know it isn’t only about bringing the sexy, because a lot of your product is in their capable hands.