image © Brian Talbot

‘UX Designer’ is not a good job title. Here is why (1)

Ruth Vakrat
Aug 28, 2017 · 2 min read

Part 1

The title UX Designer has a serious usability and marketing problem.

This title creates an unnecessary conceptual complexity as it doesn’t provide any helpful clues regarding what the person does. So many articles were written to help people explain the title UX Designer to industry outsiders (going as far as calling it a UX ‘elevator pitch’).

We are sweating out the answer, thinking to ourselves —our profession is so new and ‘out there’, it has so many elements that we are just finding it hard to explain to simple mortals what it is we do!

Well, it’s not.

Brain Surgeon — How about this one for a complex profession? Simple words, simple concept, complex work. One can straight away understand what a brain surgeon does for a living. He opens one’s brain and fixes it.

Interior Designer — Again simple. I can see the picture straight away in my mind. This person is responsible for creating beautiful, liveable interior spaces, or maybe they should be called an “Expert for internal experience”?

image © Jonny Wikins

One of the biggest problems the name UX Designer creates is preventing people from entering the field. UX Designer sounds so damn mysterious and complex that most people cannot be bothered to stick around long enough to figure out what it means, let alone entering the field. This is the reason why most UX designers are people who already come from the industry.

School graduates and their parents know what engineers, doctors, lawyers, architects, and marine biologists do. These are good professions, ones which people can easily see themselves and their children studying.

When instead of UX, I say that I am a Software Designer — you can see in your mind straight away what it is I am doing — I Design Software.

I create this magical, complex, often annoying object that you use to achieve most of your goals and complete most of your tasks. If it doesn’t do what you need it to do, then the chances are that that is my fault.

Nothing mysterious.

So, how about this one, a safe-bet, creative, exciting, future proof profession — Software Designer.

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Ruth Vakrat

Written by

Every time we create new software we create a new universe. Make sure your new universe rocks.

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