Death of a web designer

The title Web Designer is now gone. Here emerges the new avatar — UI/ UX Designer.

Building a great team of UXers is a part of my job (its more of a responsibility) and it isn’t easy to find someone who is better than you or at least to your mark.

After UX became the most ‘in' thing to talk about or be a part of, we saw the title being plastered by all those who even vaguely knew what UX theoretically means, forget diving deep into it.

Crafting great UX is a responsibility, a passion which I don’t find easily in people. I ask candidates, what is that one thing they love doing? And I don’t expect to hear card-sorting, interviews, axure or prototypes.

I am yet to come across people who say that they have a passion for solving users' problems. Real Problems. I tell you it’s a rare thing. Methods don’t necessarily lead to a solution, but empathy would. Being efficient no longer holds good, being effective does.

I try to look for these words on a resume — not because I have it on mine — but it demonstrates one’s seriousness for getting into this profession.

I was once asked what is that one quality that a UXer should possess. Ability to put yourself in a user’s shoes, I would say.

I often reject CVs they are badly formatted and the ones that let headhunters control it. They add their branding or hide contact info which causes a bad experience.

If you do not know your goal well, probably you won’t know your users well. Imagine the agony of looking at badly formatted CV and trying to make sense of all the garbled content that at times doesn’t matter.

Angular, JavaScript, PHP, Photoshop. Good! You have been an all-rounder but you also seems confused between the roles. No? So if you think, creating things in Angular.js contributes to great user experience, you are right. But only partially. But UX is bigger that that.

It doesn’t matter to users if you put an angular behind or someone sits and serves your request manually. Users want to get their work done. Period! Have you ever solved that problem for them?

Project Manager or people who have done a bit of everything, want to add UX to their resumes just because it looks good and increases their chance of appearing in recruiters’ ‘Search’. And when I probe them on UX fundamentals, all they have to say is about the layout, colors and typography. I think we have had enough of this shit floating and the desperate ones please realize that UI is not actually UX.

Eeks, I hate it when people mix the two terms — UI and UX.

I think our world still needs good project managers and visual design specialist who craft great interfaces and still contribute to the User Experience.

Some people may agree while some may differ. I would like to hear your views in the comments below. Or you may connect with me here, here or here