Article 223

‘UX Professional’ isn’t a Real Job

By Ryan Carson @ryancarson

03 September 2010 | Category: Uncategorized

A web site or web app should not be the result of a production line of people. A web site or app should be the product of a Web Designer and a Web Developer (who occasionally are the same person, as demonstrated by Shaun Inman). Anyone else who is added into this equation is a waste of money and time.

ryan-ux-tweet

[Update] A lot of folks in the comments and around the web are attacking the above sentence, so let me clarify. At its core a website should be the product of a web designer and a developer. Obviously on larger projects you will need to add various people because the workload would be two much for just two people. However, these people are added for logistical reasons, not strategic. I still strongly believe that if the lead web designer on a project needs someone who specializes in UX because they don’t have a good understanding of solid UX principles, then they shouldn’t call themselves a web designer. Web Design and UX are not two separate disciplines, and UX is not something you add to a project because you have a large budget. [END UPDATE]

I’ve worked in the web industry for 10 years at three different web design agencies and now run my own company who produces websites and apps.

Wikipedia defines User Experience Design as ..

A subset of the field of experience design that pertains to the creation of the architecture and interaction models that impact user experience of a device or system.

I define it as

Advanced knowledge of …

HTML (including HTML5)
CSS (including CSS3)
Responsive Design principles
Accessibility
Usability
User testing

A basic knowledge of …

Copy writing
JavaScript
Marketing
A/B and multivariate testing

You cannot be a ‘UX Professional’ if you are not an experienced Web Designer and involved in the day-to-day process of designing, building, testing, marketing and updating a web project.

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Comments

Colin Williams

I’ve dubbed 2010 the Year of Shoving My Agency’s Process Down Your Throat. All of a sudden, everybody is Andy Rutledge.
Peter Clark

job titles are always up for debate. front end developer; front end designer – etc.

I like this definition from quora [1]

> The primary role of a good UX Designer is to be able to extract information from all interested parties; negotiate, communicate and collaborate with business stakeholders, the design team, developers and end users in order to ensure a solution that meets everyone’s needs and works as expected. The ability to clearly communicate and speak the languages of suits, creatives, engineers and laymen (similar to suits) is imperative.

[1]: http://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-way-to-get-started-in-UX
http://carsonified.com Ryan Carson

Why the need for a third person? Shouldn’t the Designers and Developers be able to do this?
http://webuilt.it Jon

Yep, agree with Ryan 100% there.
http://www.breefield.com Dustin Hoffman

Whenever I hear “UX Professional” or “UX Expert” I just think “SEO.”
Graham Morley

UX shouldn’t even be thought of as limited to the web. An interior designer is a UX pro, a customer facing sales assistant is a UX pro. Entire teams should be aware of UX, not one person.

User experience runs further than wireframes and visuals, its the perception of a business as a whole.
ric

“You cannot be a ‘UX Professional’ if you are not an experienced Web Designer and involved in the day-to-day process of designing, building, testing, marketing and updating a web project, they cannot be considered an web professional.”

Amen.

Last year I had to explain the difference between JS, CSS and HTML to a “UE Professional” in charge of a multi million pound project. Seems anyone can class themselves as a UE/UX expert after reading a couple of books these days.
http://www.reddotinc.co.uk Gareth Clubb

It’s true, someone who studies the art of UX should have a full understanding of the techniques and tools available to them and not just dream up an intense set of wireframes.

It’s probably a little hard with larger companies though who need their designers to provide that “production line” effect and focus solely on design work.

Hard to meet the supply and demand of clients workload if you have a designer and developer that do all, unless you have loads of ‘em ;)
Ryan Carson

I agree, but for the context of this post, I’d like to stick to web projects.
http://jasecooper.com Jase Cooper

I agree.

I don’t know why web designers choose just to design websites.

Web designers should be designing web services.
Maxwell Lamb

I’d be curious as to how you’d propose, say, eBay or Amazon, would be able to manage all of their development and design efforts with a single individual or possibly two. There’s only so far you can go with a developer/designer team – we’d be up shit creek if we tried to manage our entire workload between the two of us who started out. We do “hive” work – i.e. everyone owns their own specific projects, but we usually have at least 8 people touch each site we launch, in one way or another.

That said, I agree that “UX professional” is a bullshit job title – any designer or front-end developer worth their salt should be able to make a UI that screams usability.
http://www.thinkgeek.com Jen Frazier

I agree with Graham and have to point out that your focus here is not on UX as a discipline, but on applying UX principles to web development and design.

There is much more to UX than a web site or app. What happens to the user once they stop using your site – do you care? Do you design for that? Do you follow up and refine those experiences to work cohesively with the web experience? What about customer service, sales, fulfillment and marketing? Creating a holistic experience across all aspects of a system is what UX is about – not just the web site or app.

A great web designer understands and incorporates UX into their work, but UX is not all about web design. The spread of misinformation is causing major confusion in the field.
Jason C Levine

While I see your point it is not valid in every circumstance. When I read your post it seemed like you were referring to freelance life. In a corporate or agency environment you get a project and a team is put together. This team cam consist of a web designer, developer, project manager, and even a “ux professional”. Breaking down each task allows the potential of the best possible outcome.

Yes I know a web designer should never design with a blind eye towards usability but if the designers job could be broken down into two general categories, they would be:
-appearance
-usability

All designers put pride into their work, combine a deadline and certain usability elements can be overlooked. This is where a “ux professional” comes in to monitor the usability of the entire project.

I’m the end it comes down to the size of the project. If your building an app or website for a multi-billion dollar corporation, hiring a “ux professional” to split the responsibility and speed up the project can be worth it.
http://www.thismanslife.co.uk James

I have to disagree, but based primarily on your definition / perception, of the title “UX designer”. In terms of day to day web design, you make valid points – but in theory UX design could refer to the design of MANY other things, any interface, web-based or not. DVD menus, desktop applications, car stereo UIs, in-flight entertainment systems…

“UX designer” to me, is a very broad term. “Web designer”, comes under the umbrella of UX designer, very firmly, because of course, they share disciplines… but it’s a specific subset.

Just like in the early days of the web, every man and his dog called themselves a “web designer” because they knew how to get a webpage online. Today, every “web designer” is calling themselves a “UX designer”, and while of course web design is about defining and creating an experience for a user… it still irks me too, how freely it gets thrown around. That however doesn’t mean it’s not a legitimate title for a profession/discipline.

Web design, UX design. There’s a cross-over, but there’s a definite bias, and they each have specific traits which, as one type or the other, you may or may not need. When I worked as a web designer, I was given a brief, sometimes specific, sometimes open. I created visuals, I built webpages. I delivered websites. As a UX designer, often my time is spent understanding business processes so that I can design a system, an interface layer, to facilitate their workflow and goals easier than existing systems or processes. A lot of my time is spent just thinking. It’s not uncommon for my output to not be in the form of physical design work, but instead as audit, consultation, advice, etc. End of project. I never did that, certainly not at that level, as a web designer.

I guess it’s about the bias, focus, and level of work you do.

It’s also just semantics, nomenclature, and people jumping on bandwagons souring the term “UX” for legitimate professionals!
http://www.whoisbexxie.com Bexxie

I saw your tweet earlier today and thought “Wow! I’m glad he posted that.” I always thought that UX was just apart of a web designer’s process and skill set. So why the need to hire an extra person for UX services that isn’t the designer??
Jesse

And suddenly all of the “UX Professionals” began to quote Office Space. “Well-well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don’t have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can’t you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?”
Peter Clark

not all companies operate by having jack of all trade employees. someone that spends their entire day crafting interfaces will have better skills at interfaces than a jack of all trades developer.

by your rules hiring testers is redundant because your developers “can” test? or project managers?
Thomas Davies

You seem to suggest that due to that one incident all UX Designers are useless. I could do that and state that when I have visited designers’ websites, not many actually discuss the usability aspects of designs yet they still call themselves UI designers.

So should these designers and developers be required to do the user research, understanding how users currently complete a task?

Should the designer of a website really be the one who completes usability testing on it? Surely it should be someone independent who doesn’t care about the internal politics of decision making. If some user criticise the designer’s work then the designer may ignore it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flibble idrinkleadpaint

Hehe… not so hasty!

The plethora of rubbish websites out there should surely give you a clue that designers and developers by themselves don’t always make for a great UX. Just like developers shouldn’t test their own code, designers shouldn’t test their own designs. Both require independent testers to validate they’re on the right track – you’re too close to your contribution to act without bias. If you think you can do the lot, then you’ve clearly never benefited from what independent verification contributes.

UX is definitely a skill that both devs and designers need to understand, but it’s nuts to say that UX is a redundant role and shouldn’t be undertaken by a dedicated person. Work on any slightly larger project and it’s obvious no one person can do all roles. A designer gets you so far, but doesn’t have the time to carry out research and validate designs.

I’d call myself a User Experience Designer and I work on both websites and desktop applications – and any other aspect of the business where our users will engage with us somehow. I do a lot of early concept research and UI design now, but my background was in ergonomics and usability. I believe I have a pretty deep understanding of UX, but having other people test my work helps tremendously.

At some point, you’re better off splitting responsibilities up a bit so that people can get exceptional at their particular area of interest, rather than building a collection of jack of all trades.
http://reallysimpleworks.com/blog/ Andy Gott

Totally agree. The web is nothing more than a conduit and set of tools for various forms of human interaction. Anyone who isn’t a UX expert has no business producing anything that they expect humans to interact with (sadly, there’s lots of evidence that this happens all the time).
http://adamqureshi.com adam

It seems that web design is meaning to design in the browser . HTML / CSS and just doing photoshop comps is being more of a picture . The tide may be turning only time will tell ;-)
http://www.timtuckeronline.com/ Tim Tucker

But I don’t see the logic in your argument. Why does it follow that someone with strong coding skills will have the ability to organise information effectively, for example?

It’s great that you have found people who combine these qualities, but my experience is quite different. I find that, for example, people who have strong visual skills, such as graphic designers, are often weaker at producing powerful and persuasive written content. Likewise, I’ve had many experiences where very strong web developers lack information architecture skills, and they’ve readily admitted it.

I’ve always suspected that it’s because it uses a different part of the brain.

I understand that it would be great if people did combine these qualities but the reality is different isn’t it? Otherwise why do many excellent developers and designers create sites that offer a poor user experience.
Steven

I feel exactly the same about ‘SEO Professionals’
http://www.ericwebster.net Web

I think you are a bit off the mark here, things like Strategy, A/B testing, Content Strategy, User Testing, Process Flows are not the task of designers, or developers. This is a great example of the mentality of “two guys in a garage” web design.

If you have ever been a part of huge site overhauls for large brands with complex integration systems you will quickly realize the scope of a designer is quickly surpassed. IMO.

I do agree that on smaller project of just a simple site refresh with a simple navigation and some content modules, you could use a designer alone whom has the skills.

I will also concede that there are people out there whom can (and want to) wear many hats. The question you should be asking is do designer WANT to be doing the UX/Strategy work or concentrating on their craft.
http://sixrevisions.com Jacob Gube

Why is knowledge of user experience another job for another person? Your web designer should be intimately familiar with the user’s experience. Otherwise, that “web designer” is making art, not designs. Designers should make educated design decisions. The only way to do that is to know about how users use websites and gather data to support their designs.

So, a web designer doesn’t become a “jack-of-all-trades” when they’re dealing with UX; it’s a fundamental job role of any modern web designer; people who make websites that are meant to be used, not simply to look at.
Steven

I think alot of it is to do with job opportunities … with almost everyone already having a computer, there is minimal additional outlay to get into web design and then become profficient at it. Becoming profficient at print design however can be a very different story, especially when starting out.
http://www.acleandesign.com Loren Baxter

I suppose “‘UX Professional’ isn’t a Real Job (in the Context of Web Sites and Applications, but is Actually an Important Job in Hundreds of Other Contexts)” didn’t have as much oomph to it!
http://www.agustinbosso.com Agustin Bosso

I think this is valid for small project. There roles, doesnt matter if the same person fills one or more roles. The difference between the graphic designer and the ux designer is that the first is more dedicated to aestetics and the second to usability, usually they are the same person but in bigger projects you need someone to create a flow for the entire app or site, find the best way to generate conversions, study and understand the target customer. Maybe that role can be occupied by a designer, but however, its a different role, not a different career
Ashley

Human Factors design has been in existence since WWII, and, to me, UX Design is a sub-part of this field with an emphasis in web technology.

Yes, a web designer (and coders too!) should be aware of usability and design principles, but the UX Professional discovers the principles and understands why they work.
http://misteroneill.com Patrick O’Neill

I agree completely. Agencies seem to be addicted to a dated waterfall process where the user experience team makes wireframes, hands them to graphic designers to skin, and finally everything gets dumped on technology to build.

In my view, if you’re designing websites, you should know the tools of the trade. If you can’t code a little HTML/CSS and maybe cobble some jQuery together, you really don’t have any business designing websites. Imagine an architect designing buildings with no understanding of the engineering that goes into building them.
R

I get where Ryan’s coming from. A lot of UX bull is added to projects because it is a way to sell naive customers more ethereal ‘emperors new clothes’-type concepts.

UX/over-consultation/too much user testing are used by some unscrupulous agencies (along with ponderous project management methodologies) as a way to sell ‘people hours’ and increase the bloated cost of a project.

It’s bad practice, and people are getting wise to it. Freedom of information and increased accountability for public sector agencies is helping.
gretchen

That’s ridiculous. User experience as a discipline is much more than

1.HTML (including HTML5)
2.CSS (including CSS3)
3.Responsive Design principles
4.Accessibility
5.Usability
6.User testing

It’s research, analysis, strategy, information design, interaction design, usability consulting and testing, and much more.

In my experience, the people who think anybody can “do UX” are people who think UX is no more than a set of rules and perhaps a bit of testing.

Your list makes me think you see UX as happening only during production, not the strategy phase. Maybe small projects can afford to keep UX as a production activity, but on larger projects that will fail.
http://www.miromedia.co.uk/ Andrew Male

I always feel that the last person you want to be in charge of user experience is the decleoper. By their nature they can be very insular in thought (speaking from my own experience) and can fail to see the bigger picture when it comes to a project.

I believe you need somone versed inthe language of UX who is able to look at an interface without knowledge of the inner workings of its functionality.

After all, I like the fact that my local garge can fix the cambelt on my car but I wouldn’t want them telling me what shape the seats should be.
Jose VIllanueva

10 years working on both sides, design and development. Agree 100%.
Adam Lorentzen

I disagree with your job description for “User Experience Design”. People who build things, whether digitally or physically with the intent of being used to complete a task are designers.
Make a hammer, design. Make highways signs that show routes, design. Make a web site to buy puppies, design. Design is an intended purpose, Designers are people who make things that have intended purposes.

UX Professionals should be experts in “Designing” a rich and positive “Experience” that helps whoever the “Users” are, complete their task. UX Professionals should primarily have these qualities:
1. Be a good listener / watcher
2. Understand human behavior patterns
3. Understand users different ability levels and culture
4. Be empathetic and understanding of how the person feels / energy level through the whole process.

It’s like saying an Ad man should know the types of ink used in the printer so they can fully communicate their slogan. UX Professionals, unfortunately, are sometimes necessary because of the massive amount of “web designers” that have flooded this industry and are about as sensitive as a box of rocks. I’ve worked with plenty of web designers and developers to know they totally understand code, not always people.

I normally agree with what you say and I look forward to your posts, but I had to comment on this one.

P.S. the wikipedia refence:
“http://courses2.cit.cornell.edu/HCI/images/6/6c/P637-wright.pdf” written in 2003, about 10 pages
NicholasMeyers

Your post really isn’t that convincing.

Many designers are awesome at making a site look good but horrible at making an interface usable and intuitive. Having some resources of a team solely concentrating on usability produces a better product. Each discipline should bleed into the other, but putting all your eggs in once basket will result in a website produced in a silo.

I think it is fair to say designers should naturally know user experience, but in reality they don’t. Why wouldn’t you want to spend the money to have a more usable site?
http://www.ryanwhitlie.com Ryan Whitlie

I agree 100%. UX professionals is the new ‘it’ job just as SEO was until people became wise of the fact that the foundations of SEO should be taken care of by the designers, developers and copywriters. The rest is monkey work that anybody can do.

UX is much the same. The designers & developers should know what works best for what industry based on their experience. Bringing an extra body in who has a ‘basic’ knowledge of all elements is a glorified office manager.
http://www.ryanwhitlie.com Ryan Whitlie

That’s got to be a joke right? How can someone be a UX/UE “professional” in the web industry without coming across the differences between these languages?

Damn, the whole idea of hiring a UX/UE Professional seems to be on the same level as a quango!
river

“But I don’t see the logic in your argument. Why does it follow that someone with strong coding skills will have the ability to organise information effectively, for example?”

you’re kidding, right? coding *is* organizing information. design *is* organizing information. and intelligent, thoughtful people *do* write clearly. they may not be masters of prose, they may not even be great spellers (we gots computers for that), but writing is a fundamental skill, if you ask me.

i won’t go so far as to say everyone on the team needs to do all these tasks as a main job responsibility, but if they can’t contribute to it, then you may want to think about upgrading your staff.
http://flexewebs.com/semantix Jason Grant

On small projects where a web developer and a web designer are all that is required I would say UX is an overkill. You are likely to working on largely static sites which are of ‘publish and hope’ nature (occasional ones are on topic and relevant).

However, when we are working on sites for businesses generating billions of pounds through them (e.g. Tesco.com, National-Lottery.co.uk, various banking sites, etc.) the impact on brand is far too large for a web developer and designer to deliver the goods.

UX person’s role is often to explain to people what are the requirements which make sense from user perspective and back this up by various empirical arguments wherever possible. That process of influencing, communicating and guiding is crucial on massive projects.

This is where your theory, Ryan, falls to pieces.

Catchy title nevertheless.
Deb Gelman

I’ve been a “UX Professional” for 12 years. I’ve worked with hundreds of brilliant designers and developers. Most of them had a strong user focus and robust understanding of IA, user research, and usability.

But NONE of them were able to (or wanted to, frankly) perform a needs assessment, create a detailed mental model, document a task flow or develop a navigation strategy. And that stuff’s really important, especially for web projects.
http://www.sachagreif.com Sacha

Doesn’t it depend on the size of the project? I’m sure there are more than two guys working on Amazon.com (or else, I wouldn’t want to be one of those guys…).

For most project I agree with you, but I think that for bigger projects it might sometimes be necessary to bring in someone whose sole focus is UX, as opposed to coding, making things look nice, SEO, or any other of the countless things involved in making a website.
http://www.twitter.com/renniks Mark S

I wonder if Ryan meant to include UX academics, who discover and develop current ideas on Usability. (Different to a professional who sells his ‘craft’ only)
http://Www.timtuckeronline.com Tim Tucker

By that definition (to borrow the car analogy from below) the person who builds your car engine is just ‘organising information’. But you wouldn’t want them designing the dashboard. Or putting together the marketing campaign.
http://Www.InkdotMedia.com Ryan Barresi

In the context of web design I agree, you can’t design a proper web experience unless you understand how it works. Which is why I don’t think you can be considered a web designer unless you know how to code.

On the flip side, you can be good at laying out an experience without actually designing it. It’s like what Steve jobs does, he creates the blueprint and help create the experience throughout the process.

This is a really great argument and there is some valid points on each side. Hope mine makes sense.

I would love to hear Steve Krugs view on this topic.
http://rightmindcreative.com Ryan Stang

Completely Agree.

Lets face it, most job titles in the web design and development industry are just fancy ways of saying web designer or developer. For the most part we are all working towards the same goal, useable websites.
http://www.theaccessibility.com Steve Grobschmidt

I couldn’t disagree with this article more.

It reeks of a web design/development-centric view — where the “UX professionals” are hacks and designers are knights in shining armor who can and should do it all.

That’s not even close to the real world. I’ve worked with many, many designers and developers. A select few designers truly get “UX”, much less every facet of it like content strategy, usability or information architecture. I’ve encountered even fewer developers who do.

Sure, there are the extremely rare cases of master-of-all-trades designers who get it all, but good luck finding them. You need someone unclouded by design pride of ownership or strictly code restrictions.

Good designers should understand general principles of usability, effective content, accessibility, etcetera. But to say they should -do- it all, that’s just silly.
http://www.leightaylor.co.uk Leigh Taylor

I agree with the basis of your argument and the fact, as many point out, this being a way to stand apart from the generalised term ‘Web Designer’ but you have missed one key item of you ‘Advanced knowledge…’ list – Psychology.

Without that how can you develop anything experiential for a user.
http://www.iauxdesigner.com Brett Lutchman

Wow, talk about being way off in left field.
So I guess Taguchi, multivariate, A/B Split testing, HCI (Human Computer Interaction) and psychology doesn’t have a role in UX design!?
So glad I didn’t specialize in Humanities, HCI and Information Design in University.
Unbelievable.
http://twitter.com/jasonedelman Jason

“A web site or app should be the product of a Web Designer and a Web Developer (who occasionally are the same person, as demonstrated by Shaun Inman). Anyone else who is added into this equation is a waste of money and time.”

This is a very silly statement said by someone who obviously has never worked on a team on a big project. You think a site like YouTube (yes, I know it’s Google-owned) consists of only designers and developers? What about the project managers? Information architects? Testers? Technologists? And, oh my god, UX experts? When your site is viewed by millions of people a day, it is a worthwhile investment to hire someone who knows what they’re talking about when they say they know how to optimize the user experience.

Another reason you don’t want your designers/developers as your sole source of UX is because it is really hard to look at your own work (or own type of work) and say that it is good for the average person. As a programmer myself, I know that I am not your average user. I occasionally will go to a site and view the source if I suspect they’re using tables and snobbily scoff, or check out how they wrote their javascript to see if I can replicate a certain effect. But how many Joe Sixpacks out there care about that stuff? Not many. They go to a site and do everything they can to mess up what you thought would be a perfect UX, albeit mostly unintentionally. It’s the UX person’s job to be able to identify and address these weaknesses that the people who have constructed the site may have (inadvertently) included.

While I agree with you if the project is small, as soon as it starts to scale considerably, it’s time to bring someone in. The outside perspective from someone completely abstracted from the code and the design decisions can be invaluable.
http://beep.peterboersma.com/ Peter Boersma

You can redefine UX anyway you like it, but that doesn’t make you right.

As an exercise, read this article and replace “IA” with “Web Design”: http://beep.peterboersma.com/2004/11/t-model-big-ia-is-now-ux.html

Yes, all Web Designers should (strive to) be UX Pros, but not all UX Pros need to be (your kind of) Web Designers or Web Developers.

Peter
(Experience Designer, User Researcher, Information Architect, Interaction Designer, Usability Engineer, Computer Scientist and yes, UX Professional)
Sally Carson

It seems unfair to make a sweeping statement about an entire field, but then retroactively limit the discussion to web-based work once some reasonable arguments start trickling. Many UX professionals are not limited to web-based work, and I’m not just talking about interior designers and the like.

I do find it a bit douchey to include the word “Professional” in one’s job title, I’ll give you that. It should be User Experience Designer, rather than User Experience Professional, in my opinion.

The nature of this post seems uncharacteristically impetuous for this site. It feels like a quick, emotional response to a specific personal situation that must have just occurred. Anyway, I’d love to see you and Jesse James Garrett have a public discussion on this topic — thumb wrestle for it?

( Full disclosure: I’m a former Senior Web Designer -> Interaction Designer -> now User Experience Designer )
Darren

I agree with Jason, as a web designer / developer / ux pro blah blah jack of all trades, most projects fall over or issues are missed because of the lack of testing and target market input and general users abilities. While its great to have people on your team who have knowledge and experience above and beyond their specialty, there’s nothing better that having a fresh pair of eyes no designer in the world is unbiased or can emotionally detach themselves from their work. You need to have processes to reality test your apps and websites.
Ben

Love it! Well said sir!
Matt

UX = interaction design + information architecture + user research
Front-end developer = programming
Designer = communication design + graphic design

Your argument just shows that you have very little understanding of what the term UX actually means. Same to you, Mr. Saffer.

Cheers!
http://www.ldexterldesign.co.uk/ ldexterldesign

Totally agree.

6+ points of contact usually materializes out of some dickhead MD who wants to start a firm and play Web 2.0 with his pieces.
http://markbiegel.com Mark

Totally agree. As a web designer and programmer I find it hard to believe that a solid end result can cms from a production line of people. Right now we ( at my workplace ) are finding that the best results come from a designer/programmer as the flow of code is known right from the start when the ux design is taking place.

As for looking at your own work… You don’t need another ux designer to make sure there are no problems… You shouldn’t be proofing your own work anyway! You should be designing/programming and then testing on “real world” people.
chadvavra

All titles are bullshit if you really care more about the quality of the product than the hourly rate of a person, but I don’t even care that you read some post on creating headlines that get retweeted. What I take issue with is the notion that you charge a client less for a product because you have multi-variate skills.

Naive is believing the guy who pre-sells tickets to hear ideas that haven’t be thought of yet.
http://Rtsnance.com Ryan Nance

By your original logic, and by way of comparison, film director would be a bullshit job title. All camera operators should know about story and acting.

It is not about expertise ( all professionals are limited by their range and degree of knowledge). It’s about coordinating disciplines well beyond visual design and front end development into a cogent and delightful experience.

But as a hot job right now, user experience designer is adopted by lots of people who can manage to convince people to hire them. Instead of discounting the title, it would be better to judge professionals by the value they add.

Cheers.
Ryan Carson

Surely those four characteristics are necessary for both a good employee and *especially* a designer? Why would you hire a designer who didn’t have those character traits? That’s the main point of this post: these resonsibilities shouldn’t be separated out into different roles.
Ryan Carson

I think you’re setting your standards too low.
http://Www.InkdotMedia.com Ryan Barresi

“Web design is not merely building. It’s not just designing. It’s not only the rest of the myriad disciplines and titles we all align ourselves with, but the culmination of all these things.”
— Jason Santa Maria, A Real Web Design Application

Good stuff :)
http://www.oregrinder.com Ore grinder

UX, UE, UI is the three major job about web, PM also is a major job about web design and desktop software. In future, i want to be a PMer.
http://www.oregrinder.com Ore grinder

It is not about expertise ( all professionals are limited by their range and degree of knowledge). It’s about coordinating disciplines well beyond visual design and front end development into a cogent and delightful experience.
http://www.suptoo.com Sebastian

(as a Web Designer) I agree to a certain degree. I’m all about the statement that in this branch a designer should never be just the guy that is only capable of creating the design, or just slicing the psd, “implementing” usability, SEO, .. or just taking care of the UX.
They are all too inherently connected.

However, it’s definitely understandable and even necessary that in bigger companies/projects people specialize in a certain aspect of the design-process.

Many people do often misuse the title and go pitch their services as a necessity to firms who truthfully do not really need to invest in someone to do only UX, and would be far better of hiring an all rounder.
Btw, thinking about often used bull**** job titles, “Social Media Expert” comes to mind ;)
http://www.pointydesign.com James Beardmore

All very true. I think the whole field is becoming too specialized. A certain level of it is important but at this point the number of hands a project gets pulled between is just ridiculous and damaging, it turns websites into homogenized grey sludge. Design is UX. UX is design. SEO is Design. Development is also a part of design. Hearing stories about people who have absolutely no knowledge of web development making UX decisions terrifies me.
http://mauvyrusset.com Richard Dalton

I’m curious, is it the “UX” or the “Professional” that you take issue with? I also agree that “UX Professional” isn’t a real job – its an umbrella term for a number of jobs – UX Designer, UX Developer, Usability Engineer, etc. – basically anyone involved in the creation of the user facing aspects of the experience.

As to the “UX” aspect, thats simply a slightly broader term for the way you’re using “web”, which is somewhat limiting. What would you call someone who designs a system consisting of a web element an email element and a mobile element? Hardly just “web” anymore is it? I call that person a “UX Designer”.
http://sankhomallik.com/ Sankho

Totally agree w/ Ryan on this one.

I’m a web developer, so usually I’m coding based on requirements from a UX “pro”.

All too often – as in damn near every project – some feature / visual element / data arrangement is dreamed up that would be technically impossible or unadvisable to achieve with the given technologies. This is, of course, because the UX pro doesn’t understand the constraints of the modern web like a web designer / developer does.

So then what happens? The team has to quickly throw together some alternative under the pressure of a deadline – and often embarrassingly under the watch of the client who thought they signed off a finalized design. The time spent on the UX pro in the budget is effectively wasted, and the actual product – the website – suffers as a result.

It’s a position that creates bloat in a project, and one that creates unnecessary output that is hardly relevant to the final product of a website.

If anything, UX pros should be a small set of contractors hired out for single days to test and advise web developers & designs on products nearing completion / client approval. They shouldn’t be key day-to-day members of any web project.
Lolobloggs

The problem is that these so called personal characteristics need to be more than that in a UX professional (discipline boy job title). Anyone who has studies the cognitive psychology principles grounded in the field, understood about the way to design, conduct and extract validity from research for design purposes is providing a lotmore than personal characteristics, they are bringing a unique set of skills to the table.

Should they understand the tools of a web designer? Yes, but that doesn’t mean they can be the web designer any more than the designer should be the behavioural expert.

Your argument really fails by being focused on web design. As said previously, ux covers a variety of digital implementation platforms, web is just one, designing for mobile is another big area where from experience too many developers naturally fail and need the prioritisation support that comes from ux research.

If I’m honest, not sure your point is really all that sensible, sounds like you fancied a tantrum.

Just saying.
Andrew Boyd

As one of the few respondents to this whole sorry thread who knows what he is talking about, I can only agree with what you have to say, Peter.

As for Ryan… “UX is about cabbage patch doll clothes that you knit yourself” would make about as much sense as “it’s about the web. If you know HTML you are a UX professional”. Classic circular logic. Having to explain it means that he will probably never know.
http://scruffian.com ben dwyer

You’re right, a good web developer or designer should be able to handle the user experience, but unfortunately there are a lot of designers and devlopers who can’t/don’t/won’t, so sometimes (especially in big projects) it takes a dedicated person who has some vision to be an advokate for the user, because no one else is.

So in an ideal world you’re right, but this world isn’t like that and that’s not the fault of the person who is paid to oversee the user experience. It’s still a crappy title though!
Ryan Carson

“Many designers are awesome at making a site look good but horrible at making an interface usable and intuitive”

Why would someone hire web designers like that? That’s the point of the post. UX shouldn’t be an optional skill for web designers.
http://muiomuio.com Mario Andrade

Well, I guess all company bosses want to cut down on human resources because they believe someone can take on the tasks of other person that’s not really producing.
It happened to me and truth be said it took the company 3 people to be able to do what I used to do.

Having 1 multi-disciplinary guy is useful but that guy will never be great at what he does. Will eventually be good with experience but along the way someone more focused on a specific subject will show up with more insights.

I believe that people should be specialized at what they are best and not be multi-disciplinary in 4 or 5 subjects of interest.
Stewart Dean

Your definition of a UX professional is a web designer. I’ve never heard anyone use ‘professional’ as a job title as we tend to be either architects or designers, I personally don’t mind which is used as both are applicable.

User Experience folks are vital for large projects where we provide vital information gathering and planning services for those who implement. Where user experience and web design meet is when it comes to interaction design – but we approach it from different angle. Many very talented web designers have a good grasp of interaction design but their skills tail off when it comes to the architecting of information and process flows. Or quite simply their interest tails off. The level of detail vital to get into for a large project requires a mind set happen to go through a lot of data and create new patterns from them and then be able to communicate that in a simple way.

After 20 years of doing this I can say that user experience architects are as real a role as an architect on a physical building.

You don’t need a user experience person if you’re building a small site (such as a marketing microsite) in the same way you don’t need one if you’re putting up a conservatory. Although even then it’s good to get advice.

Lastly I’ll put this thought out there, becoming too implementation focused leads to poor user experience design as it’s a different mindset and focus. You don’t need to know CSS to be a great user experience designer any more than you need to know Objective C to design a great iphone app and I would go as far to say it helps if you don’t.
http://short-space.blogspot.com Zelbinian

That’s a failure of your design process, not your UX designer. Want your UX people to design stuff you can actually build? Stop letting them design in a vacuum.
Jjfk

This post just shows how important it is to have real user experience designers.
Remember when anybody with frontpage and a copy of Photoshop called themselves web designers?
You just called yourself UX designer just because of a couple of things you’ve read on usability and interaction design.

User Experience design is not a web-only profession. Your iPhone has been conceived by people with a deep understanding of user experience. That vacuum cleaner with the practical, smooth but solid buttons too.
Fluxalex

Where would you spend you money on?
A decathlete vs. a team with specialized runners and other athletes?

Basically, for the web, everybody is a designer. But that makes not the best result possible.
For small projects, it’s far more cost-efficient to have a single designer designing and building the solution. And in this context ,the more basic skills involving usability, accessibility of for example SEO, the better the result gets.

But for larger project gets, the more depends on this result. And I think this single designer may actually get a decent result, but not the result a specialized team of designers might get.

A team of designers, mastering different skills to perfection, play a whole different ballgame. True, they might operate slightly more ineffecient and may cost a few dollars more. But the difference on the final result might be significant.

I know where I would spend my money on.
Dean

Is there no room for a project manager, IA, commericals handler, continuous integration & build engineer, .Net coder? Or are web developers and designers really the awesome at everything?
http://bradt.ca/ Brad Touesnard

I agree that UX “should” be the job of designers and developers, but depending on your local hiring pool that may not be an option.
James

I think the (initial) comment, and thought about UX designers is lacking context. The key fact missing is UX design has legacy before the web. While it’s been said web sites are over 90% typography, successful web sites are more like products that are used vs. pages that are read in a singular, linear way. And many skill sets, approaches, and metaphors are borrowed from the product design discipline.

It’s true, and unfortunate, that job titles are (a) taken so seriously and (b) misnomers at times.
Being bombastic and flippant doesn’t help further serious debate and only attracts attention from the fringe. See: politics.
Makoto K

I need to hire a web designer/UX/IA/IT professional to setup the server and SEO expert since I rather just hire one person instead of 4 cause of budget….wasn’t this the thought of the “IT guy” to design and run the web project 5-7 years ago.

I agree that it would be great to find that “Silver Bullet” employee…I wish we all could find the perfect person to do it all, but if they were that good..guess what, they are either starting their own companies or managing large group and making more money that you can afford to pay them for your one web project or app.

Programming – Left Brainers
Design – Right Brainers
UX/IA Experts – Both brains, speaking and empathy

Yes..I am in the UX/IA consultant, but was lucky enough to experience both the programming C/C++ back in the day but also love being creative and now learning HCI (psychology, visual & cognitive research, etc.) and keep up on the latest in server technology and SEO techniques…. so I am doing my best to become the “Silver Bullet” as I think you are really trying to point in your comments and article that web developers/designers should do also.
Danny W

What ARE you smoking?
Really. Stop. Mr Carson, you are going to be fooling less and less people if you continue in this vein.
Russ

So, then, those who practice UX should attend your design and dev events, right?

Or should you just have one event? It is kind of senseless to have events that focus on apps or design if everyone should basically do everything, right?

I’m so confused.

Also, based upon the drop-down menus for “dev” and “design” (which I assume is a natural categorization of what you consider to be all things in each realm), I’m confused as to which of all of those in both I should master. Is it just what you mention in this post or is it everything in each of those. What about Marketing? Mobile?

I’m so confused.

Or, wait. You have UX under “design” but not under “Web Design”. And your post says…

Still confused.

But, I haven’t seen a good dev/design debate since back at the bubble.

Congrats on your traffic and discussion!
http://www.hellomuller.com Tom Muller

Your argument doesn’t make any sense at all Ryan. You’re over generalising and creating your own little “rules” of what a web designer should or shouldn’t be able to do. And by doing that you’re only sending out the wrong message to your audience… some of whom accept your views as gospel. I think you have a responsibility here to avoid spouting nonsense.
http://www.hitechy.com/ Alexander Dawson

The part where Ryan’s entire argument falls to it’s knees is where he falsely assumes that an average individuals awareness of a subject can cater too (and match) the experience of someone who has dedicated their career or life to a particular role. Apart from the fact that Ryan failed to mention the subjects of Psychology and Sociology (which both are VERY deeply rooted to the nature of UX), asking the average web designer to qualify themselves in specific regions of the industry to the same extent as a lifelong learner would result in a situation where no “proper designers” could exist (due to the scale of education required).

Our industry NEEDS experts who do the research, set the trends and are on the front line discovering the kind of things regular web designers simply don’t have the time for (as their usually too busy turning client work into websites). The kind of ideology that Ryan has put across in the article is effectively breeding contempt toward those in the field who prefer to niche their skillset to dedicate more time too (and become a far stronger individual in) a particular trade or subset of the industry. I actually find the perspective disturbing in that he’s trying to place a great barrier to entry where unless you are equipped to the level of the best and brightest of each niche field, you’re simply classified as a deficient professional.

I practice as a UX Professional myself, and while I really do wish that all web designers had a good solid understanding of the principles (as they could do their job better), I certainly don’t expect every individual wanting to practice as a web designer to have undertaken the level of dedication, research, investigation and training that I have put myself through (just on one specific subset of subject matter) – I doubt many web designers would appreciate being told that they require some kind of training in psychology, sociology and ethnography. Our industry flourishes better WITH diversity and while it may be true that designers in general need a better scope of knowledge, there is absolutely no excuse for proclaiming that roles which were created to cater to those dedicating their careers to further developing specific aspects of an industry (which can be taken advantage of by businesses) should be martyr’d for their efforts.
Ryan Carson

Sounds like you’re working with the wrong designers.
Ryan Carson

“So I guess Taguchi, multivariate, A/B Split testing, HCI (Human Computer Interaction) and psychology doesn’t have a role in UX design!?”

That’s called Web Design. That’s the whole problem here. You can’t call yourself a good web designer if you’re not doing practicing these things.
Ryan Carson

“This is a very silly statement said by someone who obviously has never worked on a team on a big project.”

Not true. I’ve worked as a developer and entrepreneur in the web industry for over 10 years on projects up to £1M.
http://www.twitter.com/renniks Mark S

It’s wrong for him to preach that he thinks a designer should have a huge knowledge of user experience? What on earth is wrong with that?

No UX professionals are going to quit their job due to this post, some may re-align their priorities, but I doubt it.

While many designers, may take it with a pinch of salt, others will take time to learn more about usability… good!!!
Ryan Carson

Tom, I’ve got respect for you, and like wise, you know I’ve been working in this field for just as long as you.

Having said that, just because you disagree, doesn’t make my point of view “nonsense”. I’d appreciate it if you would chip in with why you disagree.

Happy to be proved wrong, but I sincerely believe what I said is correct.
Ryan Carson

“Our industry NEEDS experts who do the research, set the trends and are on the front line discovering the kind of things regular web designers simply don’t have the time for (as their usually too busy turning client work into websites).”

I disagree with you 100% on this. That’s the entire point of this article. If a web designer doesn’t “have time” to do User Experience, then they cannot call themselves a Web Designer. UX is their fundamental role – crafting a good user experience.

As a ‘UX Professional’, if you’re not involved in the day-to-day production of web sites, you cannot call yourself an expert in user experience you need to be designing, building, testing, running, measuring and updating sites to actually know what you’re talking about.
Mariusz Woźniak

I totally agree. In fact I’ve several times said the the same thing about ‘usability experts’. What does it mean, that you have to hire an usability expert? That you are hiring a designer who can’t deliver usable website or interface design in the first place?
http://nordkapp.fi samin

I have to agree with Tom here. Claiming every web dev should be an UX designer and other way around is just silly. Of course, the best people are usually somewhat polymaths/t-shaped but you should understand UX by itself has very little to do with pure web design.

The skills required for working on experience design are somewhat contextual— if you work in small teams on websites/simple apps they might as well have to know a lot about development and design *among* a whole lot of other skills. In large corporations on say, on foresight and concept design the skillset required is totally different.

I’m guessing you got this idea from all the ownership/auteur talk at dConstruct. True, every product has to have a vision but in bigger projects there’s someone like design lead or product owner for that. They can’t possibly do everything by themselves.
Deb Gelman

Ryan, I don’t know you, or your work, but if you believe you’re equally good at IA, usability testing, workflow analysis, wireframing/interface design, strategy and research, with graphic design skills and programming abilities… it sounds like *you* are a UX Professional. Sorry.
http://www.wework.co.uk Kevin Coffey

Hi Ryan,

As a Visual Designer, I disagree with the statement that a ‘UX Professional’ isn’t a Real Job. From my experience a UX Professional adds plenty value to a web design project. In fact I would ideally like to work with a UX Professional for every web project big or small, but due to budget constraints this is not always possible.

For me, being able push the boundaries of interface design without constraint enables fresh ideas to manifest sometimes bad, mostly good :) This work needs a reality check/input from a UX professional to ensure a balanced effective outcome for the project.

Design for the web is becoming increasing complex, so having a person to cover the user experience is essential to glue things together with proven research and validation.

If I did both in design and UX in myself, I feel I would be comprising my opportunity to create something new, ending up sticking to established design pattern and not really innovating much.
R

I’m looking at the personal sites of some of the UX wizards complaining about Ryan’s post and scratching my head. I don’t entirely understand what it is you are bringing to the table.
http://www.minilistic.com Ron Domingue

I don’t think it needs to be a separate/third person but the position of User Experience Designer is broader than just one discipline of mobile or web.
http://www.hitechy.com/ Alexander Dawson

Ryan, I think you missed my point entirely. I’m not suggesting that designers shouldn’t consider the effects of UX, nor am I suggesting that most designers don’t have the time to learn the basics. What I am saying is that the average web designer doesn’t have the time to gain the experience and competency in UX (and it’s related subject matter) to match those who spend their entire careers studying the subject to a great depth. And this is why we need those dedicated individuals, unless of course you are proclaiming that a web designer could understand and cater for as many variables relative to human behaviour and interaction as (say) a trained psychologist or someone with a clinical background relative to medicine (in the case of disability needs). I’m not saying you don’t have a point and I myself regularly engage in building websites (so I guess you could class me as a designer rather than a UX pro), but the need to study something as complex as user-experience (which has it’s roots in psychology, sociology et al) simply cannot be expertly ordained and is probably beyond the scope of the average designer (for better or for worse) – which is a consideration to account for.
Deb Gelman

After re-reading all this (and putting my ego aside) it’s become clear that this is a non-issue. If we separate the tasks from the roles – research, strategy, analysis, mental models, IA, interface design, visual design, front-end development, back-end development etc etc etc – we agree they’re all essential for web projects. People who are skilled at these things should do them.

I agree if agencies are upselling unnecessary services, that’s a problem. But at the end of the day, it’s about making the best site
possible for the users, not about who’s doing the work, or what we
call them.
http://typemade.mx Santiago Orozco

Design is emotional, that’s the main reason of why we choose one thing over another –eg. a car–, plus innovation.
I’ve been working with some UX guys and most of the time they freak out with the things I show them, for me they just want to be on their safe area.
I mean, the world is from those who try new things.

Cheers!
http://www.fatdux.com Eric Reiss

Your definition of UX sucks. But that’s because you think it has something to do with CSS, AJAX, XML and a bunch of other acronyms. In fact, UX also involves stuff that happens offline. The funny thing is, your original tweet is right on target. It was only when you decided to explain your position that you went off track.

Your heart is in the right place. But think broader. That’s where UX lies – at the intersection of people and processes, online and off.
http://www.hitechy.com/ Alexander Dawson

Just to clarify on one point, I know a number of UX Pro’s who are trained professionals in fields like psychology and sociology, and whilst I may not have a degree in either – I do have a related background (education and experience) which has been of serious benefit that many in our industry are unlikely to have at their disposal, which is why I think the distinction is deserved. I do respect your point of view on the matter though!
http://sankhomallik.com/ Sankho

Yeah, I have to agree with you that this is the process. It’s unfortunate that since I’m at the tail end of the current “process,” I don’t really have any say in it’s validity.
http://www.sefsar.com Youssef Sarhan

UX is a dimension, a factor, a consideration of the web design process that is as important as anything else. As the designer, you are required to intelligently resolve the colour, contrast, shape, size, type, image, flow, user habits, expectations & interactions of each and every aspect of the website. When finally brought together by the developer each of these elements form a website, a website which is then experienced and tested by users. If something is awry the user will experience that. Just as it is the responsibility of a print designer to ensure coherent understanding of a tax-form, I believe that it is the responsibility of the web designer to ensure coherent understanding of a web-form.

The title user experience professional is entirely redundant. It has no context.
http://typemade.mx Santiago Orozco

maybe I’ve worked with the wrong people…
Eric Nowina

I agree strongly with how you define the difference between the UX and Web designer. As my company my role has changed from senior Web designer to UX or IX designer and the biggest difference is the amount of time I spend connecting the dots between what the business wants to do and our users. More often than not I’ll end up writing the brief for a web designer to finish what I started.
http://flexewebs.com/semantix Jason Grant

The main issue here is that Ryan has not worked on web initiatives worth more than £1M.

He’s not qualified enough to comment therefore about what UX is. It’s outside of his awareness, so this article is worthless therefore.
webecho

“A web site or app should be the product of a Web Designer and a Web Developer”

Why add the second person?
According to your definition of a ‘real’ Web Designer, they should be more than capable of covering both roles otherwise they don’t deserve the title.

Should every Doctor be able to perform Brain Surgery? and should every Brain Surgeon know how to treat the Measles?

It’s effective link bait, but doesn’t present a very strong or coherent argument.
Hope the extra thousand ‘hits’ was worth the dent to your reputation.
http://www.justforthealofit.com/ TheAL

Lotta people are going to disagree with this, especially people who make gobs of money as “UX consultants.” However, I agree. I also agree that web designers are often developers, contrary to what is discussed in a recent topic SmashingMag has been pushing around Twitter (a PDF book in which the author states a designer who develops, or vice versa, is a red flag clients should avoid unless they want to get ripped off).
http://www.sefsar.com Youssef Sarhan

From what I understand, Ryan is not discrediting UX as a concern; he is quite simply explaining that the designer should have an intimate sensibility about UX. Similar to a product designer needs to be aware of sustainable, affordable, ergonomic and innovative principals. The problem of design is always multi-faceted; the designers skill set must match this.
Bartek

Hmmm, you would like one person with good knowledge about front end coding (html/css/js), graphic design and UX/usability/information architecture? And maybe he should making coffee and cleaning office?! :D

This is impossible. There is so much knowledge in this three areas of expertise that it’s impossible for one person to be expert in everything!

And I think you don’t really understand what is UX design… Think about: UCD, business an users needs analysis, creating wireframes and prototypes (from paper prototyping to interactive html prototypes), interaction design, information architecture, usability analysis and testing, eye-tracking and other things… If you want to be good at UX, you have to FOCUS. Becose in medium and big projects there is so much work that you can’t do other things! No time! And graphic designer who want to be good also have to focus on own area! Also front-end developer! :)

So, please, don’t create your own definitions becose you’ll get bad conclusions.
Ryan Carson

So all projects that are less than £1M do not need to address User Experience? Every good web designer needs to become passionate and well-versed in UX. Waiting till you work on a project that’s £1M+ and then calling in a UX Expert/Professional is exactly the problem I’m trying to address. Web Designers need to be ‘UX Professionals’ no matter what size project they work on.
http://christianboyle.com Christian Boyle

UX Professional:Web Designer::Web Developer:Programmer

The jobs/titles aren’t mutually exclusive or paradoxical, they are symbiotic.
http://www.planetyou.net Jason

Deb,

I think you’re one of the few people who left a comment addressing the client/agency relationship side of this debate. I wonder if this “upselling” has become a necessary evil in that many (most?) clients simply don’t see a difference between design and design informed by UX theory. For them, it’s the same thing or at least should be e.g Why on earth would I buy a car without an engine? People assume whatever they buy will work.

In my opinion, the web industry has been facing a dilemma for quite some time. Powerful design tools are making it easier for anyone to hang-up a shingle. We (industry experts) know that all designs are not equal, however our clients do not. Maybe – and I don’t know if I totally agree with this statement – agencies feel they need to create a line item in there proposals for UX just to have the conversation with their clients e.g Yes, we can build you a site (just about anyone can), however if you want a site that REALLY works, we suggest you involve a UX expert. UX is a value proposition that clients need to be educated on.
Adam Lorentzen

I agree, you “should” hire someone with those qualities and to a varying degree all designers have those qualities. In corporate America, jobs are many times distributed among individuals so that the company isn’t dependent on one person to make sure all those aspects are taken care of. At my workplace, there is no one who cultivates the user’s experience with a unified goal. Web designers, in every instance I have seen or experienced, are relegated to design… html, css, and some javascript. No one looks to these normally entry level / non-management positions for how we should be shaping the users experience.

I agree they should not be broken up into separate roles, however I also understand the importance having multiple individuals sharing responsibility. If someone wins the lottery or gets hit by a bus and doesn’t come in again, our “rockstar” designer/ux/developer would be a great loss to the company.
Chris Raynor

I 100% agree with Ryan here, the key point is that he is talking about web designers and developers, not web artists and coders. A website has to be engineered to take into account all factors, from aesthetics to usability, and from technology to economics. UX is an integral part of both the visual design and the development of the site, perhaps the most fundamental of all skills. Any designer who outsources UX is simply a pixel pusher, likewise any developer who does the same simply becomes a code monkey.
http://www.dessigual.com Ramm

I don’t know why the difference, a Web Designer IS a UX Designer, it is really stupid for me to try to make separate ways for each one, the are the same. You can’t be one without being the other, and if you do, let me tell you, you suck.
http://webtorque.org Jonathan

Where I work, I find it hard to imagine how we might be able to sack our user experience designers and make all the user interface engineers do their jobs as well. I suppose I could ask them on Monday and see what they say, but I’m pretty sure I’d get the finger.

I don’t want to assume too much about Mr Carson, other than he appears not to actually do any design himself. However, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that he’s talking about rather simple, small, web sites. To that extent, I’d agree with him. I’d trust most decent HTML/CSS devs to produce a brochure site or blog theme.

But consider an average day at the “UX professional” coalface in the year 2010:

7:00am: Get up, take a paracetamol and check email. Some responses to the user research RFQs you sent out last week have come in. They’re about 20 pages each, there will be about 10 of them if all agencies respond, and it’ll take most of your week to digest them, discuss them with others, and generally manage the pitch process.

9:00am: Arrive at work. You’ve been asked to present to the CEO’s direct reports on the new home page design concepts. The direction you’re taking is controversial (no advertising, no splash page), so you’re going to have to do a good job persuading them it’ll work against the business case. You’ve got a meeting with the analytics team later today to pump them for stats that might work in your favour, and you’ve got a bunch of competitor screen-shots that support your case.

10:00am: One of our reports asks you to review some work on the redesign of the customer service pages. You have a long discussion about the UX in the light of a big wad of call centre data you were sent last week. Together you carve out some design directions and send them on their way.

11:30am: You wish you’d not put your hand up for documenting the pattern library – it’s turning out to be a serious time sink. And no, we can’t just refer to YUI, because that’s a pattern library for a different purpose.

12:20pm: Responding to an email forwarded from somebody in the merchandising team about why we don’t put a picture of the board members on our “about us” page. WTF? Go for a coffee. Random dude in the kitchen asks me about the site’s navigation and I end up sounding like Jared Spool.

2:00pm: Better start looking at those responses. The pattern library can wait, even though you swore you’d make a decision about the use of popup windows last week to get the lead dev out of your hair.

2:15pm: Would I like to help somebody corridor test some sketches? No. I’m too busy, sorry.

3:00pm: HR tell me I’m now overdue in doing the performance reviews for my reports. God I hate HR. Which reminds me: I’ve yet to file my expenses from the LATAM research trip last month.

4:30pm: Have lunch. Have discussion about CSS with media queries with a dev.

5:15pm: Can’t concentrate on the RFQs any more, better do some work on that home page rationale. The meeting with analytics is in 15mins.

5:30pm: Analytics have a lot of data, but I’m having trouble interpreting it. We run out of time in the meeting and don’t manage to cover the merchandising questions I had. Damn.

6:00pm: Send out some invites to sketching sessions next week for new UGC ideas. They’re 3 hours each over two days. Looking forward to facilitating them, because there’s a lot of fuzzy thinking going on about what we should be doing for the UX in all this.

6:23pm: Putting those slides together, just. Distractions on Skype about some wording for a call to action. Send them an Alert Box URL about the issue.

7:00pm: Why is the CFO making design suggestions about the purchase path? Can’t he just stick to bean counting? Mind you, one of the ideas is interesting, although I think we tried something similar last year and it bombed. Looking for those designs to show him… where are they?

7:30pm: OK OK I’m coming home real soon, honey! My turn to cook? Oh, sorry, er. Coming back soon!

Really. And you’re expecting me to implement the designs, degrade for IE6, handle merge issues, fix bugs and dev environment problems while intelligently resolving the colour, contrast, shape, size, type, image, flow, user habits, expectations & interactions of each and every aspect of the website?

Interesting proposition! My price is $180K pa, plus benefits, health care and share options.

Anything less and I’d be a fool.
Tom Cavill

Ostensibly I agree, though the issue is that in a great deal of large, successful web agencies the designers don’t have the skills Ryan describes. I worked at an agency with projects of value up to £1m, that were designed by designers that had no front-end skills. That’s pretty appalling in my view, and it shows in the results (at least to trained eye).

Therefore I feel the reason the term UX professional (or one of its variations) has come about is that the great web designers – the ones who *can* count all of the skills listed by Ryan in their arsenal – have to differentiate themselves from these designers who just happen to work on projects for the web.

Personally I view the talented, all encompassing web designers described increasingly as product designers – making decisions on how users interact with sites that are now a vital part of people’s lives and livelihoods.

Product designers and software engineers are the new web designers and developers.
http://www.thomasprior.co.uk Tom Prior

The rise of the UX specialist in the web industry is a sign of the maturity of our industry and should be welcomed with open arms.

Since the birth of the commercial web, ‘designers’ (usually hybrid visual designers/front-end developers) have been called upon to act as the online jack-of-all-trades, often taking a project from inception to delivery in extremely small (or individual freelance) teams. This was the acceptable norm 5-8 years ago when web standards were less prevalent, development platforms were yet to fully mature, and the visual aspects of web design were more concerned with aesthetics than usability. It remains acceptable for small projects or small development teams, but familiarity does not mean this should be our accepted standard practice for the years ahead.

Our industry has grown up quickly, the technologies available to us have become more worthy of specialism as their scope for complexity increases. Yes – an understanding of the specialisms that affect the outcome of a project is important, but the quality of the finished website or app can only be helped if those who are experts in their particular area take responsibility for key parts of the project. We do not expect our back-end developers to push perfect pixels in Fireworks, so why burden the visual designer or front-end developer with all the UX research and testing?

I hear the architect analogy used regularly to support a ‘jack-of-all trades’ approach, but would we expect said architect to create a 3D visualisation of the building, sink the foundations and install the lighting? We expect an understanding of any aspect of the build that will affect his own work, but not to take responsibility for their actual completion; this is the same with the web.

Like the terms ‘SEO expert’ and ‘social media expert’, I believe this distrust of the term ‘UX professional’ comes from it’s recent rise in popularity. Unlike the seemingly endless army of snake-oil salesmen peddling the former two on their business cards, I don’t have the same feeling towards those who choose UX Professional as their chosen job title.

As a visual designer I feel I have some understanding of what works from a usability point of view, but how can I be sure I’m always making the right call? Of course, I could spend my time undertaking the tasks Ryan outlines along with immersing myself in some decent blogs and books, but would my time be better spent honing my own skillset to make sure I’m at the top of my game? In the same way I would expect to be called upon by my team to create excellent visuals, I’d expect a UX professional to deliver insight into the user experience that is supported by actual knowledge, insight, testing and a passion for what they do.

If we expect web designers to have at least a good grasp of UX, are we to expect a UX expert to have an in-depth understanding of web development? Surely creating the best interface, flow or language to ensure users are treated to the best experience possible should transcend the technology behind it? Why limit the development of an experience but what a UX designer THINKS is possible?

Of course there are teams (like the one I work in) that regularly deliver great work while trying to encourage staff to cover all ‘design’ bases, and there will always be freelancers who continue to do so too. However, the scepticism of UX as a specialism is to do it a great disservice when we should be happy to see it finally flourishing into an important cornerstone of our industry.
David

Wow… I’d never heard of Ryan Carson before I saw a link to this post in a comment on (funnily enough) UX Magazine. Nice job writing a post that plays well for the Twitterverse by virtue of being controversial, but otherwise this is pretty nutty. I have some thoughts to add to all the other great debunking people have been doing in these comments.

Arrogant web designers like (apparently) Ryan Carson are one of the many reasons UX specialists are necessary. People who think that their knowledge of CSS, HTML, and whatever usability experience they’ve picked up along the way qualifies them to research and design user-centered software products are way underestimating other people’s skills and experience, and way overestimating their own. Having good UX pros on your team helps inoculate your project against people who arrogantly assume they know best. There’s a *HUGE* difference between web design and software product design, both in terms of the tools and of the complexity involved in building them. Would Ryan Carson’s advanced knowledge of HTML5 and CSS going to do him much good on the Adobe Creative Suite design team, or on the Amazon information architecture group, or on the National Federation for the Blind’s web team?

What shines out of Ryan’s responses to the previous comments is that he believes that designers should be like unto all-knowing gods of every facet of research and design, and that he considers himself such a god. If such a person truly existed, you can be sure he wouldn’t be calling himself a ‘web designer’ and he’d be charging much higher rates than your average web production monkey. But no such person could possibly exist, and anyone who asserts he is such a person is just betraying his own arrogance and ignorance of the true breadth of the UX field. That is *not* someone I’d want to work with on a tough project.
http://www.hellomuller.com Tom Muller

Lets see if my response makes it through this time…

—

Well Ryan — here is my problem with your assumptions, and why I call it nonsense:

A good web designer that ticks all your boxes (as you list above), will never have the time to fully dedicate him/herself to fulfil all aspects of that job description because you’re never working on 1 project at a time, or have deadlines that allow you to spend enough time to cover each step of the process yourself.
If you’re talking about a site the size of lets say Carsonified, I would agree and say that a good experienced web designer and developer can cover the UX, because the scale of that site is negligible (and even then I’m sure that you’re involved as well, so that would make 3 people). The reason why Google or Amazon work so well is because you have teams of specialists (design, dev, UX,…) working on it and not a “master of all” (bit of an obvious statement here, but I digress).

I consider myself a very well-rounded web designer (I should hope so with my experience), and while I have an understanding of UX, accessibility, etc… I’m not specialist at them, so I need to work with people who are (and luckily I can choose those people) so I can focus on what I do best: design and creative direction. Being a jack of all trades only gets you so far… Your argument would place Mike Kus as doing everything from designing, illustrating, templating CSS (& maybe doing some HTML coding), to doing A/B testing, UX and making sure the site is accessible. Thats maybe stretching it a bit no? As I said, for a small site like Carsonified it could work. But what if you land a client who wants you to create a complex user-based services site? I don’t think an Amazon, Google, eBay etc work because its only designers and developers that created the site…

So thats why I think you’re generalising and ultimately, sending the wrong message to your audience.
http://beep.peterboersma.com/ Peter Boersma

Ryan – Jonathan
0 – 1
http://www.onebigfield.com Fergus

A UX consultant walks into a barber’s. While cutting his hair, the barber says: “so what d’you do?” The UX consultant replies: “I design stuff. Web stuff usually. I try and make things easier to use”. “Oh right, so your a web designer”. “Kinda. If you think of design as the look and feel. Well I look after the feel bit. The experience of a thing”. “oh right…”

I used to be Head of UX at Enable Interactive based not far from you Ryan in Bristol. I walked in there a UX consultant and I found a place where everyone got UX. Immediately the bar was raised. It was brilliant, I didn’t need to discuss the basic stuff. I didn’t have to defend the importance of a user centred approach. No one minded me costing in prototyping phases and user testing before we’d even started the build phase.

So what happens if everyone in the room gets UX? Better design. Am I out of a job? No, I’m in a much better place to ply my trade.

There’s a front end developer there who’s got a fine art degree (and an amazing grasp of the WCAG accessibility guidelines). D’you think he might know a thing or two about the “golden rectangle” ratio? Should they get rid of the designers and start expecting him to do the designers job too?

Job titles are just labels. I’m a director too. Do you think I know much of anything about Amazon’s Jeff Besos day-to-day job because we both work in ecommerce and we’re both directors?

I’d add more, but many voices have been raised since your tweet was pointed out to me on Friday. And many have rightly said what I think.

Our forefathers are human factors, ergonomics and all the way back to the great and cherished librarians. UX is young. But I’m sure our forefathers ran into similar comments. I mean, how hard can it be to organise some books on a shelf..?
http://cargocollective.org/aeonbeat Martin

Can’t we have a poll with results showing how many of good visual designers are also good in UX? And isn’t it obvious that without UX knowledge visual content wouldn’t be as good?
Peter Caddy

This post is naive and undermines Think Vitamin’s credibility.
http://www.grafik.co.nz Nick

Any developer or designer who creates a need for a UX professional in a project needs a bullet almost as much as the UX professional.
http://sidovangennip.com Sido

What are you thoughts on progressive enhancements, responsive design, accessibility, etc. then? Aren’t they part of the design?

I think it’s really hard to design for those things, if you don’t know how the technologies work. So by not learning CSS you kind of limiting you work and not putting out your best work.
http://sidovangennip.com Sido

I agree that’s important stuff, but don’t confuse not able/wanting with preferring a different approach. I’ve written a lot of documents in my career, but at the moment a prefer not to. I much rather get the essentials on paper (by talking to people, brainstorming and sketching stuff on paper, no formal documents are needed) and just start building! I much rather have 10 prototypes to tryout and get feedback on, than just one and a bunch of documents no body reads …but maybe that’s just me?
http://chessreview.co.uk/ Isofarro

Ryan Carson runs a web agency which churns out one site after another for their client(s). They design and build a site (sometimes, they trumpet, inside of 4 working days), and deliver it. Then, as is common with a substantial number of web agencies, they dust their hands of it and walk away. Next project with a different client.

Since they have such a tiny time-exposure to the actual needs and requirements of the site, there’s no time to do real analysis and user research, no time to engage properly with people who have to deal with customer service issues. So their crop of designers have to rely on gut feel and what they think works best.

(How would a designer from a web agency know whether their previous client work succeeded in the long term once they’ve dusted their hands of it on the hand-over to that client? How would they, in those conditions, pull out real learnings that can be applied to improve the site they previously delivered? How would they even manage that alongside the multitude of other skills they need a deep expertise in. The answer: they don’t. They just descope – in various ways – what they don’t have time for)

The build-and-run-away type of website development means that these developers and designers aren’t invested in the lifecycle of the website. They aren’t the ones dealing with customer services, visitor analytics, business owners, finance departments, marketing groups, campaign organisers, direct marketing/traffic acquisition groups, ongoing support developers, new feature builders on a daily basis. Web agency designers are simply not engaged in the day-to-day business of running a website – so have very little experience or insight of the mistakes they are making, mistakes that make life difficult for a customer, or opportunities to improve the conversion of a visitor to a fully fledged member, or paid-up customer.

Very much like SEO, UX is an ongoing process. Sure you’re web developers may be able to fulfil some simple SEO requirements during the build of the stage, but are they actively involved in the running of the site to spot indexing and site crawl path issues on a real live site, do they measure their ongoing changes and see what improves the flow of better qualified visitors? Web Developers make mistakes (I have a significant list of errors Carson’s own developers have made, especially in web site security), Web Designers make mistakes. These mistakes are invisible to these particular developers and designers because they are not involved in the day-to-day running of the site, and the day-to-day running of the organisation trying to interact with their customers – be it through the website, or other avenues.

Of course, since web agencies such as Carson, chuck developed websites over the wall and dust their hands of it when done, they are not actively involved in the ongoing lifecycle of running an organisation with that website, so are particularly unqualified to comment on whether having a specialised UX person is an asset or not. The particular situation where a UX specialist’s value is abundantly clear. Good UX specialists contribute directly to the profit of an organisation, she finds the usability bottlenecks and solves them, improves the flow of quality visitors. That translates directly into extra revenue, which for established ecommerce websites, optimising revenue is a solid business direction. UX specialists earn their keep.

The sites Carson does run themselves are all targeted very specifically at people developing or building websites. Hardly the demographic to do real world user experience research and testing. On their main business site – their events site – notice for starters there’s no route to talking to customer services, no help/faq documentation for their site/events/payment process, Just a mailto link. With a payment system as complex as this: http://thinkvitamin.com/online-conferences/iphone-app-dev/booking.php — what the hell was the person doing the UX thinking?? (Also that big “Buy Your Ticket, click to buy” just reloads the page – that’s clearly broken. Clicking on “Find time in your area” tells you that you can watch the conference video after the event – that’s quite some cognitive dissonance. (And that’s just from a brief scan at the booking page, Goodness knows how it will fall apart if I try to use it!)

I guess the real reason Carson is ranting in this way is because competing web agencies are realising that an ongoing relationship with the client is beneficial to themselves, the client and the visitors of that client’s site, and Carson hasn’t figured that out yet.
http://mtness.net mtness

Yeeeeh, excellent! Haven’t we all worn many hats?

Kind regards, mtness.
http://twitter.com/renniks Mark S

Yes, that is obvious that anything without UX considerations isn’t as good as things with them. No-one has disagreed with that.
http://www.redbullet.co.uk Andy Shield

I’m enjoying this debate.

I view user experience as a sub-set of customer experience and the two often overlap of course.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_experience

To create a superior customer experience requires understanding the customer’s point of view, say Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D in Rules to Break and Laws to Follow. “What’s it really like to be your customer? What is the day-in, day-out ‘customer experience’ your company is delivering? How does it feel to wait on hold on the phone? To open a package and not be certain how to follow the poorly translated instructions? To stand in line, be charged a fee, wait for a service call that was promised two hours ago, come back to an online shopping cart that’s no longer there an hour later? Or what’s it like to be remembered? To receive helpful suggestions? To get everything exactly as it was promised? To be confident that the answers you get are the best ones for you?” (Peppers and Rogers 2008)

My fear would be that if we create a generation of web designers who try and decipher all the details relating to human factors and organisational requirements (across all key stakeholders) then this may actually stifle creativity.

I like the fact that there’s a role for someone to sit between user and client requirements and filter back only the salient points – in a way that helps, but doesn’t hinder. It’s not just about getting all the facts, it’s about interpreting them in a meaningful way.

Regardless of job titles, people have different skills and the trick is knowing how to bring them all together.
http://www.chrisberridge.com Chris Berridge

I see where you are coming from re the scope for ‘UX’ being a catch-all title open for abuse, however solid UX professionals are absolutely essential for larger retail website projects. The business acumen, knowledge of customer behaviour and scientific approach to testing and interviewing is essential if you are to maximise conversion rates and create the best possible customer experience. It’s as simple as that – if you believe they are all a waste of money and time you have obviously never worked with good UX professionals, or fail to take business objectives into account when approaching a project.

I am a designer, I specialise in designing interfaces, and the best projects I have worked on (and there have been many, of all sizes) have included UX people.
Josh

You might want to get the whole web design nailed down before going after usability experts. Unfortunately your site seems to be broken in IE7 ( your right col and footer). Not sure how many of your users use that browser but it might worth thinking about.

I also find it quite interesting that during dConstruct (one of the few web conferences that you don’t run) you decide to create a web frenzy. As a result it is quite hard to take what your saying or this debate seriously.
http://jimmoran.co.uk Jim Moran

I think both sides have already had a good say on this, but the main area I disagreed with Ryan was that having a dedicated UX Pro was somehow an opportunity to over-charge your clients.

If your project needs detailed UX design, followed by visual design (a simple example), why would it be more expensive if this role was carried out by two people? Perhaps it’s less efficient than the “one designer” scenario, but equally two (or more) focussed specialists may be more efficient – even with a project management overhead.
Sarah

Here here! All I have been able to think reading all of Ryan’s statements is the unbelievable ego that would cause someone to think that they could manage every aspect of planning, developing & creating a brilliant website. His kind of web designer is equivalent to a GP, knows a little about a lot of things. What worries me is the arrogance of thinking that he never needs to refer to a specialist in any area, no matter how complex, unusual, or outside of his experience a situation may be. I sincerely hope that his arrogance isn’t causing his clients to lose too much money.
http://ulrikg.com Ulrik

I would compare it to psychologists, you can be an empathic and understanding psychologist, and have no clue who your patients really are, what they do, what their problems ACTUALLY consists of in the real day-to-day life other than the patients word in a room. No knowledge of the actual acedemic field or proffesion in which the subject has their issues.

Then there are people who have natural compassion and empathy, you know your friend who always has all the serious talks with your other friends about breakups and heartbreak. They might not be educated psychologists, but have a natural tendency to work and see things in the same way as they do.

In the same way, i see UX as the psychology/logic of design, and because it being a relatively new term, its always been a discipline in design – extending interaction design. Thinking about the underlying logic, seeing through the facade of things, and finding and solving the real problems.

Now, as i see it, there are then some people who has natural empathy and understanding of users, without necessarily being educated in the field, who has the logic of the business, goals and ideas in place, but not necessarily the design eye nor the coding knowledge..

And as long as there is no formal education specifying the complete range of skills and expectations of an UX designer, the job isnt a real job, and this debate is not valid :)
http://www.itsphil.com Phil Zeelte

My opinion on this would be that UX is engrained within website design (and development). If a web designer doesn’t take into account a Users Experience when designing (and developing) then who is he targeting as an audience?

It could well be that there is simply to much of a divide and that this whole debate should, rather than divide, bring together the “two disciplines” of UX and website design as one. Perhaps every web designer should take on a more strict and thorough UX process for each and every project.

Just my opinion done hate on me :)
http://twitter.com/socialtechno Gordon Rae

You seem to be looking at your industry from the supply side: from your own skills, from the way you’ve always worked, and the way you like to work. It’s not surprising that you don’t think ‘UX Professional’ is a real job. It’s not surprising that people disagree with you.
Justin

On something as small as ThinkVit, Amigo or Dropsend then yes, the des/dev formula works perfectly. I’ve been all sides of this, I am the designer/developer, I have worked with startups and have been a UX on multi-million pound ecom platforms. This statement was just another example of “someone” desperately seeking attention, again.

Quit getting so hung up on irrelevant semantics and focus on putting something out there that makes the world a better place.
Euge

I agree with Graham Morley. And If you say that for the context of “your post” you just stick to webdesign, I think that your statement is just to “make some noise”. If what you say is half true (or according to “the context”), there is no point in discuss it, right? Cheers.
http://dewlillydesign.com/ Anne

Thank you Ryan! Couldn’t agree with you more! I’m both a designer and developer, have been for over 10 years now, same as you, and you have exactly summed up my own opinion on this issue. Well said!
http://dewlillydesign.com/ Anne

Amen.
http://webtorque.org Jonathan

@Martin: That’s not what’s being discussed. Ryan is saying that “web designers” should actually *do the work* of UX professionals in the process of creating a web site, not merely be able to. I’m sure you could also do the work of the company receptionist, or the CTO, or the project manager, but whether you actually should – or choose to – is another matter entirely. This is about specialisation and demarcation. It’s not a pissing contest.
http://www.uxmag.com Jonathan Anderson

This is a really enjoyable thread of comments to what Ryan must now realize was a half-baked, utterly incorrect thought. Kudos to Ryan for at least making a bold statement that became the fount of such interesting comments about UX. The UX field is so broad and so ill-defined that it’s helpful whenever someone puts a stake in the ground toward which or (as in this case) away from which people can run, so the edges of the field become more apparent.

I think the most generous possible interpretation of what Ryan was trying to say is this: all web designers should have strong UX competencies and all UX people worth their salt should have strong design/tech abilities, so there’s no difference between the two and thus no need for the seemingly loftier ‘UX professional’ designation.

This is just dead wrong for many reasons that have been addressed by other commenters. It seems like Ryan has a very limited view of what UX professionals do. This may be because he’s worked with some bad ones who were just glorified web designers with presumptuous job titles, but that experience bears only on his and his agency’s experience (or inexperience), not on the field generally. This may be a result of the fact that Carsonified only does web projects, and the farther a project is from true software and the closer it is to brochureware, the less valuable the full range of UX skills and tools are.

Ryan, you look from a narrow perspective to paint with an overly broad brush. The types of projects you work on might be okay just relying on only highly skilled web designers/developers, but there’s a big world of other types of projects–both on and off the Web–that require much more experienced and specialized ‘UX professionals.’

An amusing irony in all of this is that web professionals *just like you* who overestimate their UX competencies are exactly the reason why you’ve had bad experiences with so-called UX professionals. You at least recognize that you’re a UX-flavored web designer and not just a ‘UX Professional,’ but just because other people with the same experience as you undeservedly use that label doesn’t mean there aren’t other people who do deserve it. And anyway, UX is such a broad concept that you wouldn’t be wrong to call yourself a UX professional… you’d just have to be more specific about your particular specialty and niche. Everyone in the field has to do that, yet it seems like it’s only those whose roots are in web design who forget to.

Anyway, keep on saying wacky things because these discussions are very interesting and entertaining!

- Jonathan Anderson / UX Magazine
http://twitter.com/dalejandro Dalejandro

As far as i know, youtube was started by two or three guys, all Web Developers and/or Web Designers. Google bought it and then all of what you said applies [and the site has maintained/retained much of what made it famous and user friendly = UI UX etc..].

I think what Ryan (correct me if i’m wrong) is trying to get across with this post, is the idea that to start a web project, or app, the need for an UX professional is certainly a waste of money and time. A Web Designer should be able to cohesively integrate all the aspects of the “product” (brand, individual, concept etc), the “functionality” (html>5,css>3,Js, php or whatever language), and the “purpose & response” (User Experience, User interaction, Interface). All that process should and must be able to happen, come from, one individual, max two (the developer).

As the project grows, it’s obvious that —depending on the involvement of the designer or developer— more people should be involved. Creative writers, UX and UI professionals (that “professional” tittle gives me the creeps) and so on, whomever you think would be relevant to adhere to a project, should be in it.

The “Jack of all traits” people exist and can definitely perform better than specialized folks (sometimes, some other times not so much) because usually the cognitive process takes place naturally, meaning it comes naturally to them, when to specialized people get lost in the technicalities of the trait, whatever that trait would be.

In addition to working online, i’ve worked in restaurants most of my adult life (some ppl like monday night football, i like cooking), so about 6 years, i’ve come around some great Chefs that try to do too much and fail at their job miserably. Some others are incredibly mediocre at their job and get really good at just doing “their thing”. The time comes, exceptionally rare, but it happens, when you meet someone that has never cooked a boiled egg, or a good carbonara, but they only need ten minutes to get instructed and perform (understand) and be incredibly good at their job, eventually pursuing cooking full time and becoming brilliant chefs&cooks.
The fact is that, “Jack of all traits” that are successful are a minority, the ones that are brilliant are even more of a minority.
Christopher Burd

Yes, they should be able to.

Look around you. Is it so?
Jon

I have a background as a “web designer” ever since the 90′s but has moved to interaction and experience design the last couple of years. My experience is that it’s VERY hard to be good at behavioural science, anthropology and other skills that a UX:er have and still keep up with HTML, CSS and other developer-centric stuff. It’s not impossible, but you probably have to sacrifice something on the way.

If you treat UX as just usability, accessibility and A/B-testing, then you are more “web designer” than “UX Professional”. But that’s a narrow definition of it – UX is so much more.
Jack

Jack of all trades, master of none.
Richard Research

Research is integral to UX. In the past year, I have conducted hundreds of research interviews for projects, gathering data from users and stakeholders. I use this data to inform user journeys, site maps and IA.

I’ve yet to meet a ‘web’ designer who’d want to do this work – they’d much rather be doing visual and brand design because that’s their strongest skill.
Rob

Well said. Very well said.
http://www.viget.com/about/team/bwilliams Brian Williams

Per my earlier tweet back to you, I have to disagree. The industry is growing up. Roles are naturally specializing to handle more complex problems. Through this growth, some teams will handle the specialization well, some will handle it poorly — it’s higher risk, but when it works it’s higher reward. Efficient coordination among teams of specialists isn’t easy, especially in iterative web development when requirements change often. The answer, though, isn’t to stubbornly stick to tiny generalist teams just because that’s easier and safer, it’s to figure out (1) when specialists can provide value, (2) how to have them collaborate effectively, and (3) how to adjust quickly on the fly as the needs change.

I think the opinion of specialization being bad comes from people who have bad experiences working with underperforming, unqualified specialists who are poorly coordinated on a project team. If you’ve worked with great specialists working together well with fantastic results, you’d change your mind — it’s a thing of beauty.

I’m biased because I work with some awesome UX designers, and I see the value they provide when they work alongside an equally awesome visual designer (great at making beautiful interfaces), front-end developer (great at building complex interactions in HTML/CSS/JS), and back-end developer (great at building functionality in Ruby on Rails), all coordinated by an awesome project manager (great at running the show) coordinating with an awesome client / product owner (great at having and sharing a vision). We used to all be generalists, but from my experience having focused UX designers (and front-end developers as well) has considerably improved the quality of our work.

2 caveats:

1. As people specialize they can’t put on blinders and work in silos. They need to respect and understand the work being done by their teammates. It’s collaborative, not “production line” (as you put it).
2. Not all projects require the same skills, team members, and process. There are still times when the only option is a tiny team doing their best with limited constraints, and that’s fine.

Don’t get me wrong: there is plenty of bloat and nonsense out there, and lots of people who claim to be “UX Professionals” but actually provide no value. Don’t let the bums ruin it for everyone.
http://blog.mjdingle.com Dingle

This is something that doesn’t sit well with me, people keep talking about UX designers and Visual Designers. To me UX is a practice that encompasses IA, Testing, visual design etc. At the heart of it, a great deal of the experience of a user is defined by the look, the feel, the mood that is created by the visual elements of the design. People continue to separate the fields but I think you have within the UX practice, people who are stronger with visuals, people who are stronger at working out information flows & personas etc. But EVERYONE in the practice must have a good understanding of what the entire practise is trying to achieve….. a great USER EXPERIENCE.
http://www.russelluresti.com RussellUresti

In a word, “no”. Tempering a client’s business goals with a user’s goals requires knowledge of business and marketing as well as usability, accessibility, design, development, cognitive psychology, human factors, and HCI. Many of these things are too varied in terms of skill sets, they require different parts of the brain; it’s simply unrealistic to expect one or two people to be a master at all of these things. If you have one or two people to be responsible for all of these things then the quality of each one will suffer — the details required in each pie. Experts who are focused on one area are not a bad thing. Sometimes a web designer should just be concerned with the aesthetics, not the client’s ROI; it allows them to focus on the details.

I agree that the designers and front-end developers should have at least a modicum of understanding of the other disciplines, but I don’t believe they need to be experts.
Mark

Couldn’t agree less with the original post – UX pros are essential on any large site build. They act as the bridge between client and audience as well as being an essential part of any well structured design & development team working on large projects.

A good IA/UX specialist will be multi-disciplined – they will be technology and design aware, will understand how to define architecture based on what audiences actually need & want and will be able to properly test and iterate based on audience/user testing. It’s big job when done correctly and requires a particular type of person…not just a des/dev pro who can handle Axure or Omnigraffle.

If you’re producing brochure-ware and smaller sites then fair enough, you can get away with a small team whoa re likely to be quite close to the audience – but if you don’t have a UX specialist on any large web project you’re missing a big part of the puzzle (and this applies across web-apps, campaign sites, mobile apps or whatever else you like).
http://www.fixpertdesign.com Sally Carson

Is it possible that when one camp speaks of “Web Designers” and the other of “User Experience Designers,” we’re all referring to the same thing? It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve all ground to a halt for a heated semantic debate on our job titles.

Once I read Ryan’s update to the original post above, I realized that he’s thinking that in one project there are both Web Designers AS WELL AS User Experience Designers. I have never been on a project or team that had both. It’s either / or.

In fact…I can’t think of the last time I met or worked with a “Web Designer.” Sorry. I’m in the San Francisco Bay Area — is this a regional thing? Maybe others from different locales can chime in?

And please, other Bay Area / Silicon Valley folks, correct me if I’m mistaken but “Web Designers” don’t seem to exist here any more, the term has become passé. My feeling is that when you say “Web Designer” it invokes a sense of…16-year old niece with a copy of Dreamweaver doing the web site for your gas station.

Maybe “Web Designer” = Web 1.0 brochureware / content-based sites, while “User Experience Designer” = Web 2.0, and it’s resulting complexities?
http://sideshow.com Alex Schleifer

Surely, the bigger the project the more you need to split up roles. I’ve worked as a team of one on smaller sites but had very specific roles on larger ones. Nothing unique to the industry about that either.
Ben

When you say that UX is a way of ‘overcharging naive clients’, you’re not only saying that a good web designer should be able to do UX (maybe true), but that they should be able to do it in zero extra time (obviously false).

Isn’t this basically the same as saying ‘good UX should just happen’? Do you honestly believe that?
NicholasMeyers

Amen
Kevin Howard

As a user/client of web designers, in my experience there are too many out there who don’t know enough about user experience/usability. They just want to make nice looking, “cool” sites.

I would never expect (or want) a developer to do the front end design, just like I wouldn’t want the designer to produce the database schema.

I think there is a case for some specialist skills on a project, such as search engine design and optimisation, but I agree with Ryan that all web designers should have a good understanding of what does and doesn’t work when it comes to user interface, considering the target audience. If you don’t you should call yourself a “Colour Scheme and Layout Designer” :)

Tip to clients of Web Designers – read Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug.
http://www.morewebsitetrafficseo.com Brett Vostro

“A web site or web app should not be the result of a production line of people.”

Ryan Carson has a point. I think he’s coming from the angle of too many web design companies taking their clients to the cleaners. I know – I contract as a web developer for a company who outsourced their website design to the tune of $50k. I know there would have been less than $15k worth of true effort.

But it’s also relative – that is, a web project with extensive requirements and needs might indeed take a team of developers as it’s beyond just one person.

Still, I’m siding with Carson (just).
Marius van Dam

Let’s analyse:
- “Happy to be proved wrong”
Are you really? All the comments above this one didn’t prove you wrong or at least made you rethink your original statements?

- “but I sincerely believe what I said is correct”
You mean that your beliefs are so strong that no convincing argument can make you think different?

This is a useless discussion.

We all agree about the competences needed to create a good user experience on the web. (research, design, user testing etc)
We also agree what is needed to produce the actual web components so that they work as expected. (HTML, css, JS, some JSP’s/PHP/whatever)

The way these competences are spread over several people can defer per project.
When you staff a project it depends on the scope of your project, the deadlines and what people are available. It would be great if all developers and webdesigners can do UX. If they don’t need external UX designers and can produce great quality (small) websites on small projects.

But how effective are teams of two people on large projects? There is much to much to do for two people to effectively produce something in a reasonable time span.

Specialisation does excist and I think that User Experience Designer is a broad enough term already.

Marius van Dam
Project Manager and User Experience Designer
http://livegraphics.eu Xavier

I for one, think that there is no right or wrong in this discussion. But I do believe that Ryan has a valid point when he says that UX professional is not a real full-time job–*cough* social media expert *cough*. To put this into perspective, I would take it even further. Web designer is not a real job either. If you look at it from a bit more distance, we are all designers at heart. Web design is merely a specialisation, covering fields like UX design, graphic design, UI design, usability, and a lot of the other things listed in the above article. But what is to keep “print” designers from designing awesome websites and what is to keep product designers from designing beautiful, usable websites? (there are a myriad of other examples.)

I strongly believe that there is a common set of core design principles across all of these specialisations. UX design is one of those common principles, but not a field (or a job) in itself–unless in academic research, where isolation or narrowing-down is a good thing. As stated above, any type of designer (architect, product designer, web designer, …) should be familiar with the principles of UX design.

And of course, a certain project might demand a certain designer of a team to focus a bit more on the UX design of the website, but if UX design is your only skillset, I’d say you are very limited.
http://mediajunkie.com xian

Aren’t you veering into “No True Scotsman” territory here? If people rattle off anything useful they believe is part of UX research, strategy, or design, you will say that’s part of the kit of any good web designer, right? even when your odd original list of random skills that you consider the definition of UX did not originally include them.
TJ Ward

I think the best thing about this post are the comments. And I find it really interesting that all of the salient, intelligent points are made by people other than the author, who offers little more than pithy one-liners in response.

Anyone who’s not trying to make themselves famous by starting a sh*t storm understands that it’s more complicated than Carson suggests. To design an experience you need to be involved in all aspects of a product that impact the experience. This includes but is not limited to code performance, graphic design, copy, photography, video, online and offline marketing, dynamic interaction, workflow design, feature set, and release planning. That’s an aweful lot for one or two people to keep track of, but more importantly, I believe you’re going to produce much better work if you’re getting input from a group of people with different perspectives and expertise.

I’m sure there are people out there that are capable of doing all of those things, but in my experience a small team of well-rounded, but focused professionals produces better results than a lone gunman.

Just saying.
ric

@Thomas
The given example was merely something that showed me how little value a UX/UE “expert” can be to any project when they have no web coding experience.

Most developers have some form of experience in UE/UX coming from the process of designing (read:engineering) and coding web pages.

I’m basically stating that until these people get some real-world website designing and building experience, they aren’t (in my opinion) qualified to make anything other than a recommendation as to how a webpage could or should work.
Rob Gillham

Ryan, Someone pointed me at this link expecting me, as someone with ‘UX’ in my job title, to be outraged. Having read this article several times, my initial irritation has given way to almost 100% agreement. As you say, if someone is sufficiently good at wearing different hats, the only real barrier to performing all the required roles is the fact that the day is only so many hours long.

As someone who initially trained as a systems analyst and programmer before moving into what was then termed ‘Usability’, I was constantly bemused by many of my colleague’s insistence that they didn’t need to understand the technology constraints of whatever environment we were working in.

Although we were viewed as little more than annoying, overly academic criticizers of the work of others, we did perform a useful function, as (and I’m talking 10 years ago) many top agencies refused to acknowledge the importance of user insight in design. Now, as you say ‘UX’ is seen as part of the skillset of a competent web designer. Equally, a person who does user-side research but cannot step into the design process is increasingly a one-trick pony.

I dislike the ‘UX’ tag intensely, as I feel it’s been appended to the job titles of too many of that useless tier of people who so often sit somewhere between designers and clients within the new mdea community. But regardless of what you call it, user insights are increasingly driving concept-development and the strategy behind products and websites, and this is the space where I often find myself working now. If you call me ‘UX’-this or that, or something else entirely – I couldn’t care less, as long as I can add some kind of value by my presence. If think someone is doing fine without a dedicated ‘UX’ role on the team, then I tell them I’m not needed.

Thanks for a provocative, but ultimately well-thought out argument.
http://bartmax.com Bart Calixto

FAIL!

Nice try tho ….
http://zynergy.mx David

I think the the problem is the time, 8 years ago, the “web designer” title mean: a dude with knowledge on design and html/css. Now, that guy is a User Interface Designer(for web).

Now, a Web Designer is a dude with the next skills:
UI Design, UX design, AI, A/B testing, IxD etc. But is hard to be a expert/guru on all those areas.

I got your point Ryan, every “web designer” must have UX experience plus AI, A/B testing etc. But, again, is hard be an guru/expert on each area. Thats why exists “UX Pro” title
Jason Sack

Reminds me of the classic battle between the People’s Front of Judea vs. the Judean People’s Front… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_qHP7VaZE&feature=related. I prefer to think of UX as an approach rather than a discipline.
Ryan Patrick

Agreed, limiting the “UX Professional” to web only for the discussion is a cop out. The reality is that more and more companies do more than just web sites and web apps. For a company to compete these days, their products need to have more depth then just a simple web presence. Today’s technology products require a mobile, desktop, and social aspects and that requires a better branded and better designed product. These multiple platform products can’t confuse the user as they bounce back and forth from web app to iPhone app to iPad app to desktop widget. Designers/developers do need to know and build for UX but most developers and designers are so focused on their portion (mobile app, web app, etc) that its impossible for them to see the larger view of the product. The UX Pro is becoming more and more important as products become diversified.
Jimmy

“I define it as

Advanced knowledge of …

1. HTML (including HTML5)
2. CSS (including CSS3)
3. Responsive Design principles
4. Accessibility
5. Usability
6. User testing

A basic knowledge of …

1. Copy writing
2. JavaScript
3. Marketing
4. A/B and multivariate testing
”

I think your definition is wrong and perhaps that’s why you have an issue with it?

A UX designer is an expert in cognitive and behavioural psychology, it has nothing to do with scripting languages.

I agree that it SHOULD and in some cases is a part of being a web designer; unfortunately that’s not the world we live in. ‘Web Designer’ is the title applied to anyone with a twitter feed and a copy of Photoshop.

That doesn’t mean you’re wrong in principal, but you’re definitely wrong in practice.

It’s an old-hat title that’s been relegated due to context.
http://stefangoodchild.com Stefan Goodchild

Jack of all trades, master of some?
Gideon

Great! So I guess having business analysts are pretty much a waste of time as well?
Because the developer has the specs afterall and he has to understand the business to be able to code the app in the first place, right? You’re a joke.
http://www.experience.net.nz John Moore

I think the one thing missing from Ryan’s original list of must-haves for a “User Experience Designer” is talent.

Design ability is a talent – you either have it or you don’t. All the other competencies listed are skills – that any reasonably dedicated professional can learn and master over time… but the magic that takes those well researched, tested and architected wireframes into a well considered, balanced and crafted interface requires talent.

So by this logic – yes a “web designer” could also be a “UX professional”, but a UX professional would much more rarely be a web designer.

This said I agree that on a web project of any scale or complexity a multidisciplinary team is required for a successful outcome.
http://strawberrysandwich.com Robin Barton

Ryan, would you buy a house built solely by the conceptualist artist. While it may look amazing and appear to have all the right functions, how do you know the foundations are solid?

No doubt a good designer should be an expert in UX, but where a UX architect really adds value is their ability to understand 3rd party business logic. Do designers have time for this?

A thought provoking post from a philanthropic web guru, but your naivety surprises and disappoints me.
http://dewlillydesign.com/ Anne

His definition re. what makes a good User Experience Web Designer is quite accurate, including a solid knowledge of scripting languages.

The reason WHY the coding languages are included (from a web designer’s point of view) is because nowadays (and I’m sure you’re not aware of this Jimmy, as you apparently are not a web designer) is because professional web designers tend to follow a continually evolving set of standards that are prescribed by the W3C – the World Wide Web Consortium. If we don’t develop websites according to these specs, then we are creating websites that are not user-friendly at the end of the day.

You can read more about this on my blog http://blog.dewlillydesign.com/why-your-website-should-be-kept-updated-to-w3c-standards/07/06/2010/

I think the biggest problem in this debate is that inexperienced web designers (the ones who own a copy of Photoshop and a Twitter account as you so insultingly inferred) are calling themselves usability experts, when they truly don’t know the first thing about what it takes to design and develop a user friendly website – from the ground up. It is also a problem when “UX Professionals” profess to understand what makes a website ‘user-friendly’ when they don’t know the first thing about what it truly takes to plan, design and develop a modern standards compliant website for a client.

Let’s just be clear here: Usability testing after the fact is not the only component of good user-experience design, it is something that is organically built into a project; right from the planning stage, before a designer even opens up Photoshop or their favorite coding app.

I think that so-called “UX Professionals” should first familiarize themselves with what it really takes to design and develop professional websites, before they sit here and cast stones at Ryan, a professional with over 10 years experience.
Kevin Howard

“….but where a UX architect really adds value is their ability to understand 3rd party business logic.”

can you please explain this statement – maybe give us an example?
Colin Watson

A lot of people here have given analogies of brain surgery, home construction, car manufacturing, etc. That is misleading, I feel.

Web design is nowhere nearly as complex as the above mentioned vocations. Trust me — I’m human and have lived on this planet and have observed a few things. Hell, just ask a kid; even she will tell you.

I am a budding web designer/developer and if I’m honest with myself and want to be somewhat successful at my job, I will try and make the whole ‘user experience’ pleasant and of an acceptable quality (by clients and peers alike). Given that some clients have the extra money to spend on UX and have hired someone who specialises solely in that area, a ‘person who works on/with the web’ (I’m avoiding labelling to minimise the debate going into a tangent) would do well to understand ‘the web’ (including the interactions within it and between it and other bodies, eg. I may not be good at drawing but it does me well if I understand what graphic designers do, the tools they use, the platforms they work on, and more importantly – are they pulling my pants down when they invoice me).

I could argue that I don’t need to know about what they do, but you know and I know what works well in this world. I don’t like to compartmentalise (although I’ve found that the authorities think it saves them time when they profile me at airports – sigh). I believe in people being somewhat well-rounded in their skills and personalities; let’s face it — no matter how calm we are or think ourselves to be, we all like to blow off steam from time to time (and that’s also part of being a healthy person).

I say, let’s be well-rounded people and continue learning and acquiring new skills. But in no way do I wish to diminish the work of specialists. If someone wants to specialise, by all means, do so. But please let’s not ignore the limitations (if any) and advantages of doing so.

P.S. Please pardon my non-American spelling (or any other typos).
Julius

Ryan, you are absolutely correct that UX is not a real job and, in fact, borders on being a complete load of crap.

What we need to do here is step back and look at what web development actually is; a type of software development.

In software development, we have people who perform the role of a software architect (as part of their job not as a job itself). These people are many things including managers, researchers, system designers and most of the other stuff that Kevin Yank el al described in their Sitepoint podcast of 10/09/2010 but above all they are programmers. They know the languages and tools they use and work with them. The role of “architect” is just a part of all this. So, architects are people who started out as programmers and have gradually taken on more responsibilities to eventually steer the development of a project but never quite taking their finger off the pulse of the underlying machinery.

When people talk about UX developers, they are really talking about architects who have thinned out the requirements of the role to exclude essentials like the ability to program and called it a job unto itself. What we are left with is an entire job (not just a role) devoted to fluffing the egos of marketing imbeciles (usually clients but all too often people within the web dev company itself) who have zero idea about what the software (website) ought to do, what it’s limitations are and how to make it functional, extensibe and secure. What the project then becomes is a half baked house of cards that breaks at the first sneeze because untenable crap is shoehorned into the project by the marketers but is considered a success because it looks good.

This brings me to another point. The graphic design for a project is draped over the top of the functional aspects of the project thus graphic design is a peripheral aspect of the project and not it’s driving force. Form follows function! Never the other way around!

Bottom line: if you cannot code, have no idea about system design and can’t say no to marketing dross, then you cannot possibly step up to the role of an architect or “UX Designer” as the cool kids prefer to call it.
http://blog.matthewgoddard.net Matt Goddard

Reading through the comments thread it’s not hard to see where the problem lies.

Firstly, There’s about a 50//50 of people talking about UX as a research and business function and those talking about UX as essentially a interaction design function.

Herein lies the problem – the umbrella term UX is applied equally to both, it’s no wonder people are confused.

Secondly, who can honestly argue that a web designer/developer should not have an understanding of user experience.

Understanding the elements of good product design is an essential across function skill set so yes a designer and developer should understand “usability” et al.

A good question to ask is should they understand or be asked to conduct the research? If a designer or developer is primarily interested in creating the assets of design and development, then it’s probably better to keep them focused on delivery and have another person engaged in those tasks, to feed into the design and development process.

-Matt
http://flook.it Roger Nolan

…and that is the problem. You can’t pick on a generic job title from a specific industry. UX designers work on camcorders – should they be able to write the ROM code and sculpt the plastics?
http://rolling-webdesign.com Theo

Very nicely said/wrote, amen!
http://www.maxstrebel.com Max

This discussion is so funny. You are completely right. This commercial buzzword shit is useless anyway. Of course its the job of the screendesigner. The Pixelpushing is just the decoration, UX design should have always been the main task of the webdesigner and also be indiscussable.
Lee

Seems to me that web designers really fall under the umbrella of a visual designer. They execute the vision and strategy that the usability researcher has mapped out. They are the ones that make it visually appealing, but align with the plan that meets business goals, brand standards, and usabilty goals/tasks.

I just have the hardest time with the word “design”. It’s so generic and everyone thinks they are a designer! I know a lot of graphic designers who think they can design a web page because they know some HTML and CSS. But they can’t create an effective page because they have not studied web design principles therefore their decisions are solely based on asthetic. Asthetic can only get you so far.

If you want a website that is easy on the eyes, but doesn’t have any purpose behind it then I’d say just hire any designer. But if you want an effective site, that users will enjoy using (without fustration) and meets business goals then you need someone who understands the user, web standards, interaction, etc.

It’s also easy to say that any web professional should have an understanding of “usability”. So if they read a few books does this mean they have an understanding of usability now? No! because it only makes them dangerous enough to start designing on a few methods and ideas. They need to actually have experience and be updated on the latest research.

I work as a UX professional day in and day out. And when our developer, who has read Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think” tell me this shouldn’t be this way because it says so in the one book he read, it makes me scream! He hasn’t considered any of the other factors like our users and their goals, business goals, and so on!
Mark

A lot of this discussion depends on scale and scope of a site–for high-functionality commerce sites (airlines, Amazon, banking, etc.) you’re smoking something if you think 2 people can design and implement an entire site. Plus, as many have mentioned, it isn’t just the volume of work, it’s the training, nascent talent, and experience to handle the many tasks and perspectives.

But, you’re probably not talking about “big bang” projects–most sites only get completely redesigned every 3-5 years now; think how long it’s been since Amazon or eBay *really* changed much. More often the focus is enhancements: adding social components, updating/adding discrete functionality, visual refreshes, etc.

In my experience you need certain skills and the size/scope/budget of project defines who and how many people do it. You need to:
- define business rules
- understand marketing objectives (incl. campaigns, SEO)
- define functional/user requirements
- document flow and functionality
- test design with and without finished graphics
- implement, test, and deploy design as finished product

I’ve been working on web projects (and multimedia) since 1994. Titles and roles change, but the work doesn’t. Great for you, if you can find 2 talented folks to do all this work, but I’ve found it’s pretty rare unless they work nonstop, are crazy talented, or the scope is fairly small.
http://alexaitken.net/ Alex Aitken

…and what about the contention that a single developer is going to consistently and responsibly build your web apps end-to-end? Sure there are some superstars out there. In general, though, I don’t think this flies.

http://alexaitken.net/business/in-response-to-ryan-carson.htm
http://www.guenther.cx milan

For a User Experience Designer, “Webdesign” sounds like “Logo design” for the communication designer.
Simon

It’s funny to see the list of what you expect also to encapsulate UX. You only list knowledge requirements. That’s if you only need people who read books. I think skills are required, especially advanced people skills. And I have witnessed so many times developers who don’t have people skills. The more those developers knowledgeable seemed to be in their field the bigger their misunderstanding for their users seems to become. I don’t believe such generalization is a kind of rule. However some talents are rarely combined. And even when they do, specialization of focus is always good. I have Masters in Visual Design, Interaction Design and Computer Science. So much for the knowledge part. I have my own company, and really big contracts. I combine all things, this makes decision making easy. But if I know if there I would hire a just as good UX designer but with dedicated time and focus, I get a better UX solution, and also a better solution in terms of code. And vice versa when I hire a Coder. Cost more time, better quality, higher price. But then again I have to do sales too, so in the end that’s where it all boils really down too ;)
Kevin Howard

Colin Watson said ” Given that some clients have the extra money to spend on UX and have hired someone who specialises solely in that area …”

So what does a designer specialise in if it’s not UX?

Let’s face it, the concept of a UX professional and the need for such a person is being sold to the client. I’m sure clients don’t say “we have a big budget for this site so we’ll hire a UX professional in addition to a designer to burn some cash”.

But if the client does end up paying for both they are probably being ripped off, because a designer should be totally focused on UX (what else are they designing for?) and if they can’t design a site which results in good UX then they’re no bloody good!

Maybe the term “UX professional” was dreamt up by an experienced designer who was fed up with trying to compete with a teenage kids who will “design” a site for a few hundred bucks.

I must admit I have some sympathy for good designers who really know what they are doing, because faced with a client who doesn’t know the first thing about web design, it’s hard to differentiate yourself from the next guy or gal who will do the job for a fraction of the price. Although it’s even more of a challenge for developers, unless their client knows what good code looks like.
http://stewartmccoy.com Stewart McCoy

I agree that web designers and developers should be UX pros, but Mr. Carson’s list is a business and development-centric list. What this list defines is not the skill set required of a user experience designer, but a user interface developer. And there is a distinct difference. I articulate that distinction in my blog post (below).

Also, a UX designer is sometimes needed as a specialized role in larger firms with a more distributed workflow. Web Designers and developers just can’t do it all, as there are only so many hours in the work week.

I wrote a blog post in response:

http://stewartmccoy.com/portfolio/article/re-ux-professional-isnt-a-real-job
http://face-value.tumblr.com Max Steenbergen

I wrote a response to Mr. Carson statement over at my personal blog, for those interested.
“Face Value blog: Web Designer != UX Professional”
http://tumblr.com/xwrj449xt
M

Hi,

I’m a UX professional and kudos to the many true UX pros out there defending this.. I agree with Ryan Carson on some levels, esp UX profs who read a few books, create sub-par makeshift wireframes and claim they’re an UX designer/strategist/whatever UX title. Just recently, I spoke with an old college friend who was a software developer and he’s interviewing to be the sole UX person at a company.. dude has no experience and says “i only need wireframe experience, not interested in sitemap or flow diagrams..” really- he’s going to head up and build the UX for this company… so fellow UX-ers in addition to nay-sayers we’re also fighting against those that give user experience a bad name…

Ryan Carson, just a quick look through your site Carsonified, I already noted some HUGE creative/usability no-nos.. Missions page, you have white txt on bright red background.. really? huge huge readability issue. Then wait, jump to the next section, white on baby blue.. wow my eyes just did a double take with those wild colors. Click on Teams and you have while text on bright orange. Those are the color combos I’ll never let my web designers go live with. If that’s your take on UX and usability, I’m more assured that’ll be a greater need for people with my skills to clean up such a mess.

My eyes are still seeing spots, and I was only on there for 5 mins.
http://www.petemachine.co.uk Pete

UX isn’t a job title, or a fad, or something engineered to rip clients off. It’s a company wide process & design approach that every employee of any sized agency adopts. I’m Head of UX at a large agency in central London & I’m not there to twang on about philosophy or protocol or old-skool usability, I’m there to help all the different strands & disciplines contained within our walls work with the end-user in mind. A 2 man design / developer team should indeed be able & willing to UX their own project, you’re correct with the statement… But with the same token larger organizations require a bit more user-goal-management / strategy to keep the juggernaut on the tracks… Designers are UX people, developers are UX people, IAs are UX people, PMs are UX people, clients are UX people, Planners & Data Analysts are UX people, Business Development staff are UX people, the Senior Management are UX people, Art Directors & Copywriters are UX people… And so on and so on… It’s all about the consumer & you can call those of us that are professional practitioners of UX whatever you like, the job title is irrelevant, we’re just people strategists guiding & inspiring other staff members & clients to a common goal.
http://thomasnguy.org Joktu

Glad to have found your tweet. Much needed affirmation to what I always suspected. In my experience and dealings, most self-professed ‘UX’ experts have ZERO affinity for the ‘Gestalt’ of holistic design. More ‘damning’ is the fact that NONE of them have a compelling body of work to substantiate their title.

Conversely, some ‘designers’ I know are really more decorators than they are designers, giving no thought to the ergonomics of their product.

UX is an innate trait, a spiritual component of a ‘good’ designer. Giving someone a corporate title of ‘UX expert’ doesn’t qualify their expertise.
Kevin Howard

For many people involved in this discussion it seems that the terms “web designer” and “web developer” are interchangeable. To my mind they are different people and I would never hire the same person to do both.

Stewart – why should a developer be a UX pro? Isn’t that the designer’s job?
You wouldn’t expect a designer to know how to prevent sql injection.

If Ryan’s list of skills was development-centric, then under Advanced Knowledge surely it would include php, sql and java script? But it doesn’t, because that’s what a developer does.

The only area of overlap is the HTML and CSS, because some designers specify this as well, whereas others simply produce screen images and leave it to the developer to work out how to reproduce that in the browser(s). But the latter is likely to introduce inconsistencies between the design and the finished product.

If the designer also specifies the HTML and CSS then the developer should be able to produce the front end exactly how the designer has specified it. Personally I believe this is the best approach, then the developer can focus on code which is efficient and secure, and a database which is going to allow future changes to the site. Unfortunately whether the developer has done this is much harder for the client to determine than whether the user interface works well!
http://www.multiblah.com Kevin Cannon

Indeed, well said.
http://www.johngoode.com John Goode

we mock what we do not understand.

ux ≠ seo
ux ≠ design
Anthony Franco

Not sure why you limit UX design to just the web. User experience is the practice of designing good technological experiences, not just web sites, but for all software.

Because there are so many devices, technologies, and platforms today as compared to even five years ago, asking a designer to be an expert at the development level is unrealistic and frankly naive. Our field requires specialization and collaboration, not super humans that can design and build for all devices and platforms.

However, I would agree that too many people are using the term “User Experience” to describe web design. I was speaking at a digital agency summit last month and asked them to define user experience, nobody could – I then asked them how many of them we selling it, more than half of them were.
http://twitter.com/tehcuopznarf tehcuop f

i disagree with the statement you made. However most small to medium businesses would benefit from the swiss army knife developer. BUT the bigger the organization the more pronounced will be the effect of getting UX wrong or right. also according to Franco below UX is not only the web…but i think your statement was made in a web development context
Chrsbennett01

Mentioning “usability testing” in your article, I’d suggest you take a look at http://www.userfeel.com.
http://twitter.com/sylphdesign sylphdesign

I beg to differ on this message. even though your points on Advanced knowledge of the following are accurate

HTML (including HTML5)
CSS (including CSS3)
Responsive Design principles
Accessibility
Usability
User testing
A basic knowledge of …

Copy writing
JavaScript
Marketing
A/B and multivariate testing

I personally tried to be a web designer, but I didnt have time to actually go out and code or work these intergrations happen. I rather went on my way by creating an informational wireframe that was meaningful and and had design responsive principles. I architect the flow and process while also finding latest html5, javascript and css3 frameworks to make things work. After collecting the appropriate information, I go to the WEB DESIGNER who can put the information together. What this does is it allows projects to be delivered lot quicker, with clarity, and forward thinking vision of the next web.

In my opinion, the job of a UX designer is not to actually go out and create pages, but rather collecting what works and passing the deliverables to designers who can do it. This process continues to work wonders for us in all the projects we handle.
Kevin

If you’ve hired a “web designer” you might need a “UX pro” as well (if your “web designer” is crap).

But if you hire a “UX pro” you will definitely need a to hire a “web designer”. Unless of course the “UX pro” was a “web designer” the week before ;-)
http://twitter.com/kaniasty Eva Kaniasty

The key flaw of this statement is the confusion between ‘knowledge of’ and core capacities. It’s awesome for a developer to have UX knowledge, in the same way that it is great to have a UX pro who understands coding. That doesn’t make a developer a UX pro, or the UX pro a great developer. Of your list above, only user testing is actually a core competency of a user experience researcher or designer.

What’s happening in UX now is reminiscent of what happened in the early days of the web, where every Joe Schmoe started calling him or herself a web designer. It didn’t mean that web design wasn’t a skill – it meant that it was a highly sought after skill that hadn’t been clearly defined yet.

In the past ten years, I’ve done a decent amount of web design and development, and I have an understanding of both that serves me well in my current job. But my job is neither of those things, and if you hired me to do design, development, and UX, you will get a middling result. Why? Because as smart as I like to think of myself as being, I can’t keep my user research and interaction design skill sharp while keeping up with the latest HTML/CSS standards, while learning yet another programming language, while honing my visual design skills. And don’t forget marketing skills. Each discipline requires a different kind of talent and continual improvement that few, if any, individual contributors can manage.

I’m not arguing that all web projects are complex enough to require dedicated UX talent, but more and more of them do, because they require knowledge and practice of many disciplines, each of which requires singular dedication to master.

Lastly, for the record, let me make a list of some of the tasks/techniques that UX pros actually specialize in.

User Interviews
Contextual Research/Ethnography
Diary Studies
Surveys
Focus Groups
Requirements Gathering
Requirements Prioritization
Brainstorming Facilitation
Design Process Management
Information Architecture
Task Analysis
User Modeling (Personas, User Stories & Scenarios)
Storyboarding
Process Analysis
Interaction Design

-eva
sbaird

Interesting observation, but I’m afraid the article narrows the whole UX world to a subset of Web Designers.
The truth is that although UX was born there, it’s headed toward being a much bigger deal in the world of software development.

For lightweights trying to build an enjoyable Web site, you may be quite right. For major software companies that design things people use for 8 hours straight every day to do their job, it’s a huge deal and a field all its own that is desperately needed. (Ever heard of Windows? There’s a reason designers favor Macs– it’s called UX.)
Rob

Your post… It’s not even structured.
sbaird

Ergh! No personal offense intended, but these kinds of comments (UX=SEO) are the kind of things people say that crank out terrible e-commerce sites for a quick buck, then expect the web design world to bow down before your expertise. There is SO much more to all this!

Think of the difference between http://toysoldiers.com/ and http://apple.com. If you really think all the UX team at Apple did for that site was SEO, then… *bangs head against wall*
sbaird

I defended UX above as a separate field, but I had to laugh at this because it does ring true to some statements above.

I predict that this debate will rage on for some months because everyone is coming to UX from a different direction. For some companies/people/products it is the crucial saving grace that will set them apart from the silly here-today-gone-tomorrow competition, and for some it is a time waster that adds little value.

To be honest, I probably would not hire a UX Expert to work on a smallish website that just dispenses small amounts of info or e-commerce. For a large-scale project that people will be using constantly to perform mission-critical tasks, hiring that person could save you from ruin and boost you into the realm of Google, Apple, Facebook, and other giants built on delivering a great experience. These companies did not get where they are by having their web designer slap together his best shot at a plan for the product/site.
zoneding machine

What UX is ? I am not very claer about it.
Lisa Jutek

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http://twitter.com/jive Jonas Flint

The specialist debate is actually a very old one. a great article on this, and not just web related: http://www.brazencareerist.com/2009/07/26/specialization-is-for-insects

One of my favorite quotes by Robert A Heinlein:

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
Good Shovel

While I agree with certain points made in this post, I think you may have it backwards. You cannot be a Web Designer if you are not an experienced UX Professional. The designer-developer combo is nowhere near sufficient to produce a decent website, unless those individuals are also playing information architect (a body needs bones before it needs skin and makeup) and content strategist (no, not the same thing as copy writer). User experience is a holistic discipline, and while it needs designers, it needs many other players first.
Carla Saraiva

“All web designers should be UX pros” : Clearly, you’re facing a dilemma with generalization vs. specification. Yes, it would be nice to have someone (a web designer you say) who excelled at brainstorming, sketching, designing, UX, information architecture, developing… Yes, that would be nice. But, according to my experience and what I learn from my colleagues, it is very hard to know a lot about lots of things. You usually get just grasp of each one (which may be ok for small projects), and I honestly don’t believe that’s enough if you want a job well done. Also, UX/Usability/Interaction Design, etc. are huge (and growing!) fields which have plenty for a person to “chew on” and certainly justify a profession dedicated to it. Just my two cents.

PS: If You Have Nothing Nice to Say, Say Nothing At All!
Ewqewqwqe

You are truly an idiot.

Some people go to university specifically for Interaction Design or Human-Computer Interaction.

Maybe you’re talking about freelancers. Otherwise, you sir are an idiot.
http://www.nenewmedia.com/ NENewMedia

More should be done to measure the impact or effect of user experience to give the UX its due. For a small web/design firm like ours we emphasis that all our web designers are well versed in UX as well.
Jonny

I read through more than a few posts and what I did not come across was acknowledgement of the difference of knowing something and producing something.
I work as a UXD for larger international clients and agree it’s a bit of soft title (I came from a design background and did just read a few book). But today is my 5th month on one project, and we are not finished. I am 1 of 3, sometimes 4 other UXD on this one project producing documents that will be used to build a huge website. If I/we didn’t do this-by your statement- a designer would have to do. It is not reasonable.
The roles do overlap but I don’t know any excellent designers that are excellent developers.
Designers should know how to design an app, a site without the need of a UX, that does not negate the industry.
Uncle

How nice, provocative statement! There are lot of things, services and user interfaces that can be designed outside web pages. I’ve been doing ui&ux design on welding machines, armored personnel carriers, mobile games, sports computers and app stores. Web design is usually just simple and boring. At least on scale where you can design all by yourself.
Rob

Site like Carsonified take artistic license to break the rules of the medium – so i wouldnt get too upset about usability issues
Rob

It looks like Ryan looked at the world around him and based his opinions on observation – getting them pretty accurate. Sounds just like any UX person I know.

However the platonic form, dictinary definition of a UX person is quite different. Why?

Its like this. Doctors have to do paper work right? But in no definition of a Doctor will you see the word paperwork. So Ryan is wrong as we dont define things around us by what they share in common with other diciplines …. we define things by what they dont share in common – in general.
http://www.meratvforum.org T.v Serials

What I see as a problem is that because of the perpetual creation of titles, there’s sometimes confusion as to what a person actually does. I have had cases when folks in my line of work would stop and meditate on “User Interface Designer” as if it is some occult trade. It is simply exhausting.

One thing I get reminded of though is that back at Uni we’d learn different development processes and often the core of the next would be the same as the previous, but someone somewhere decided to re-invent the wheel and call it a “Round Turning Device”.
Justin

Ha ha ha! This made me laugh out loud.
http://www.tomgilbertscott.com/ Tom Gilbert Scott

“…you either have it or you don’t…” – this line of thinking is pedalled a lot in so called ‘creative’ circles. I think it comes from an insecurity about our work being harder to explain and justify than more obviously tangible roles.

It doesn’t take a genius to spot that children are innately creative (more about this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zDZFcDGpL4U). I believe the extent to which we continue to be creative in later life depends on whether we celebrate and nurture this aspect of ourselves.

Sure, some people have a natural aptitude for certain things but without lots of hard work that potential will never be realised. I think a more accurate way of viewing talent is something like this…

A little natural aptitude + lots of practice + lots of mistakes + giving a damn = a degree of ‘talent’

Bringing my line of thinking back to your point. I consider myself to be someone who can create a “well considered, balanced and crafted interface” but this ‘talent’ was 10 years in the making. I churned out a *lot* of crap to get here.

Topics

Learn with Treehouse

‘UX Professional’ isn’t a Real Job

By Ryan Carson @ryancarson

03 September 2010 | Category: Uncategorized

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Think Vitamin Radio
Episode #34: Amazon Fire and Responsive Roundtable

Advisory Board

Aarron Walter

Ethan Marcotte

Molly Holzschlag

Paul Boag

Jeff Veen

Ryan Carson

Topics

Learn with Treehouse

‘UX Professional’ isn’t a Real Job

By Ryan Carson @ryancarson

03 September 2010 | Category: Uncategorized

Other Posts You Might Find Interesting

Comments

Think Vitamin RadioEpisode #34: Amazon Fire and Responsive Roundtable

Advisory Board

Aarron Walter

Ethan Marcotte

Molly Holzschlag

Paul Boag

Jeff Veen

Ryan Carson

Think Vitamin Radio
Episode #34: Amazon Fire and Responsive Roundtable