UX professional not BS professional
Monday morning arrived like clockwork after a week ‘offlining’ around some of the more remote parts of Wales. Sat at my desk with a fresh cup of tea buoyed up, yet slightly unnerved by the lack of drama within my inbox, I began to skim through 10 days of tweets, blog posts and comments.
I naturally expected to see lots of buzz around the dConstruct conference, run annually on the first Friday of September. I had booked myself a space but the opportunity for a last minute holiday was too tempting to miss so I begrudgingly passed my ticket on. Looking through my feeds it seemed that the overwhelming topic of conversation was focused not on dConstruct itself, but a comment made during the conference by a high profile attendee discrediting the term ‘UX Professional’.
The initial tweet was soon accompanied by a blog post justifying the statement. High profile rebuttals started to appear first from Andy Budd of Clearleft, and then from Mark Boulton, Cennydd Bowles, Scott Berkun, Jason Buck and even our own Michael Wilson.
Identity crisis
Each response approached the subject from a different angle, and with varying levels of fervour. For me, however, it wasn’t so much the dismissal of the job title that rankled, after-all it matters little whether I call myself a UX Professional, Designer, Consultant, Architect or Engineer as long as the role is defined, meaningful and adds value. And besides I don’t believe Carson meant to attack the naming of the role, more the validity of the role itself. What I took issue with was the belief that to include UX specialists within a project was a way for agencies to “over-charge naive clients”.
“An easy way to spot people with identity issues, or professions that feel marginalized and vulnerable, is how much drama they make about what they call themselves and what other groups of people call them. More telling perhaps is how much in-fighting and factionalism there is among groups with largely the same ambitions, rhetoric, and in some cases, members.”
Scott Berkun
For me this is not only a clear sign of naivety but highly offensive. I agree that the need to create a positive experience means designers and developers have to have a good understanding of UX principles and I also accept that when working on small or basic websites it often isn’t necessary to have more than one or two people involved. But to label any team that, due to the complexities of a project, call on specialists to be involved as con-men is just plain wrong.
Collaboration
At Redweb we work as a team. More than that we work as a collaborative team of specialists. Specialising allows each member of the team to concentrate on the areas that they are most passionate about. They each bring an alternative perspective and dynamism that enriches the work we do. Effectively each specialist adds more value.
“We employ specialists because it allows them to do just that, specialise. All our UI designers have the ability to design and code websites, but we ask them to focus the majority of their efforts on designing interfaces because there isn’t enough time in the world to be amazing at everything within the web design industry.”
Michael Wilson, UI Designer
When we conduct user testing to ensure a site meets the needs of the people, it’s intended that specialist user experience consultants carry out the work. They are trained in such things as Human Computer Interation (HCI) and the principles of cognitive psychology and understand the most effective ways in which to gain valuable insight. But importantly they don’t work alone. Members of their team, whether designer, developer, content strategist or project manager, are encouraged to participate in the activities, observing first-hand the issues that are raised.
Most importantly everyone is openly encouraged to share their knowledge and help educate the people around them, ensuring that key principles are fully understood and carried across from one project to the next. But as Mark Boulton says “understanding the principles of something can in no way replace an experienced professional”.
Popular topic
I’ve only touched on one the subjects raised by this debate as I think a lot of more interesting people have done a far better job of it already. If you have the time it’s well worth reading some of the responses to Ryan Carsons original post.
Why I think Ryan Carson doesn’t believe in UX Professional and why I do by Andy Budd
On Defining UX by Mark Boulton
The Pollution of UX by Cennydd Bowles
‘UX professional’ isn’t a real job? by Scott Berkun
Why I think UX Professional is a valid job title by Michael Wilson
Any fool can wireframe… by Jason Buck
6 replies to “UX professional not BS professional”
A good article Paul – which has prompted me to add my five eggs.
I too have read Ryan’s blog and many of the responses. I get the feeling that Ryan’s initial tweet was a throw away comment which was at best a poorly timed generalisation. Ryan’s big mistake was to dig his heels in and try and further substantiate his remark, it is here that his argument really breaks down.
It is fair to say that the title “UX Professional” is relatively new but that does not make it a valid one.
I have been building commercial websites since the mid nineties when a “Web Designer” was your title and that was that. Since then, the range of different technical skills required to build a website have increased dramatically and the size complexity of web developments have grown much bigger (many of which I suspect are of a larger size than Ryan may have experience of) and which for practical purposes now involves a team who have specific skills.
I wonder if Ryan also object to other titles such as; front end developers, back end developers, copywriters, Search Engine Optimisers and Project Managers, probably not, but they are all titles that indicate an area of expertise.
Ryan’s view is that anyone wearing the UX Professional badge as surplus to requirements and a “waste of time and money”. But it would be impractical to keep increasing the workload of designers and developers by getting them to take on additonal duties. Is a Project Manager a waste of time and money too?
Ryan’s main argument it seems, is that good designers and developers should understand the area of user experience and for that reason you do not need the additional role. I fully agree that designers and developers should consider UX and in my experience most do, but only to a point and beyond this point, it is not their fault.
What Ryan is missing is that even the best designer or developer won’t understand the many different variables that affect each client and their specific target audience without time spent resarching this area. Overlooking this research could be a costly mistake and that is why attention to UX and then applying those findings can pay dividends.
I also get the feeling that Ryan views UX Professionals as lacking skills in design and development, but in my experience anyone wearing the UX hat has already built up a skillset in design and development before taking on the of UX and many instances will still be active in aspects of design and development. If Ryan’s implications are that it is just another way of gaining a job title for those that lack other skills he is mistaken.
Naturally on projects with smaller budgets, economy of scale would be applied with the likelihood that the role of UX Professional would not be possible and in this case the role probably would be filled by the designer and developer alone. But because small projects cannot afford a UX specialist, it does not follow that one should not be used where projects with larger budgets (and higher expectations) would gain advantage.
I absolutely hold the view that everyone in a team from the project manager down should have a knowledge of the other roles and an overlap of skills is essential, but Ryan’s throwaway remark and subsequent attempt to justify it, pillar boxes his own experience and does not take into account the efficiency that is gained from combining a team who can concentrate their time on their own specialism. I also suspect that Ryan has not witnessed the benefits that time spent resarching UX can add to the overall success of a project
Thanks for your comment Garry it’s really appreciated. I completely agree.
I’m sure it was just a cynical and poorly thought through piece of linkbaiting but as you say effectively disregards the notion of specialists (let alone UX specialists) within web design altogether.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I’m sure, due to the scale of projects Carsonified work on, specialists aren’t necessary and thats fine. What I take umbrage with is labelling any organisation that works on projects that do require specialists charlatans.
Thanks again for your considered input.
I agree entirely with your comments Paul.
Being able to call on specialists is one of the key benefits of working in a larger agency.
Its not just about having accurate expert knowledge at hand when needed. It’s also about passing some of this on to the teams they’re working with, infecting them with passion for their subject and challenging their own approaches
I wonder if some of this negative thinking stems from something nasty that, in freelance gigs, I’ve noticed creeping in:
Agencies hire me as a UXD, charge me out to clients at double my daily rate quoting the gospel
of and expect, or at least *sell*, miracles of faultless UX / UCD. When asked for briefs, contact with the client – even answers to questions like “So what’s the site supposed to do?”
I’ve been rebuffed and told to ‘just, you know … do your stuff, you’re the expert’.
I suspect the peddling of gold-plated wireframe monkeys as UXDs at 100% markup is becoming increasingly common. I also think there are people producing very attractive wireframes, but without a robust understanding of what they’re doing and leaving the building before the product’s launched – kerching!
very nice article
Paul, I missed this excellent response. Knew you’d fly the flag!
Rarely can designers *can code well*. If they can they are likely to be limited in their design capability. Compromised even.
The world has not seen many Leonardo da Vinci’s…