#UXcampLondon session: What do you do? Explaining our jobs to ourselves and others – David and Martina

That session is one of those that can only happen in a bar camp: it was pretty much improvised, consisted mainly of a group discussion. I found it however very interesting especially since a couple of participants were less deep in UX than the rest of us, and provided a somewhat external outlook, very much appreciated given the topic.

In the field of UX, you pretty much have as many job titles as you have individuals (each of these post it is one!), and it is very difficult, even for us, to clearly see what each of these mean.

Disclaimer: This is based on my poor recollection of the session, and may not be an accurate or comprehensive description of the presenters ideas. I also use those to share my own idea on the topic.

“UX Consultant” VS “UX Designer”

An interesting debate was the difference between “UX Consultant” and “UX Designer”. “Consultant” has a very wide meaning, which is not very helpful.
“Designer” present another issue, which came up because a couple of participants were less deep in UX than the rest of us, and provided a somewhat external outlook: many people do not fully realise what design means, or at least how we understand it (as “conceive”, or “define”). For most people, design means drawing.

Indeed, my Mac’s New Oxford dictionary says: “to design, verb [trans.] decide upon the look and functioning of (a building, garment, or other object), typically by making a detailed drawing of it”

So the choice is between one word that is so wide it doesn’t mean much, or something more accurate that will be misinterpreted by many (most?) non-ux people. Not a nice choice.

With a maturing field comes specialisation

The way I see it, the UX field is still maturing, and with maturation comes specialisation.

Ten years ago, the one and only job title regarding websites was “webmaster”. One title to handle everything. Over time, it became clear than a website required many different skills, and new titles were created: we now have very distinct roles as content writer, graphic designer, and web developer.

I see the same thing happening now with UX. Quite often we all do a bit of Information Architecture, a bit of Interface Design, a bit of User Research (etc…). In time, as the field mature, the teams will grow, and each of these task will be handled by a specialist.

“How do UX differs from marketing?”

A question along this line was also challenging.
This is another thing about which UX people tend to feel strongly about, yet often struggle to express why.

To caricature, marketing is often seen a lowly task about selling things in a very materialistic way, while UX is here to help users and make the world a better place, one web form at a time.

But of course, the difference is no so clear cut.

Both marketing and UX try to understand the individual better.
Both want to identify what the individual actually wants.
Both use similar tools: interview, focus groups, surveys.
Both can involve understanding and crafting emotional responses.

Marketing is primarily concerned about selling a product, so mainly before the sale. UX worries about how the individual uses a product, after the sale.

You could say that UX is about real needs, that are often unexpressed by the individual. But marketing would also says similar thing. We like to think the needs identified by UX are real and useful, while the needs that comes out of marketing tend to be artificially created (branding, product endorsement by celebrities etc).

But let’s not fool ourselves: while we take pride in helping the user, wich we really do, the reason we get paid to do UX is to generate more money, whether by having a better software that more people will buy/upgrade or a better conversion rate on a website.

How to answer “what do you do?”

This is not easy, especially when the person asking has only vague idea of what websites or software are.

One answer I gave was “I work to understand what people need so I can make their tools easier and more enjoyable to use”. This usually leads to an awkward stare (the unexpressed “this sounds wanky” that was mentioned durring the session). Sometime people are really interested and ask “what tools?”. To which I reply “could be software, website, planes, nuclear plants”. It’s not really convincing however.

I was reminded I once came up with a better way of explaining UX, exploiting the person’s own experience. I would ask “Have you ever struggled while trying to do something with your computer ? Or had to ask for help to program your VCR?”. Of course they always answer something along: “Hell yeah!”. Then I say “Well my job is to understand people and work on those those products to make sure this does not happend anymore”.

This may give them narrow and vague idea of what we do, but at least the are likely to see our profession as valuable, and well, less wanky.