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The Unnecessary Fragmentation of Design Jobs(m.signalvnoise.com)

over 6 years ago from Kyle Case, Product Designer

  • Marc EdwardsMarc Edwards, over 6 years ago

    I tell people outside the industry I’m a designer, or software designer. If they ask for more information, I can tell them the kinds of things I work on.

    For people inside the industry, I just say I’m a designer. I don't want to limit myself. If I need to do some motion design, I’ll install After Effects and give it a shot. I don’t want feel boxed in by a title or lower my expectations. Even calling myself a designer seems restrictive — I like using Xcode and am happy to make simple code changes.

    I see the titles we (as an industry) have given ourselves as confusing, reductive, and constraining. If a someone wants to know if you’re good at wire-framing workflows and user testing, they should ask. I don’t think sticking “UX” in your title tells them much more than just saying you’re a designer.

    3 points
    • barry saundersbarry saunders, over 6 years ago

      I think differentiation between UX (research, strategy, ideation, prototyping) and design (art direction, comps) is helpful when job hunting / recruiting, if only to denote which skills you have/don't have. But I just call myself a designer personally.

      0 points
      • Marc EdwardsMarc Edwards, over 6 years ago

        Yep, I definitely understand there’s some benefits to labelling things, especially when hiring or searching for a job. I’m not sure the current labels are the best representation of that — they’re confusing.

        I do have a significant bias though: I like being involved in the entire process and I would struggle to let someone else be the ideas person and for me to just be the implementer, or vice versa. I don’t like the titles, because that’s not how I like to work.

        0 points
        • barry saundersbarry saunders, over 6 years ago

          That's fair, for me I do research and ideation but not implementation. For better or worse there's a perception that the startup model of designer is the default, and so I get offered a lot of jobs that expect art direction / comps / front end, and little to no research, strategy, user testing, prototyping.

          0 points