So, what role am I this week?

In the beginning...

In the last 200 years the built world has seen architecture grow from engineering, industrial design grow from architecture, and software design grow from computer hardware design.

Ideas from the creative world have grown with the advances in the built world; so it is in the software world. New companies have been created using totally new business models like desktop publishing, digital graphics, computer aided design and now whole movies are made with computer graphics imagery. These applications have grown to be quite complex and the barrier to entry for any later comers was daunting.

Enter the internet with a web interface providing first a hypertext linked access to military, technical and scientific information. It continually grows and morphs until complexity forces the creation of a range of specialist’s skills to help the web grow through its birthing pain-points.

This is the well-spring from which the UXD community has emerged.

Although it could be argued that industrial design, architecture and computer science all provided precursor skills to the UXD world, UXD is mainly the result of the marriage of Information Architecture (IA), and Human Factors Engineering (HFE), where the librarian component was dropped from AI and the mechanical engineering was dropped from HFE, since UX focussed on more than just indexing and information and didn't need to worry as much about the mechanical engineering and ergonomics of HFE since the interface was virtualised and planar.

UX has also sprouted more than a few siblings, like CX (Customer eXperience) and Service Design, both of which look at the larger user experience world outside just electronic interactions and the design of computer interfaces.

Service design looks beyond the human/computer interface and designs in real-world interactions as well

These user-focussed areas look at whole systems in the real world as well as the virtual and UXD practitioners can use lessons learnt in CX and Service Design to match on-line services with real-world touch-points.

There is also the allied practice of digital design which is the cross-over point between graphic design and interface design where traditional advertising meets online marketing.

The UXD space is growing with the advent of a wide number of specialisations, however it originally started with three main disciplines:

·     User Interface Designer

·     Information Architect

·     Human Computer Interaction Analyst

This is getting a bit complicated, and when I saw the Venn diagram (below) showing experience design and computer science, human factors, industrial design, architecture and computer design all having partial cross-over into the UXD space, I thought we finally have a model that can explain it all.

Each of these professions had before them a number of influences based on the pre-online world, however early computer interaction work in the 1980s/90s was mainly done by individuals who learnt on the job. They kept going until the jobs got too big for one person and so specialist roles emerged.

Made by the former German UX consultancy envis precisely, based on Dan Saffer's original work "The Disciplines of User Experience"

The diagram above attempted to bring a kind of infographic overview into just where things are in relationship to the way we manage design processes today.

It is complicated and still lacks references to customer experience design and service design, has Writing in a tiny little circle just nudging UXD (WTF!) and Marketing not even touching Communication design? Anyway, it is a start and I'm not the one to go down that rabbit hole to fix it since I have a strange feeling it can only be achieved in 3D!

Back to UX-centric roles

Since 2000 the following roles have been added on the creative side…

·     User Centred Design Researcher/Planner

·     Visual Designer/Digital Designer

·     Interaction Designer

·     UX Architect

·     Motion Designer

·     User Experience Designer

·     Data Visualiser

·     Test Content Writer

…and the following roles on the development side:

·     Front-end Developer

·     Design Technician

·     Prototyper

·     Videographer

·     Data Wrangler

…along with the following production roles:

·     Digital Producer

·     Content Editor/Wrangler

·     Content Writer

…plus the following client-side roles now have a link:

·     Product Manager

·     Customer Satisfaction Analyst

·     Change Manager

·     Marketing Manager

·     Marketing Analyst

…and so the UX Unicorn* is now dead.

Traditionally the practitioners in UXD came from the design community, however science has been added to a broader UX industry today of the following roles:

·     Cognitive Psychologist

·     Ethnographer

·     Anthropologist

·     Neuro-anthropologist

·     Ergonomist

Although these roles are beyond the “design” part of UX they do show that there is now a healthy and growing ecosystem building around the UX industry.

It is only getting bigger. I can say I've actually had to do most of the work described above in my working life, and much of it with a fair bit of cram learning via Google or its precursors, Alta Vista and O'Reilly technical books.

Now my problem is when talking to clients who are totally confused over where I sit in their scheme of things, How do I explain where I am located in this great mass of allied user experience roles today? 

I think I'll have to get back to you on that one once I read up on proto-ethological anthropology and immersive 3D data modelling! ;-)

* “UX Unicorn” is a name for somebody who can do all of the above rolls. It is a bit of a joke in the industry because UX Unicorns are now a myth and no longer exist, however clients keep wanting to hire one all-rounder rather than a team. There really aren’t any all-rounders left who can grasp and action successfully all of the tasks that go into online software development and production these days. And if there are, they command top dollar.