Navigating the jargon filled landscape — U* Designer. Wtf do they mean?

As designers, it is our duty to make things clearer. That's literally our job. Somewhere along the lines that went for a toss. And I don't blame anyone, it's a competitive market, we had to do something to make us stand out. I was once an "Empathy Designer" myself, *cringe*.

I get it, it stemmed from a necessity, and we already had the knack of making anything sound exotic.

Insider secret time: cold hard logic driven design decisions are often hard to sell as opposed to ununderstandable jargon, occupational hazard.

Interface designer, Empathy designer, ui designer, ux designer, ui/ux designer, ux/ui designer, cx designer, ux unicorn (phew, any unicorn is a red flag. It's a mythical creature for a reason) they are all the same-ish.

Let me simplify the vocabulary for you, especially HR people.

Ui designers: people who decide how your product looks

Ux designers: people who decide how your product functions

Why do you need both (separately) because it's hard to find someone who's really, and I mean really good at both. Ux designers thrive on a lot of analytical thinking, intensive research methodology and always stay up to date with industry standards and the latest interfaces. While ui designers need to have really good creativity, constantly experiment with the latest design trends, a capacity to break rules as and when necessary, while knowing how to deal with the consequences, revisit old designs and try to make them better (sort of design refactoring if you will. Oops there I go inventing jargon again)

And an overall resilience to settling for average.

Clearly, these job roles branch widely enough to justify different roles for either of them to do a good job. As a company, your success depends on these people because they decide what your user actually sees at the end of the day. No end user cares about beautiful architecture and prettified back end code. (I do, but I'm not most users) the monkey brain in us wants pretty things to look at and fun things to happen when we click stuff.

For any designers reading this, if you feel called out, I am genuinely sorry. I'm here to point out a problem, here's how we can fix this: stick to one thing, add your specialization after. Ui designer with a penchant for empathy makes a lot more sense than empathy designer. UX designer +microcopy specialist. So. Much. Easier. Or if you are a generalist, just call yourself a designer, like me. If you don't think this is a problem, just search for a job in your role on LinkedIn. Beginners are loosing out on design gigs because they labelled themselves something else without truly understanding it. People are losing out on opportunities by just overpromising and underdelivering because that's become somewhat of a standard quo as of now, and hr people are so confused with all the words that they have trouble shortlisting and losing out on really good creative professionals just because of miscommunication. This eventually will affect you too, if it hasn't already.

On a professional side note, who makes a better designer? Someone with ux background, marketing background, or graphic design background? Let me know in the comments below or tweet @ubercoolchicken

If you are triggered by this article, also leave a comment below telling me why. It'll help with the algorithm :)