UX: Sorting Through Roles

Nov 9, 2010

More often than not, the spectrum of job titles for those who design on the web gets so muddled and blurred that it’s hard to distinguish who does exactly what. More recently, others have debated the usefulness of having such a wide array of job titles for what seems to be such closely related roles. If there’s still debate and discussion relating to the differences in job roles within our very own industry, imagine what people on the outside feel like when trying to relate the differences. It can seem perplexing seeing the multifaceted roles that go on in the daily lives of web designers.

“This card sort is a way of creating insight into what UX professionals have in common and what the differentiators are, based on your daily professional activities instead of discussing what a label such as IA/UXD/ID etc. should contain. ”

George Miles

In comes UX Card Sort, a new study conducted trying to gather data on what roles are utilized according to ones title. If you ever wanted to impress friends (or alternatively, confuse the hell out of them) with what goes on with your job as a designer, I recommend showing them this.

UX Card Sort

 

For what it’s worth

Having a total of 53 total cards is a telling sign of the potential depth of work that goes on in this profession. Here are a few examples of what I selected for myself.

Core: Usability, Interaction, Graphic Design, Wireframes, Coding, Typography
Secondary: Variant Testing, HCI, Personas, User Journeys, Branding
Suitcase: Copy Writing, Illustration, Photography

In summary, I take a stance that my main role as a designer is creating interfaces for the user experience, but also with the knowledge to code and create my own designs into fully working html/css/js myself. I think it’s critical to know the technology that goes behind the design to get a full understanding of the web. I like to simply call myself an interactive designer. What about you?

Link: UX Card Sort →

1 comment

Miuku

Nice link. It’d be interesting to find out if the results will ever be published publicly, it doesn’t seem to state anywhere on that site if it will or not.