4 ms·

You seem to think there’s a legitimate difference that isn’t entirely contrived.

tpoacher 3y ago
I don't think playing "my definition vs your definition" is a fruitful discussion in general, but the answer is, it depends. If you're in the camp who treats UX as a professional title/career, then in principle it has very little to do with UI, and being labelled "UX/UI" is often an "insult" to UX professionals along the same lines as "Computer Scientist / IT support", or "Electrical Engineer/Electrician", "Civil Engineer/Sanitation Engineer", "Pharmacist/Teller at Boots", "Doctor/Medical receptionist". (not to imply that the latter professions are 'lesser', but rather to point out that the former professions in the pairs are typically deemed to require a higher standard of skills/training rather than simply vocational/apprentice-based training). At the same time, I'm not naive to not understand the fact that, if a large number of people start referring to X as Y, then after a while, insisting that X isn't Y is a lost cause, and you might as well start calling it Z instead. But, e.g. my wife was a senior UX professional who is now doing her PhD in Experimental Psychology; the original motivation was that this would make her a better UX researcher when conducting controlled experimental studies on behalf of her employer. She specialises in voice assistive tech, and her topic relates to isolating auditory markers of voice trustworthiness. I can tell you if she applied for a UX job and the interviewers started asking her what css colours she prefers on buttons, she'd be pretty pissed.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  It might be helpful if you explained the difference between UX and UI design here. I'm legitimately fuzzy on what the difference actually is.
  - ps901 3y ago
    It might be helpful to view this from a scientific research perspective. UX research is more about how things should be done to provide a better usability for the user. Like, general respectively abstract concepts (e.g., how should a chatbot present itself when it first "talks" to the user, which UI components could be involved). It's not about how to actually design those things, i.e., applying CSS to an HTML document if you will. UI design is mostly a dev job, while UX design is more of an actual research discipline.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      Thanks! With that understanding, it seems to me that many, if not most, of the criticisms being levelled here do, in fact, apply to the field of UX research. But certainly not all of them.

I don't think playing "my definition vs your definition" is a fruitful discussion in general, but the answer is, it depends. If you're in the camp who treats UX as a professional title/career, then in principle it has very little to do with UI, and being labelled "UX/UI" is often an "insult" to UX professionals along the same lines as "Computer Scientist / IT support", or "Electrical Engineer/Electrician", "Civil Engineer/Sanitation Engineer", "Pharmacist/Teller at Boots", "Doctor/Medical receptionist". (not to imply that the latter professions are 'lesser', but rather to point out that the former professions in the pairs are typically deemed to require a higher standard of skills/training rather than simply vocational/apprentice-based training). At the same time, I'm not naive to not understand the fact that, if a large number of people start referring to X as Y, then after a while, insisting that X isn't Y is a lost cause, and you might as well start calling it Z instead. But, e.g. my wife was a senior UX professional who is now doing her PhD in Experimental Psychology; the original motivation was that this would make her a better UX researcher when conducting controlled experimental studies on behalf of her employer. She specialises in voice assistive tech, and her topic relates to isolating auditory markers of voice trustworthiness. I can tell you if she applied for a UX job and the interviewers started asking her what css colours she prefers on buttons, she'd be pretty pissed.

JohnFen 3y ago
It might be helpful if you explained the difference between UX and UI design here. I'm legitimately fuzzy on what the difference actually is.
- ps901 3y ago
  It might be helpful to view this from a scientific research perspective. UX research is more about how things should be done to provide a better usability for the user. Like, general respectively abstract concepts (e.g., how should a chatbot present itself when it first "talks" to the user, which UI components could be involved). It's not about how to actually design those things, i.e., applying CSS to an HTML document if you will. UI design is mostly a dev job, while UX design is more of an actual research discipline.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Thanks! With that understanding, it seems to me that many, if not most, of the criticisms being levelled here do, in fact, apply to the field of UX research. But certainly not all of them.