UX/UI unicorns, much like actual unicorns, are, at best, knackers yard horses with a chair leg poorly stapled to their foreheads and you will get what you deserve if you buy one - a make believe animal that walks around shitting rainbows. Worse, they seriously undermine the extensive and poorly understood capabilities and benefits of modern UX at a time when UX is starting to make a real difference to companies' revenues, savings and reputation. When this pretence inevitably leads to disillusionment of UX within these many companies it will permanently damage the UX discipline. As a small caveat, I know there are legitimate UXers out there who apply for and get UX/UI roles simply because they're tired of fighting the ignorance and just take the job and damn the title, but I doubt many of them actually get to carry out modern UX in such a role.
Everyone wants to be UX. Agile, Design Thinking, Lean, they all claim to be as UX as UX, but UX/UI is where I will focus this post. UX/UI has been bothering me for a long time, but a recent slew of UX/UI roles that require high end UI design, and InVision recently tipping me over the edge, has prompted me to write this.
InVision is a "design prototyping" tool used to "Upload your design files and add animations, gestures, and transitions to transform your static screens into clickable, interactive prototypes".
InVision, not content with putting UI design before UX (cart before horse), now want us to believe that we should "Make the leap from UX to UX/UI" like that's an aspiration or an improvement...or viable.
Of course what they actually mean is "Make the leap from being great at one thing to being half-arsed at two things, or, make the leap from being great at one thing to pretending to be great at two...and make us lots of money buying our product at the same time". This is not just a UX issue. It also dilutes the creativity of pure UI designers by introducing UXers who try to create great UI design. Trust me, we can't. I have spoken with UI designers quite a lot recently who complain that they can't get good UI roles that don't ask for UX/UI.
Though it seems to be fashionable to be UX at the moment, that will pass and it stands to hurt both UI and UX if this unicorn shit is not stamped out right now (not literally obviously. No one needs unicorn shit on their shoes).
InVision are not the only party guilty of this deliberate (or lazy) profiteering on the back of UX. Other company's 'ux' tools also take a design first approach to UX. The idea of taking your UI designs and then making them into clickable prototypes is a nonsense. None of the research and testing designed to get you to a point where a prototype is created and tested should be UI designed until after it tests well functionally, otherwise you introduce bias, distraction and solutionising.
To design anything properly, you must first understand the problem. What is the goal? What does success look like? Jumping into a drawing without identifying how success will be measured is art, not design.
There are easily 5 articles a day talking about the 'differences' between UI and UX or 'How to tell the difference between UI and UX designers'. There is so much vacuous nonsense written that it's actually effecting the validity and purpose of UX in the marketplace. Companies and recruiters are starting to believe that the UX/UI unicorn is real.
There is no such thing as a UX/UI designer or unicorn! Well perhaps there is, but they have little to do with modern UX or little to do with real UI.
The Problem
Most employers and recruiters do not differentiate between the terms design and art, which is one of the reasons I've always had this nagging issue with the label UX 'designer' for what I do. I guess its because as a UX architect/consultant I am acutely aware that 'designer' has strongly expected behavioural overtones associated with it, lending itself to a lack of clarity for our potential employers. It's hard enough to distinguish UI design from UX design as a title for many employers, so don't deliberately mash them together. It's a lazy, opportunist response to a lack of understanding of the purpose, process and benefits of UX and it just sets UX back.
We have enough problems with numerous inconsistent UX titles and skill-sets confusing us, the client and the recruiter, without muddying the waters further by referring to people as 'UX/UI designers' regardless of whether they carry out the research and architecture or creative design. I feel like we should use the word 'designer' less liberally and start using it more deliberately and not use 'UI' at all in the UX world.
I hear "UX/UI Designer" used time and time again to refer to what I do. There are so many issues caused by this I barely know where to begin, but let's return to the fact that the this leads to some very specific expectations of behaviour, skills and deliverables. It does not intuitively articulate the skill set associated with UX. Worse, it leaves out much of the valuable skills and deliverables that are not associated with the title UI Designer and are critical capabilities of UX.
Nomenclature makes a difference in setting the expectation of stakeholders
Recently an account manager begrudgingly 'permitted' me to be involved in the early stages of a project discovery (exactly where UX belongs). I challenged his resistance and he said :
"Well, we're starting at the wrong end !"
When I asked him to explain he said that UX and UI belonged at the end of a project, when the product was nearly done, so to start with UX (in his mind, inseparable from UI) was starting with a discipline he believed belonged at the end of the project. This is another great example of why UX and UI are not at all related. UX must be involved at the earliest stages of the project and all the way through. It's not a tick box.
UX Design
Those who know me will tell you that I have zero tolerance for UI designers who call themselves UX designers just because they can use design tools to create mockups they like to call prototypes and wire frames. I'd be just as intolerant of any UX designer/architect who claimed that they were UI design experts because they produce hi-fidelity prototypes. It's critical to be able to deliver the full UX service. Without that, UX is pointless. Literally! And as an employer you'll end up wondering why you bothered with UX at all.
UX Skills Overview
Research - stakeholder interviews, usability testing, ethnographic research, behavioural analytics, customer feedback data, user interviews, interview moderation, interview scripting, CX and business RoI data, competitor analysis, etc
Architecture - design functional layouts, wireframes, prototypes, behavioural matricies, use cases, user journeys, information architecture, usability scripting and testing, user stories etc
Additional - working knowledge of systems architecture, security, coding, APIs, networking, databases, CRM, Marketing technology, etc is very important as the UX solution will define the business processes, system architecture and software required to implement it - UX effects everything because everything is UX.
This is a brief list, there's a lot more, but you'll notice there is no mention of Photoshop, Illustrator or Brand guidelines. That's because they are not UX tools and we only care about your brand if it conflicts with the user's best experience (Ask me about Red & Green if you ever meet me). Beyond the optimal functional experience we don't really care all that much about the UI design aesthetic. We will take it into consideration, but there are UI design experts there and we will collaborate with them, as we do with every other discipline, to allow them to bring the aesthetic to life after we have the core architecture and function right for your users. Their UI expertise will be used, not ours.
UI Design
If this post comes across as negative toward UI designers then I want to take a moment to make it clear. I am in awe of those amazing people who can create wonder in peoples eyes and hearts through visual imagery alone. The ability and imagination required to produce this kind of visual and emotional heroin, when it's done well, is genuinely indistinguishable from magic. I love great UI.
UI is the face, the image, the beauty, the desirability. It makes customers' and users' hearts pound, it catches their eye, it makes them fall in love and it makes them aspire to be part of what a business has created. It is the tip of the iceberg that they can see and I would go as far as to say that a solution built without great UI runs the risk of going totally unnoticed, no matter how good the UX is. Great UI Design is hugely important and I really don't believe that any successful product can be launched without it. In fact, it is so important that that it is another reason that you cannot hope to do the UX and the UI in a single role. The skills, tools and demands are too great for both. One is inevitably compromised in favour of the other if you have one person doing both.
Great UI is inherently visible.
Great UX is inherently invisible.
If We Were Building A House
If we were building a house, UX would research the land, the materials, speak with the client to discover what they wanted from their new house. UX would speak with the service providers and builders, articulate what must be built, why it must be built, how it must be built, ensure that standards are implemented and best practices followed. They would architect the building, its function and the optimal interaction with it and produce wireframes to impart all these requirements for everyone to follow and be on the same page. Everything would be in the most usable place, it would be warm, safe and dry. UX makes your life better.
UI would deal with the aesthetic. They would make it visually and emotionally represent what the business wants the customer to feel and act on. The interior design, the furnishings, the colours, they give the house character and ambiance. They will make the owners feel happy in the house, comfortable in the bedroom or want to spend all their time in the garden. They will give it curb appeal and make the owners fall in love with it. UI steals your heart.
The Unicorn Dissolution
This leads me back to the UX/UI Unicorn problem. Some employers expect that a UX designer should be able to carry out the visual design aesthetic and the UX research & architecture to equally high levels. Or they're just tired of trying to work out what the hell UX does because they do not understand the differences well enough yet. In any case, you can't have it both ways. You could do UI design or UX architecture really well and hack your way through the other (depending on where your skill set really lies - UI or UX), but on projects that are more significant than an email campaign or a banner, that's just not going to cut it any more.
The UI and UX disciplines are far too extensive and mature now. Specific models, methods, skills and tools are required for each and they are no more mutually inclusive than UI design and UI development models, methods, tools and skills are.
Only one of these things is not like the other, one of these things is real
UX/UI unicorns are a myth and I have yet to meet someone who even has the time to do both well on a project, let alone the skill sets.
Take Aways
What to do about UX/UI unicorns
We (UXers) do 'design', in the same way that a structural architect designs a building. But it's not art. That's not to say that we do not have a strong creative thread through our DNA, it's just that it's not the kind of wild, unhinged, creative flare that UI creatives have. It's a measured, contextual creativity. Part science, part imagination and part data/insight. Even then, this is only a small part of what we do, so we must stand up and put a bullet in it every time the unicorn raises its pretty little head.
Employers, who are already confused enough about what we do and what they need, repeatedly expect a role with UI in it to come from a creative design background and be able to produce high fidelity visual designs using tools like Photoshop and Illustrator. A huge number of UXers do not have the creative background or skills required to carry out this kind of UI design at all. Companies are failing to hire these outstanding UXers because they don't have photoshop on their CV. They do however, have the skills to do stakeholder interviews, user research, customer surveys, competitor analysis, interaction design, wireframes, prototypes, card sorting, gap analysis, analytics review, user journeys, use cases, solution modelling, ecosystem modelling, systems architecture, ethnography, taxonomy, information architecture, API requirements, coding, psychology, usability testing and so much more.
It does nothing to clarify or promote UX to potential employers and future advocates if we perpetuate this broken taxonomy and indistinct labelling system and let companies like InVision suggest that UX/UI is somehow a 'leap' in the right direction, or even viable.
UX or UI - Choose
You are competently one or the other. You are a brilliant UX architect or you are a brilliant UI designer. Choose and be damned. Tell recruiters, tell employers, tell anyone who will listen that there are no unicorns and there never were. Tell them how amazing UX or UI is, why each is unique and special and what to expect of them.
If you peddle yourself as a unicorn you will get little satisfaction from your workload, employer expectations, salary/rate or compromised results and you will negatively impact both disciplines
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