Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Brian Meschke Image by Arch Reactor

Lately there is a lot of discussion that touches on designers and their job titles. Some think there are too many or they are meaningless because everyone is a designer. Many people are confused by the differences or assert there are none. Whatever your opinion, it’s pretty clear that hiring managers, recruiters, and designers themselves are going to continue to use a variety of titles.

I’m not going to throw my hat in the ring on the array of titles and how necessary or not this fragmentation is. Instead, I’m going to approach this from a different perspective: my thesis on the best practice for organizing different types of digital design and their respective titles.

I believe the best title for a design position is reflective of the scope at which they work most often.

That’s it. A simple matter of how far zoomed in they are to do their work. Let me explain further.

Let’s say you are a recruiter for a medium-sized tech company. (Disclaimer: I’ve never been a recruiter. What follows is assumed to be definitely NOT this way this works.) The creative director comes to you and says we need to hire a new designer. She gives you a list of requirements and responsibilities. You do a quick search to see what other companies are looking for and how they describe similar positions. You are overwhelmed with the variety of titles and descriptions. Jonas Downey conveys it well:

Bleh. What’s the difference between UX and UX/UI and UI? Isn’t Product also UX/UI? Isn’t a Front End a UI? What’s a Graphic Designer with UX & UI Focus? And isn’t all of this Visual/Digital design?

It seems that many people view these titles as a hierarchy. You start as a lowly visual designer. You #gitgud and now you are a UI designer. You work hard and improve your skills and now you have the privilege of calling yourself a UX designer. Someday, if you achieve greatness, you may be rewarded with land and knighted a digital product designer. So because you, the recruiter, want someone really good but don’t have the budget for a rockstar, you post your job looking for a UX Designer.

No. That’s dumb. Instead look at the scope of the responsibilities. What do I mean by scope? I mean how far zoomed in on the product is the work.

Let’s start with all the way zoomed in. Macro lens.

A Leaf

Visual Design is the styling and aesthetics of an interface. You concern yourself with pixel perfection. You don’t worry about how the user gets from one page to another, or whether the features you have are the best possible version. You focus on the visuals, the branding. You make things look good.

Zoom out a bit and you get:

A Tree

As a UI Designer most of your time is still spent working visually. You are mocking up interfaces, building prototypes, and creating animations. Your work is focused around the presentation of the product. It is the responsibility of the UI designer to transform the product’s research and content into an attractive and responsive layout for users. While styling and branding falls under visual design, translating the brand into a product is mostly UI design.

Expand the scope of your responsibilities a bit further and you have:

A Forest

UX Design moves past the visual aspects of a product. You now have to think about the experience as a whole. It’s not just the pieces themselves, but how they all fit together. You oversee the information architecture for the whole project. You create user flows of various tasks. You talk to customers and review your analytics looking for clues that lead to pain points and features that could be improved. It’s your responsibility to turn the goals and features of a product into a positive experience.

Zoom out one last time and you end up with:

A Mountain

A Product Designer expands the scope of their concern beyond your product. You help set the goals for the product. You determine the product strategy and prioritize features to achieve it. You examine your product’s market and help find your place in it. You find your competitive advantages and how best to capitalize on them.

Closing

I want to be clear that I am not saying that you should only do one of the above. I’m not saying that a UI designer shouldn’t think about how his interface affects the user experience. I’m not advocating for UX designers to never consider their product’s place in the market.

I am saying that thinking about the general scope of work for a position is a good tool for finding the appropriate title and person for the job. For designers, thinking about the scope at which you do your best work or find the most fulfillment is a good tool for finding the right position.

The right person for the right job makes everyone happy.

Designer Titles As a Matter of Scope was originally published in Prototyping: From UX to Front End on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Designer Titles As a Matter of Scope

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