Thread by @nickf, Recruiters & hiring managers: A UX Designer may be skilled one, some, [...]

Recruiters & hiring managers:

A UX Designer may be skilled one, some, or many of the following core disciplines of UX:

- User Research (UR)
- Content Strategy
- Information Architecture (IA)
- Interaction Design (IXD)
- User Interface Design (UI or UID)
- Evaluative Research

Every UX Designer is a bit different on what disciplines they focus on. It’s important to understand the differences. A discipline isn’t always a job title/role per say. If the team is large enough to have specialization they may be separate titles/roles for each discipline.

There are many things a UX designer will do as a skill of each discipline. For example, if my skill is in IXD I might create prototypes of my work to test with. These types of things are deliverables, methods, & techniques (“tools”). They don’t define us or our role/title either.

It’s important that job postings include information about what disciplines a company is looking for in skills of the candidate. So if you want someone who has skills in the disciplines of IA, IXD, & UID state these things in the job posting, not in the title of the role itself.

I state this because it’s often discouraging to candidates when they see “UX/UI Designer” in the job title. It suggests the employer doesn’t understand the field of UX & is probably not a good place for a UX Designer to work. This reduces your odds of finding a solid candidate.

Different companies or even teams may have different configurations of UX. Some may have User Researchers, others may have that’s as part of what UX Designers do. Some may have prototypers, others may have this as part of what UX Designers do. Communicating these details is key.

Going back to the list of disciplines, it may be helpful to think about the disciplines as focuses. Here they are again:

- User Research (UR)
- Content Strategy
- Information Architecture (IA)
- Interaction Design (IXD)
- User Interface Design (UI or UID)
- Evaluative Research

Translating these disciplines into focuses we might end up with something like this:

- Understanding
- Information
- Structure
- Behavior
- Aesthetics
- Measurement

It’s not perfect, but I found it helpful to see it this way.

Here are the models I created many years ago to help define this distinction and it still holds up fairly well to this day. You don’t need to agree with this model, but it’s a good starting place for discussions about roles & opportunities in UX in your org before posting them.

I would also consider pairing it with IDEO’s venn diagram from the Human Centered Design Toolkit book and Peter Morville’s honeycomb diagram that depicts the facets of UX as seen here.

It’s ok to disagree with this, but let’s try to keep an open-mind. We’re all trying to add clarity to the field and it starts with taking the time to understand the field first, before we start to hire for it. I hope you found that helpful in some way. Thanks for listening.

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