Yes, "everyone" contributes to the UX, but UX by committee is common in startups and small business and I have seen it create clusterfucks more often than not.

The UX designer is the voice of the customer in the room, and they are also the conduit between business and development. They are not just cranking out deliverables, they are also diplomats that need to constantly be asking questions, challenging assumptions, and again, acting as the customer in the room. Cannot stress that enough.

If your UX designer isn't doing that, then there is a more specific name for the job they are doing; Likely a UI/interaction/IA designer (or what have you).

I hate articles like these. Why do we have to deal in absolutes? We are not siths....

KILL THE HAMBURGER MENU KILL SLIDERS KILL THIS THING I DON'T LIKE KILL FLAT DESIGN KILL ICON FONTS KILL MOBILE FIRST DESIGN KILL ALL THE THINGS

Call it what you want, just keep the user at the forefront, and it shouldn't matter.

Two things I have to say on that topic:

• I like the term "Design researcher" or "User researcher". This is something that useful people with an experience-oriented position actually do. Research is something that happens all the time, and too few people actually give it a noble connotation.

• Someone in a "UX" position will often take credit for the "experience" and present themselves as the person tying everything together in a successful project. My only advice is: Ask this person what he/she can be responsible for fucking up. Most only know to take credit, and the lack of accountability is a tell-tale sign of someone taking up a fairy-dust title.

(Also: What you can be responsible for fucking up is usually your real title.)

I understand the sentiment of the article, but it's really just a matter of semantics. Your title doesn't matter as much as what you do.

UX is a hot blanket buzz word term. I dare to say 40% of the companies that look for it, don't know what they're looking for. It'd be more accurate to say, I am looking for a visual designer. I am looking for a front-end developer. I am looking for an interaction designer. I don't think it's something that is in a phase of being destroyed as a term so much as it is in the phase of needing to be defined.

We HAVE visual, interaction, fashion etc etc designers. So what exactly is the UX designer? I thought it was someone who is centered in user research, iterative design based on user research, and extremely user-centric. More so than normal marketing analyst and marketing journey mapping. It is a different perspective on the user than what the engineer typically gives and what the marketing team typically gives, and what the sales team typically gives. That's the definition of UX that I want the world to know.

I know at Intuit they have "Experience Designers" which I believe fits the vagueness described in the article. As "responsible designers," I don't think the right thing to do is "oh well we can't agree so let's just get rid of the term." I think it's a valuable term that is still new and needs to be developed. It might take a long time but I think that's more helpful in the long run.

I went in a previous job as an advocate of UX design. I can assure you that by the end of that, they won't go searching for UX design so much as they will specify UI or Visual artist. And I think that's a good thing and a more clear thing to say than "Designer" I'm NOT a graphic designer. I'm NOT the front-end developer. I do research, I focus on the experience.

Yes, ideally the entire company should be design-oriented. There was an article recently saying that Apple may not think of all its design details but the mentality is pervasive throughout the company. They STILL have UX designers just like we still have QA. Everyone should be concerned about the quality of the product, but hey someone's job still needs to concentrate on making sure every detail is okay. Again, I focus on the experience. I personally think of it as when I was making art projects back in school. I think artists are the ultimate experience designers.

"With that said, if you want to become a UX designer, be happy, because you already are! "

I think that statement is as frustrating as "everyone is an artist; everything is art."

Amen. I never understood that title either. In the agencies I have worked at, a UX designer did wireframes and a UX analyst did user-testing. It kept the clients happy because the process of creating apps and sites became very linear with tangible results early on. However it didn't contribute a lot of value to the product. You can't just slap look and feel and interaction design on top of some wireframes and expect and good result.

Something I've wanted to say for a long time. This lack of clarity has also emerged with the "Product Designer" title we're starting to see, but at least it's slightly less vague than UX Designer.

This line of thought is so wrong-headed I don't know where to start.

Firstly, we have division of responsibilities because design is always about coming to terms with competing requirements and constraints. That's why we have specialists, so we can calculate trade-offs between code quality, business profitability and user experience. A perfectly designed user experience would give the user something amazing for free and the business would collapse.

Secondly, division of responsibilities is about assigning responsibility and accountability. If everyone does UX, no-one does UX. If you've ever worked somewhere where 'everyone is a project manager' you'll recognise why we have project managers in the first place.

Lastly, the idea that everyone can contribute to the UX goes against the first principle of user-centred design which is that you are not your user. If you don't have someone going out and talking to users, doing research, creating personas and user stories to help model other people, constructing and testing prototypes, gathering feedback and iterating, you're going to implicitly end up designing for yourself. Which is fine if you're creating an app for other people like you - seems like this chap works on a todo list that's primarily used by other designers - but most UX designers don't work like that.

My problem with the term "UX Designer" has three main points:

• No one understands what it means

• Experiences are subjective and cannot be designed but they can be staged (eg., The Experience Economy)

Finally, Donald Norman the man who coined the term UX design states that UX is little more than a buzzword:

"the term [UX Design] has spread widely, so much so that it is starting to lose it’s meaning.” - (Adaptive Path 2007)

I'm not entirely sure why, but the abbreviation "UX" has always really irked me.

Part of the problem may be the conflating of UI/UX titles.

Kill the CHIEF DESIGN OFFICER! -> Nice job title dear author.

Don't kill it just because some people use it wrong : )

Maybe UX and it's methodologies are so different between companies, regardless of the fact we are all designers, our goals are so different in a way we could never share the same definition about UX Design.

It could be the platform we are working for ( for example web vs mobile ) or our company's culture:

1. In agencies that holds multiple client's projects and basically giving services to other businesses will usually try to divide the role into teams ( researches, visual, Ix, iA etc... ) and might even duplicate them with time.. which means everyones have a clear role description and it might considered to be stupid by someone to cover other peoples jobs or trying to improve something that is not related to his/her responsibilities.

2. In startups or product companies with an horizontal structure and a strong Design culture you might see one senior Designer do UI + Ix + iA + implementation support + QA - working tightly along one or two developers knowing and understanding exactly what the outcome should be look & feel & work like and it's value to the users.

I understand and appreciate the sentiment of the article. However UX Designers do exist, and have very different functions than UI Designers, Product Designers, Engineerings, etc.

The term UX Designer is so misused by smaller companies (who in reality are just looking for someone to build and design their website/application as fast as they can) that it is often disregarded as an actual useful job title (for which is very much is).

Never mind that the person who was asking about where to start in "UX" was just looking for some advice.

Sheesh.

"UX Designer" is a mess not because of "designer" word, but because of "UX". What is UX? Absolute nonsense. A product shouldn't put "user" first, it should put the product first. Why? Because people love and use products. If put the product first, you automatically and irreversible putting all your customers first.