My business cards describe me as a Web User Interaction Designer but in my current role I’m officially a Business Analyst because the title that more accurately reflects what I do — User Experience and Social Interaction Strategist — might scare people.
None of those titles actually do represent what I do. Well, perhaps to someone in my industry. Maybe. But certainly not to someone outside the user experience domain.
I’ve been trying to distil my activities and responsibilities down to some core areas … for example research, testing, compliance assurance and business analysis could come under just “analysis”. But to call myself an analyst then excludes the design work I do. But to call myself a designer confuses people with graphics/visual designers … and I don’t want to be forever following my introduction with “But I don’t do graphics”.
Architect is used by some but I think it’s ambiguous outside the construction industry.
Consultant is a little more generic but generic just means less precise, not more accurate … and comes with baggage.
Putting “User” in the title is focussed on individuals and excludes designing for teams and social interaction … but what really is the practical difference?
I want to refer to my extensive web experience without sending the message that my skills aren’t relevant outside the web … and my last two projects were not web-based. Specialist knowledge like usability and accessibility, not to mention front-end development which although I don’t code (much) any more is still incredibly valuable when working on web projects – for most projects I’ve worked on I’ve been the most knowledgeable team member on standards-compliant, high-efficiency, high-quality web user interface development. I need to indicate that somehow.
Want to refer to social media too but that really does seem to be a completely different kettle of fish so I’m happy to just vaguely refer to the use of social media as an engagement and research tool that ultimately serves analysis and design.
But then what about my involvement in Government 2.0 and the use of social media for broader policy design … which is another of my current projects?
How does strategic thinking fit into this? Would be nice to refer to that in my role considering I currently work in a strategic role without excluding my low-level interaction design experience.
Whack all that together and you end up with a 13-word job title … so now I’m trying to distil it even further, get to the underlying shared concepts, prioritise … and still figure out how to present this in a way that makes sense to those both inside and outside my industry.
How might someone else describe my role? As you can see partially from my notes above: Someone who works closely with people to identify their needs & understand their work in order to contribute to the design & development of user-friendly websites.
Sure, it doesn’t refer to all the things that I do that I think are important but it has clarity. Can it be distilled to a 3-word job title using just the words in that paragraph?
It’s doing my head in. I might be over-thinking it but I need to satisfy myself that terms like User Experience Designer really are the best that we as an industry can come up with.
Apologies for the writing style in this blog post … it was originally written as a caption for the photo of my notebook on Flickr.
// purecaffeine.com, UX, design, social media and Gov 2.0 blog by designer Nathanael Boehm, Canberra, Australia. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
