Does "UX / UI" denote ignorance?

In the early 1990's, pre-WWW, I designed my first user interface (UI). It was a Mac-based front end for a Pharmaceutical Information System (unfortunate acronym), to help research scientists share information more easily with each other without having to know database commands. A few years later, I was a consultant at Sapient, and my role changed to User Experience (UX) Architect, because it seemed like usability was passé, and more comprehensive user experience design was where we were headed. We inherited the new title from the recently purchased e-Lab, a consulting company that focused more holistically on the overall user experience, rather than just usability and UI. It was about people and behavior patterns and relationships, rather than a data transaction.

After starting down the path of UX, I shunned the moniker UI, because it made me think of the outdated mode of sticking a user interface on top of data and code to make things easier for people who don't know how to speak the arcane language of the developers. Increasingly, whenever someone used the term "UI" in a meeting to refer to what my team would be doing, it set off alarm bells: This person does not know what UX is, and this engagement will require extensive education about the value that user experience brings to the table for both customers and the business.

Often, engineers, architects, project managers, and later product managers used the term UI, because it put the design team in a well-understood place. After all, the design team dressed differently, took first class flights to Rio to talk for weeks about design direction (yes, guilty), and had lots of fancy meetings with great coffee, and produced expensive deliverables that the aforementioned builders would need to find a way to bring to the light of day. Depending on the space that the client gave the design team to ideate, building the thing could be a very difficult or even impossible task, so the technical team would often take the blame from clients and client partners for delays or scale-backs. Enter agile.

With the rise of agile, lean and product management, many of the inefficient practices of the early 2000's were tossed out unceremoniously, and UX designers were relegated to product teams, incremental improvements, daily stand-ups, backlogs, etc. Right diamond execution-focused activities became the norm, and left diamond strategy-focused activities were only for the lucky or the elite. No amount of kicking and screaming by UX'ers could turn back the clock. Management liked agile and product management, because they made production more transparent and predictable.

But something was lost. As the clunky consequences of agile/lean became more obvious, industry leaders like LinkedIn, Google, Uber, etc., made a place for people doing left diamond activities that was distinct from product teams, sprints and incremental optimization, under banners like "User Research," "Insights and Innovation," "Product Discovery," "Experience Lab" etc. People in these groups could go back to the more time-consuming generative methods that focused on strategic, North Star, market-leading advances, rather than product optimization. Suddenly a few years ago, there was a Silicon Valley hiring frenzy of people to fill these roles, and it hasn't stopped yet.

But. However. Nevertheless. Things have changed with the pandemic. People are changing jobs at a much higher rate than previously. Working remotely is now a serious career option. Skill development is commoditized with a plethora of bootcamps and other free/low-cost options. And the term "UX / UI" has become something different too. It's a sign of the normalization and core role of design in digital transformation. UX / UI is the name for people doing stuff like that, and they are in high demand. The people leading these efforts don't know the secret handshakes that the eclectic UX tribe developed two decades ago, and don't care. They need to staff up, globally.

So when someone uses the term "UX/UI" in one of our community meetings, for me it is no longer a blinking neon sign that they don't know what they are talking about, but rather a sign of normalization and mainstreaming of the profession. It's a label to communicate and find people to fill design roles, fast. They need help, and this is the bucket to find that help in. So if it helps us evolve to the next level and brings success and enjoyable career opportunities, long live UX / UI!