Should We Remove Ourselves From The Term "Designer"?
Frankie Kastenbaum
Experience Designer by day,?Content Creator by night,?in pursuit of demystifying the UX/UI industry | Mentor & Speaker
The debate of what our title should be is on going and these days tends to lean towards Product Designer.
BUT, the other night while I couldn’t sleep I had a thought…
What if were called Experience Storytellers instead?
Now, I know this moves as away from the term "Designer", but is that really a bad thing? Aren't you tired of people giving their opinion when you mention that word? It's not like we were trained in that field or anything...
But anyways, I'll stop myself there and explain why the term "Experience Storyteller" is actually better than Designer, in my opinion.
At the end of the day, one of the most important parts of our job is being the communicator between Business, Engineering, and our end users. It is our responsibility to connect the dots, and engage all these disciplines in a way that excites them and gets them on board.
In other words, our main role we could argue, is less about spending time in Figma making something look pretty, but more so about preparing for that handoff meeting. We have to come prepared, ready to sell our designs in a way that will best resonate with the others in the room. And well, how will be do that?
If you guessed "tell a story," then you got that right!
So why should we hide this important part of our role, especially one we spend the majority of our time in (for good and for bad)? Especially since in my opinion it helps us move away from being a pixel pusher.
And even more, I wonder that if we alter how we are called, would that alter the perception of our industry too?
Senior UI/UX designer and Webflow developer. I help startups and companies with meaningful designs. Additionally, I share my expertise by teaching about these topics.
1 年I think having just a general term like "I'm in UX" can be confusing these days because we now have a lot of defined sets of systems that are required for each specialist to work on. Would have been fine if it was a decade ago. But now there are just many new responsibilities that are new in the field with the advancements in the field as well and brands are growing. They are in need of new technologies and new ways of looking to improve their businesses hence new terms are gaining prominence :)
UX Designer | Workshop Facilitator | Design Thinker | Web3 | UX Researcher | Pro Amateur Karaoke Singer ??
1 年I love "Experience Storyteller." It certainly has a better ring to it than "Stakeholder Wrangler." ??
Senior Design Leader | UX Design, UX Research, UX Strategy | I help companies maximize their impact with increased user engagement & satisfaction by fostering a culture of relentless curiosity.
1 年Your argument is very compelling. Design at its core is solving problems or addressing a need. Instead, it's misunderstood as pretty visuals, which can be an output of Design. I love your idea of taking our titles and flipping them on their heads to at least challenge us to think more about what role we play. Thanks for the thought exercise.
Providing a design that meets the needs of users is always the goal of UX Design.
1 年Re-Edit: I gave this more thought last night. Experience storyteller is in the right direction. I wouldn’t use that term in a elevator pitch though. In a jornal entry I wrote, I expressed “UX experience design” as an umbrella term to cover the many responsibilities a person would take on to enhance a digital product experience for people. Some of those responsibilities include storytelling, research, creative vision, computer software skills, etc. I don’t like the term designer under this umbrella term. Everyone, including stakeholders, co-workers, the people who collaborated to make UX software possible, and even the participants, all had a hand in your “doing” to enhance the Users experience. Maybe the term “Digital collaborative experience designer” or “Product collaborative designer” sounds wordy. “UX Managers” or “UX Vicreroy” is another one I just thought of. It’s hard to narrow down a term to describe someone under the whole umbrella. Maybe we shouldn’t narrow it down to simplicity. I don’t know. It’s worth pondering on though.
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1 年Merci