There has been a bit of a debate recently on the validity of the job title ‘UX Developer’, much of it as result of Leisa Reichelt’s post What is a UX Developer and are they really a thing?.
In some fields, job titles are easy. But in a such a new field as web and application design, where processes and roles are still being thrashed out, and are adapting to rapidly advancing technology and thinking, its not so easy. Job titles from a decade ago like ‘web designer’ and ‘web master’ are now deemed too vague, too indicative of a generalised skill set, in an industry that increasingly expects specialism. The industry likes to hear ‘UX Designer’, ‘Web Applications Developer’, ‘Visual Designer’ etc. People with such job titles are seen as focussing on being really good at one thing, instead of diluting their value by spreading their skills across multiple disciplines.
I have a problem with this trend. Although I too believe that it is possible to spread yourself too thinly and end up being a jack of all trades, I think the industry is becoming very militant and prescriptive in what is and isn’t a valid skill set, and draws somewhat arbitrary lines between one ‘specialism’ and another.
There are developers out there who specialise in one single programming language. There are other developers who successfully work with multiple languages. There are designers who specialise in typography alone, while others specialise in interface design, and still others work across digital and print. Depending on the developer or designer’s skills and inclinations, any of these approaches can work. There is no ‘right way’, and no guarantee that a narrowly focussed skill set will necessary be a deeper one.
Similarly, most UX Designers I know are involved in everything from user research, IA and interaction design. It is quite possible to specialise exclusively in any single one of those activities, and quite possible to do all three. Some UX Designers are very good at all three, but I’ve met some UX Designers who are actually pretty lacking in some areas – specifically interaction design.
A ‘UX Developer’ seems to me to be a perfectly adequate description for someone involved in interaction design and front-end development, much the same as ‘UX Designer’ is a description of someone involved in interaction design and user research and IA. After all, the overlap between front-end development and interaction design is no smaller than that between user research and interaction design.
Interaction design demands an understanding of how things get built, and can benefit hugely from being prototyped within the actual medium in which it will be built (in this case HTML). Front-end developers often have specialist knowledge of the nuances of building accessible interfaces, something that should be fundamental to all interaction design for the web. Most front-end developers make daily interaction decisions anyhow, simply because no amount of prototyping or wireframing can account for every scenario in the usage of a site or application. Additionally, many of the important nuances of interaction design, such as the timing and subtlety of transitions, pretty much have to be done in HTML/JQuery.
I don’t mean to suggest that all front-end developers are natural interaction designers, only that the front-end development skill set dovetails very well with that of interaction design.
On the surface, ‘UX Developer’ could be seen merely as a synonym for an interaction designer who happens to prototype in HTML, but I think the term could prove to make an important distinction, in that a UX Developer would be assumed to be capable of delivering production quality front-end code based on those prototypes – an ability not all interaction designers possess. The value in this – in increased efficiency, in less risk of things being lost in translation – is obvious.
A UX Developer is not a hybrid. There are no ‘hybrids’ in this industry. There are simply people, all with their own unique skill sets. Some of these skill sets fall easily into established job titles, while others don’t. If they don’t it is because those job titles are based on outdated and arbitrarily drawn boundaries in what should be a seamless process with no fixed cut-off points in responsibilities. We can’t ditch job titles altogether (it would be hopelessly impractical) but if the hats we have don’t fit everyone, then at least lets knit some new ones.
I’ve been working in this industry for over 10 years, and have been involved with everything from server-side coding to interface design. My core skills though are front-end development and interaction design. I’m never quite sure how best to summarise what I do to others – perhaps UX Developer is the closest fitting hat there is right now.