What means to be a Designer in 2020 ?
Design is always evolving since more than a decade, from Information Architect & Web Designer to UX & Product Designer.
When you speak to someone who doesn’t know anything about design, it’s quite confusing because he always thinks about aesthetics or even worse about art. Of course this side counts but it’s not the purpose of our jobs.
A designer is someone who has the ability to solve problems : taking a step back and understanding user needs with cognitive bias, running user interviews, making links between quantitatives and qualitatives analysis in order to detect insights (a.k.a the user frustration).
These insights are very important because you can reflect them into a feature in your product/service.
What is a Product Designer ?
A Product Designer is a “T-shaped” mind, who has a global knowledge in UX / UI and works with every stakeholders of a Product Team. He has smooth relationships with developers who can implement the design solution without any frictions because he thought about the Design System (UI Style Guide), for example.
Moreover, theses last years, we often hear that Design System is the new trend because our working process has evolved too !
Sprints are shorter because everybody understood that we have to confront ideas ASAP to the market to see if we’re in the right direction.
At the beginning of the project Product Designer will focus on the needs and often use frameworks like Design Thinking Process.
New jobs are emerging : UX Writer and UX Strategist
As explained, you can choose to be very generalist and care about UX/UI at the same time or you can be very specialized into a particular aspect of design : aesthetics (UI), animation (UI / Motion Design), user research (looking for user insights through datas as I mentioned previously), content (UX writer) and strategy (UX strategy).
Let’s talk about the last two.
Writing isn’t regularly considered in the UX process but the impact of words is huge in user experience. The UX writer crafts all the content of the Product : from the “404 error” to the joyful message notification you receive when your money arrive in your bank account through your favorite bank app.
It’s obvious that colors & interactions provides delightful emotions into your Product/Service but tone and subtlety of delivered message don’t have to be neglected.
UX Writers work with User Researchers to get to know their audience and the way user interact with the product.
The difference between UX Writer and Marketing Copywriter is that marketers produce content in order to sale something whereas the role of the UX Writer is to guide user through the various features of the Product.
What about the UX strategist ?
A UX strategist is someone who has a good experience in Product, and who makes the link between design and business issues. He has a high level vision and understands all the value chain.
Often considered as the decision maker, he will drive the team and prioritize tasks.
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This point of view is to show that a designer isn’t a pixel pitcher, but someone who is interested in user needs and that suppose a lot of soft skills (curiosity, empathy, communication, collaboration, analytical perception…)
To move forward :
https://www.behance.net/gallery/86123741/Design-Thinking-Process
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/quant-vs-qual/
https://uxplanet.org/16-rules-of-effective-ux-writing-2a20cf85fdbf