Be a UX designer, not a Web designer.

As I have been exploring the world of usability and branching out from my developer life over the last three years, I’ve run across a bunch of “UX jobs” that seem to vary in job title and responsibilities. Here are a few of the job titles that I found:

1. UX Designer
2. Interaction Designer
3. User Experience (UX) Engineer
4. Human Computer Interface (HCI) Specialist
5. Information Architect
6. Usability Analyst
7. UX Application Developer
8. UX Graphic Developer
9. Web designer – “Hold on, wait a second!”

These job titles are interesting to look at side-by-side. Some of them emphasize strong design skills while others require research/analyst type of roles.

I really question the “Web designer” job title that is listed in a search for “UX jobs”. I know a lot of graphic artists that claim to be Web designers, but is any Web designer automatically ranked as a UX designer or Interaction designer? People that use the job title, Web designer, might have some great artistic talent, but some can’t build a design with good navigation to save their life. I understand that this argument does not apply to all Web designers, some have learned over the years how to design sites that work well and even push the back-end developers into building better code. This is not about the skills of an artist, it’s about a misclassification of a job.

Ultimately I question, “Is the title “Web designer” dead? Since the Web 2.0 revolution, I have heard less about Web designers and more about usability and user experience development. In my opinion, Web designers have a responsibility to pursue the usability track and understand more about designing the user experience than just graphic design. Once they have this knowledge, switching to a UX title would be justified, even deserved. My conclusion is that the job title Web designer is no longer a valid one and has been replaced with or user experience designer or UX designer. Even if the job title does not disappear, it should not be listed as a “UX job”.

User experience design is about finding balance between what information you want to convey and how people will find that information.

Twitter is down!

OMG, OMG, OMG! What to do, what to do, what to do. Would a flame thrower help?

Don’t panic, I’m sure it will be back up soon enough.

Innovators, or so they think!

I find it interesting that so many developers think that innovation is defined by this scenario:

I’m bored of using ‘x’ as a variable. We’ve been using it for a long time and even though it works, I just think it isn’t innovative enough. From here on out I’m going to use ‘y’! Oh man, that is so cool – everyone is blogging, Twittering and talking about it, yes ‘y’ is so much better than ‘x’ because it does the same thing but abstracted out to the next level. Yes, ‘y’ is so cool because it is so much closer to ‘z’. Oh man, I can’t wait for ‘z’ to come out next year!

Exhibit A - The new wheel!

Unfortunately so many developers waste their time eating up the scraps of Microsoft and other companies and they really believe that because they are keeping up-to-date with those companies that they are some how more innovative and smarter than other developers. I’d like to say, NEWS FLASH! Most of those big companies are copying versions of the really cool and innovative applications or ideas that small companies and really good developers have already created.

These self-appointed innovators think that by following bigger sheep they are some how not sheep themselves? I laugh at those silly dopes that believe they are innovating. They can build giant frameworks, abstracted to the nth degree of level of 56 classes, 41 interfaces and all the powers of Grayskull. And then using a simple performance test, you find out that it takes 900+ data calls to build the entrance screen. Wow, aren’t you so proud that you reinvented the wheel and did all that work? Don’t you think you can hold your head up high and talk down to other developers that just don’t follow the innovative idea of creating such wonderful creations! At least it ain’t ‘x’!

Maybe you innovative folks are right. Perhaps I’m too old fashion and thought ‘x’ was working fine so I didn’t want to change it. Except that if in your haste you would have taken time to actually “learn” how ‘x’ worked you would realized that ‘x’ was working better than ‘y’ and really was more in line with how ‘z’ works! Instead you pushed to implement ‘y’ and now it sits there so cool because it’s up-to-date, but performing worse than ‘x’ – you’re so smart. Whaaat… you mean that sometimes Microsofts releases a coding pattern that doesn’t makes sense? Then they realize that they have misguided those wanna be innovators and role out a new version that really is just a fancy ‘x’. Hypocrisy!

To all of you that believe you are innovating something, pat yourself on the back for really believing that you are good developer. Besides, your Microsoft certification says so!

One question, did you get trophies for 5th place as a kid?

I'm so unimpressed.

I’ll come full circle and just add another thought about the kind of development I’ve seen and watch others fall into. Remember the scene in Finding Nemo where the undersea mines explode and then at the surface you see two pelicans and one little bubble pops up. “Nice!” and the other pelican flys away. That is how I liken all the extraneous coding super architecting of applications that really only need to show a picture and text. In the end, no one cares if it stinks!

IE8 release means no more CSS Hacking?

Man I hope so. It would be great to not have to invent separate style sheets for IE and just quit the hacking we have to do to ensure overall good UX. I’m curious to see if people will start to let go of IE6 and make the jump straight to IE8 (since IE7 didn’t really gain any more speed).

Hopefully Microsoft has really taken the time to invest in catching their browser up to CSS compliance and us UX designers can focus on what really concerns us. I am a big proponent of using CSS Reset and trying to level the playing field, but inevitably I have to use a hack to get IE to respond correctly. My guess is that as the browser wars wage on, the F2E folks will just continue getting the job done. Job security to know all the minutia of varying browsers I guess.

Letting go of reliable tools to see if optimized tools exist.

There are so many developer tools, libraries, patterns and best practices in the developer community that it boggles the mind. So how do you know what tools to use? My answer to that question is simple. Does the tool that you are implementing meet your needs? If so, how long does it take to implement? I recently went through an example that taught me a valuable lesson.

While developing a Web site for a client, the scope document had a Photo Gallery section indicated in it. My first instinct was to use what I had always used LightBox2 – logically. I was already using swfobject 2.1 and didn’t think there would be a problem adding Lightbox2 to the application. I was very wrong. Firefox (oh why can’t they just be like you) was rendering the Photo Gallery without issue, but IE 6&7 were erroring out horrifically. This was not a good sign.

Looking into the issue, Lightbox2 uses Prototype, Scriptaculous (2 scripts) and the Lightbox.js plus CSS. A lot of points of failure in my opinion. The only solution to fix my IE issue was to pull out the scripts and “fix it.” But that didn’t help the fact that the client wanted a Photo Gallery with a “lightbox” viewing format. I thought about using another solution I was familiar with, ShadowBox, but it seemed bloated and really more than I needed.

A co-worker (@ianlintner) suggested another tool that acted just like Lightbox, but without all the scripts. I was excited to try something new that would be more efficient for the UX. He suggested using Slimbox 2 (Slimbox, the ultimate lightweight Lightbox clone). I reviewed the specs and they had switched from Moo Tools to using jQuery – even they had optimized it so I wouldn’t have to.

This new tool did not pretend to be more than it was. Other developers like to find “silver bullet” tools that do what they need and more! Sometimes, it’s overkill and they waste more time implementing the “enterprise” level tool that does the same thing a little script would do. But it’s cooler…pfft. My recommendation, if you need a pair of pliers – you may have a rusty pair without grips that gets the job done or you may find a new pair of pliers that is shiny and has new grips. Either one of those tools are sufficient for the job. Just don’t go get a pipe wrench to do the same job if it isn’t needed.

Some of the added benefits were file size, Lightbox 2 was 70+ KB, while Slimbox 2 is around 45K B. It works perfectly on all platforms and browsers without any conflicts on my site. The jQuery script is hosted by Google, of course, so that saves me from even having to host the script. I like delegating stuff even if it adds points of failure, my point-of-view – if Google is down then a nuclear strike is on its way. Checkmate.

Overall, the lesson I learned was to be more aware of optimized tools that do what old tools accomplished, without going overboard.

Social Media Buzz

As social media expands it still is in its infancy on full support of accessibility. Designing with accessibility in mind usually makes people think, “nothing but text” or “ugly.” The sad fact is, most developers are huge style sheet and DIV layout adapters, but don’t ever use the ‘media’ property in their CSS links.

I’m confused that more F2E folk don’t take the time to add a Braille CSS. It really isn’t any more difficult than setting up a print friendly CSS. I am guilty of not adding this to my sites. But my next site will be accessible to many media. I will post a link once it is live.

Back-end Developers = Contra Code Usability

It never ceases to amaze me that when Agile back-end developers attempt usability/workflow you end up having to use a Contra code to use their application. Don’t expect documentation of the Contra code, they are too busy figuring out crazy workflows to write down how to use the system. Besides, it is Agile so any of their stuff could change in a moments notice.

I often refer to the Architecture Astronauts (Joel Spolsky) that still believe they are helping clients while they really only pursue their own interests. As Joel suggests, I don’t fear the astronauts, I pity them. They just don’t get how to approach planning to answer a client’s needs. Sad.

F2E Intentions

There are a lot of blogs that talk about usability and Web design. But there seems to be very few blogs or discussions that I’m aware of, about people who practice Front-end Engineering. I’m one of those people that have to communicate client requests to back-end developers but in that process help design usable interfaces that can be wired up to data layers.

Since I began developing over 10 years ago, a lot has changed. Nevertheless, since most new developers always insist on building their own versions of code – I’ve been around long enough to see history repeat itself, over and over and over…

I hope to use this blog to convey some of my technical expertise and thoughts about usability/Web design techniques. From what I’ve read online the war continues between usability experts and Web branding people. Everyone knows there is a middle ground, but they stop there. My plan is to talk about the middle ground and live in “reality.”