The UX v UI ketchup bottle meme is one of the classic memes that tries to differentiate between the perennial debates in design.
Even this meme was so bad that it needed a correction and this post explains this in detail
Recently I came across this interesting meme, with Spiderman from different universes looking at each other and wondering who is who, takes the same debate to the next orbit. There seems to be a new kind of designer in the chaotic universe of Design Hiring.
For those who were yet to understand the difference between a UI designer and a UX designer, a Product designer comes as another of those creative guys with a fancy job title.
While this medium article by Ellie clearly explains the difference between the UI, UX, and Product designer, below, is my stab at explaining the difference (with a visual representation) skills required in design practice. I call it “The Product Design Stack”
I have represented bottom two layers of Product design stack below the ground because it is generally the invisible layer of Product design but critical foundations without which Product design is not possible.
Product Design Stack — an oversimplification?
While this representation is — in a way — a gross oversimplification of design and limited to digital design only, it surely will be helping in making Design more accessible to those who are perplexed by the elitist and eccentric tendencies of designers.
The Design Stack, draws a lot of inspiration from the Garett’s model of user experience design and if you look closely it’s nothing but old wine in the new glass.
A product designer is a Full Stack Designer
Following are skill-stack representations of different types of designers with whom we generally get confused.
While these skills are interrelated and rarely discreet, they will help to clear the confusion between the job descriptions we see posted by different companies.
NOTE: A lot of companies themselves are not aware of what role they are looking for, so these skill stack representations should be helpful to write the correct job descriptions.
UI designer / Visual designer
The classic perception of a designer for digital products is someone who creates aesthetically beautiful wireframes. UI design basically involves interaction design and Visual design (which comprises eye for colors, typography, iconography, and illustrations).
Technically it’s impossible to only be a UI/visual designer, because one has to understand the information architecture and user flows to be able to do UI design.
But there are designers who can’t do information architecture and user flow design on their own and will need support from a dedicated UX designer — and Visual or UI designers fall into this category.
UX designer
User experience design requires the designer to be a skilled Information designer and user flow designer, as well, along with being a crafty UI designer.
In today’s talent market, one could find almost everyone claims to be a user experience designer when they are just UI designers. When a company hires a UI designer, the information architecture and user flows are designed by the Product Manager, which is okay, but not the right thing to do.
When you are hiring for UX designer, ensure that the design candidate also knows about designing Information architecture and user flows on their own.
Another skill a user experience designer has, in addition, is the ability to understand the user's needs. This skill, again, cannot exist in isolation because it requires the designer to understand the business requirements.
It may be true that a user experience designer may not be able to argue with the product manager on the validity of the business requirement which is one of the critical skills that differentiates a product designer from a user experience designer.
Again, it is almost impossible for a product designer, not know or understand about content design and technology but they may not be good at it and depend on the expert for the same.
Content designer/UX writer
The other type of designer, almost never included in the category of designers, is the Content designer. Content design is a very vast department and the skill in particular required in Product design is UX copywriting.
Few may argue, UX writing and Content writing are one and the same but they are not as the former is a subset of the latter.
The interrelated skills, for UX writing, are Information architecture, User needs, Business needs.
User researcher
We have already covered this skill — to understand user needs — under UX designer and Product designer roles, in fact, this is also a skill that overlaps with a Product Manager role. It is one of the core skills the business relies on and hence it is, in fact, a common skill across roles.
Problem is that everyone has biases, and it takes a user researcher to investigate the user needs in an unbiased way through various research techniques.
Again there are two types of user research
- Evaluative user research
- Generative user research
Evaluative user research is something almost everyone in the company takes a stab at it — almost always — in a biased manner.
Generative user research is something that is an exclusive skill owned by the user researcher who arrives at the right business requirement.
Sometimes user researcher role may be confused as product management role but it is not the case.
This blogpost explains different advanced methods of generative research done by a user researcher.
