During Q&A sessions at conferences someone will inevitably ask: "Which applications do you use for your work?" — which is probably the least helpful question you can ever ask if you want to improve as a designer.

There seems to be a segment of beginners in many professions that perceives the competency gap as purely a software solution.

Questions about tools are usually innocuous. It gives some insight. Experienced devs do it too. Is that team using React? Are you using Go?

Gives you an idea of where people are going. What other tools are available, how easy it will be to get help, etc.

I always ask people because the tools I have discovered are not quite what I'm hoping for.

e.g. I haven't seen a rapid prototyping tool yet that bridges the gap between powerpoint and coding well. (I hadn't actually found Axure yet, but it looks promising)

I think I agree with this sentiment. I'm really tired of the prototyping tools oriented around making ridiculous little micro interactions with just the amount of bounce or spring.

That should be built by understanding spring physics and going and sitting next to your implementing engineer. The hard stuff to prototype is what I think you're alluding to, larger navigational or IA types of hypothesis testing.

I also haven't found much there...

And note that many, many companies still do not understand UX. There's a good chance your interviewer/manager will have little to no understanding of UX. They will favor the visual beauty of your work over any of the aforementioned qualities that make a great UX designer.

Ugh. That's my workplace right now.

I want to switch from doing front-end development to UX research, but to my boss that comes down to high-fidelity graphic design in photoshop.

Yep, I have a Masters degree in interaction design with a healthy curriculum in true UX, and I'm a far better interaction designer than programmer. Part of why I got into it was because you have the capacity to have a major impact on how applications work, and I was relieved that I didn't need to worry about fidelity down to the graphic design layer. Come to find out that almost all UX designers I've ever met - outside of my alma mater - are graphic designers, and I've just never been able to convince anyone to hire me for design.

Despite that, I've lucked into temporary design roles on some major projects end to end, have all the wireframes, the design thinking, the compromises and so on, and that helped not one bit.

edit: grammar

I actually discussed it with my boss today, having just graduated from a Bachelor in information engineering I felt I'm not using my talents at best. So now I'm going to try my hand at information engineering. Problem is - our customers probably don't even know it, and use marketing firms for advice in that regard.

Let's hope this works out, if you have any advice I'd love to hear it.

Your first point is exactly right. The tools (and even the output) matter little if you haven't gotten the research and product thinking right. I recently wrote on this related to product design, if you're interested: https://medium.freecodecamp.com/your-best-work-will-be-invis...

Completely agree with you. Once you've got the methods & thinking down you can apply that to any tool. And often the best tool is the one that helps you communicate & test the fastest.