You seem to think there’s a legitimate difference that isn’t entirely contrived.

I don't think playing "my definition vs your definition" is a fruitful discussion in general, but the answer is, it depends.

If you're in the camp who treats UX as a professional title/career, then in principle it has very little to do with UI, and being labelled "UX/UI" is often an "insult" to UX professionals along the same lines as "Computer Scientist / IT support", or "Electrical Engineer/Electrician", "Civil Engineer/Sanitation Engineer", "Pharmacist/Teller at Boots", "Doctor/Medical receptionist". (not to imply that the latter professions are 'lesser', but rather to point out that the former professions in the pairs are typically deemed to require a higher standard of skills/training rather than simply vocational/apprentice-based training).

At the same time, I'm not naive to not understand the fact that, if a large number of people start referring to X as Y, then after a while, insisting that X isn't Y is a lost cause, and you might as well start calling it Z instead.

But, e.g. my wife was a senior UX professional who is now doing her PhD in Experimental Psychology; the original motivation was that this would make her a better UX researcher when conducting controlled experimental studies on behalf of her employer. She specialises in voice assistive tech, and her topic relates to isolating auditory markers of voice trustworthiness. I can tell you if she applied for a UX job and the interviewers started asking her what css colours she prefers on buttons, she'd be pretty pissed.

It might be helpful if you explained the difference between UX and UI design here. I'm legitimately fuzzy on what the difference actually is.

It might be helpful to view this from a scientific research perspective. UX research is more about how things should be done to provide a better usability for the user. Like, general respectively abstract concepts (e.g., how should a chatbot present itself when it first "talks" to the user, which UI components could be involved). It's not about how to actually design those things, i.e., applying CSS to an HTML document if you will. UI design is mostly a dev job, while UX design is more of an actual research discipline.

Thanks!

With that understanding, it seems to me that many, if not most, of the criticisms being levelled here do, in fact, apply to the field of UX research.

But certainly not all of them.

> You seem to be mistaking UX with UI design.

This is often a motte and bailey distinction though, where the "UX" person's background is UI, and they think only about UI. But they can charge more because theoretically UX is everything.

I don't think this is an individual's issue, as if everyone hires UX instead of UI then what do you do? It's a UX consultancy issue.

It used to be something specific, coming from the heritage of HCI and usability engineering. Then every UI designer decided that it sounded cooler on their resumé, and now the concept is completely pointless.

The poor usability of modern interfaces certainly doesn't come from people who care about what it's like to use it in practice. It comes from people whose main skill lies within the field of aesthetics.

What should you call yourself if you're actually interested in working with usability, and happy to leave the visual design to others?

> What should you call yourself if you're actually interested in working with usability, and happy to leave the visual design to others?

UX.

Most serious people in UX who see job postings mentioning "UX/UI" avoid those jobs in the same manner that a C++ coder would avoid "C/C++".

But I agree that doesn't do much to dissuade people who don't quite know the difference (or what it is that they actually need or want) from advertising "UX/UI" or "C/C++" and then people applying to these jobs.

What you're describing isn't UX though. At least not in the way that UX professionals understand it.

There being "impostors" in the field who bluff their way through, while regrettable, does not imply that the whole industry is made up, any more than the existence of people applying to data science jobs with nothing but excel skills says nothing about data science.

And some companies really, really need UX people on board.

Well, I think it's certainly not how UX is sold, but I think it can end up that way, or even worse. I've been in several meetings with expensive UX consultants where we're paying them to run team retros for teams they aren't in, or doing mood board style exercises. Lots of internal work that's invisible but claims to add enough value to pay a large amount of money for.

Now, I'm someone who insists on having a UX/UI person in the team when I'm making an app, as I want it all to go well, and I don't mind spending a chunk to get it, but the number of people I've found who can actually do that is vanishingly small compared to the number of people who are billed out as expensive UX consultants.