I can’t help but continue to write about my recent thoughts regarding our profession. As of late, I, like many of you, have contemplated even calling myself a UX professional anymore. The truth is, I’m tired of fighting the “they just don’t get it” battle. I’m constantly reminding myself of the “pave the cowpath” theory, and think “Why aren’t we just doing that?”.
What do I mean? I mean why aren’t we just using terms that those that we want to work with are use to hearing. I’m talking things like Customer Acquisition Designer or Customer Retention Architect. Those types of titles mean something to the people we have been trying to hit over the head for the past 15 years. After-all, that is really what the value of Information Architecture and User Experience Design and Service Design and Interface Design and any other hot buzzword design or architecture is. It’s all about making a company or organization and their products and services better for their users or customers (or both!).
Perhaps we have been using the “How” to describe what we do, and maybe, just maybe, that is means we’ve been trying to build a new road, instead of paving the path.