I am in what I feel is a unique position: I’ve been a dev and dev educator for 25 years, and I also have spent 15 years in HCI/UX/User Research.
I’ve spent countless hours facilitating usability tests and then building the software in response to them.
I 100% agree with the “dribblization” of usability engineering.
More so, I think the term “design” has become overloaded. A graphic designer who wants to actually get paid and eat goes into UX. But where does their joy come from? From the visual, not the usability.
This year I got hired at Nielsen Norman Group, helping train designers to understand the theories of the human mind and applying them to UI.
I am finding the range of knowledge and background amongst designers is massive, precisely because of the imprecision of the word “designer”.
If we called it “applied cognitive and behavioral psychology” we would get closer to the results we want and perhaps a smidge more respect for its necessity in the age of slop UI.
I’ve spent countless hours facilitating usability tests and then building the software in response to them.
I 100% agree with the “dribblization” of usability engineering.
More so, I think the term “design” has become overloaded. A graphic designer who wants to actually get paid and eat goes into UX. But where does their joy come from? From the visual, not the usability.
This year I got hired at Nielsen Norman Group, helping train designers to understand the theories of the human mind and applying them to UI.
I am finding the range of knowledge and background amongst designers is massive, precisely because of the imprecision of the word “designer”.
If we called it “applied cognitive and behavioral psychology” we would get closer to the results we want and perhaps a smidge more respect for its necessity in the age of slop UI.