UX jobs: User experience (UX) vs Interaction vs UI vs Product Designer

What are the roles and responsibilities of a UX Designer, and how do UX roles differ from other similar titles like Product Designer? Let's find out. 

Introduction

It can be overwhelming to understand the different job titles for designers. Titles change as the field evolves. I can confidently say this, as I've had most of these design titles throughout my career.

The roles and responsibilities of all of these UX roles typically include creating the end-to-end experience for users, crafting wireframes, flows, translating business and technical requirements into a usable design, creating prototypes to bring design visions to life, and aligning cross-functional partners around a design solution.

The History of Visual and Interaction Design

To better understand the UX roles, let's talk about the history of Visual and Interaction Design. Before design systems, Interaction Designers and Visual Designers were two people working on the same interface but with a different focus. Every project had an Interaction Designer and a Visual Designer.

Interaction designers produced wireframes, flows, and general page level schematics, while visual designers focused on branding, color, layouts, and iconography to enhance the information on the page. This approach was a bit of a waterfall process in that the interaction designer would start the design and hand it off to the visual designer. Both designers usually sat together to discuss the plan and what information needed to be emphasized with color and discussed layouts.

It was also assumed that most people couldn't be equally good in interaction and visual design. It's true, most people are stronger in one of these skills, but it isn't fair to say that people couldn't learn to balance their skills by taking UX courses or learning more. But I digress. The design deliverable for Interaction Designers was usually a set of grayscale wireframes that showed the layout, but mostly how the experience should behave and interact.

Visual designers would take those grayscale wireframes, add color, and sometimes change the layout if it made sense for the experience. Visual designers would also create pixel specs indicating all the padding and spacing between elements to hand off to the engineers. It was laborious work.

The Impact of Design Systems

The maturity of design systems collapsed into a single role of UX Designer or Product Designer since most design systems have visuals embedded within the components (i.e., padding and color). The visual design role evolved into a design systems designer, with a focus on building and maintaining the design system.

Design systems changed how we work on products, and removed a lot of tedious work, and allowed the visual designer to focus efforts on more important work. In some industries, and companies visual design is treated as a specialized skill set.

But, its less common to find roles that are specific to visual design, because design systems teams are usually small.

Understanding Different UX Roles

Now, let's talk about the different UX roles you might encounter.

Interaction Designer

The Interaction Designer title is common and has been around for a while. Interaction in the title refers to the interaction between the user and the system. If you've encountered the term Human-Computer Interaction, this encompasses how interaction designers think about designing for people in various contexts and environments.

Modern interaction designers go deep in interaction but are still expected to work within a design system and compose layouts that make the experience usable to ship products. They think through system flows and interaction states and simplify complex experiences using a user-centered design approach. Their skill set is best used in technical spaces- like a complex mobile app rather than a marketing website, which relies on strong branding and visual elements.

UI Designer or UI/UX Designer

The UI designer (User Interface Designer) was an older title that was an alternate title for interaction designer. Somewhere along the way, the title referred to the visual aspect of the user interface, what you would consider the 'visual' or 'branding' layer.

The UI designer title was widespread before the UX designer title became commonplace. A newer variant is the UI/UX or UX/UI title. The focus on the UI part of the title signals that the person applying should have strong visual design skills. Some reasons for this are that the role might require more than just working with typical design system components, and you might be creating different visual layouts or need to work with non-standard grids, develop new forms, or scale typography across different scenarios.

My personal opinion is that UX/UI is a silly title and there's no need to differentiate the UI part, since UX encompasses the entire experience, but that's just my thoughts.

UX Designer

UX Designer or User Experience Designer is the same as an Interaction Designer, and the same as a Product Designer. Do you notice a theme ;)? Although there's no difference in responsibilities between Interaction Designer and UX Designer, the UX Designer title, in my opinion, better expresses the more prominent role designers have in shaping the end-to-end system.

As a UX Designer, you are responsible for the entire experience beyond user interface elements. For example, how the user onboards onto the product to their customer support experience. In the past, the UX Designer skillset mainly encompassed interaction design, strategy, and systems thinking.

Product Designer

Product Designer is a new-ish title for user experience, rooted in traditional product design or industrial design. Traditional industrial designers design physical products like shoes, hardware, and everything in between, like tents. I'm fairly sure this title was popularized by Facebook to apply to digital products.

In the tech industry, designers design digital products that are either software or web-based. The product designer title reflects modern practices in tech in that designers should handle all aspects of design, including visual design and interaction design, as a generic skill set rather than unique specializations.

Which UX Role Should You Apply To?

So, which UX role should you apply to? Apply to all of these UX-related job titles. I've had every job title on this list. I've been a UI designer, a UX designer, a Product designer, and an Interaction designer. I had the same core responsibilities: producing wireframes using user-centered design methodologies and distilling complex technology into simple, usable experiences. I've even worked on design systems and created design system components and patterns, but I didn't have an 'official' design system title. Titles are highly dependent on the company and where the industry is. Companies have slightly different needs in the kind of skills they're looking for in their designers.

You should feel comfortable applying to any of these job titles to get into UX. The job requirements should list anything specific you need to know outside the scope of general responsibilities. Generally speaking, these roles will be similar in the day-to-day work, except for highly visual design-focused responsibilities like design systems. Your career in design will be an ongoing learning process. Most people have strengths in some areas and aren't as strong in others. That's okay! You can fine-tune and upskill both on the job and in your spare time.

Personal Experience and Advice

I struggled with visual design (UI design); my core skill set was interaction design. Interaction design came naturally, but I worked hard to become good at visual design. I did a ton of tutorials, studied good design, consulted with people with strong visual design skills, and eventually found my way.

This difficulty is part of the reason I teach design. I know it's learnable, and I know that while it's not always easy to learn, if you keep working at it, you will get it. Apply to those jobs, even if you feel like you aren't qualified. Put your best foot forward and lead with your strengths. You can learn the rest later.

Adjacent UX Roles

Service Designer

Service Designer is a fairly new title. It's not a common title in the tech industry, and I've seen it mostly in agencies and consultancies. Typically, these designers think holistically about customer touchpoints and capturing the end to end experience customers have with a brand.

For example, if you are a retailer with a brick and morter storefront, a service designer would map out and find improvements in the entire journey of how customers find products in the physical store, their checkout, return, and shipping experience.

In comparison, User Experience Designers mostly focus on end-to-end for just the digital experience, but the techniques and process can be applied to a more holistic experience like service design. However, that's not usually in scope for a UX Designer.

UX Researcher

I mentor a lot of newcomers to user experience, and a lot of people gravitate toward user research, but don't realize its a different role from design. User Researchers work with product and design teams to help uncover user pain points using a variety of research methods.

Typical methods include surveys, interviews, usability tests, and data analysis. Uncovering people problems and helping define strategy for the team is a core skill for researchers. A lot of researchers I've worked with have had academic backgrounds and sometimes a Ph.D.

They are very close to the customer, and can help the team articulate themes and pain points without being bias. They are skilled in asking good questions, and creating research studies and reports that help influence the product roadmap.

Sometimes the research role comes in a few different types: quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods. These roles usually have education requirements because of the reliance of using quantitative methods or a mixed approach of qualitative and quantitative methods.

Content Designer

Content design is a misunderstood role, in my opinion. I've been fortunate enough to work with some great content designers, and without them the experience would not have been as strong. Sometimes content designers and product (UX) designers work on the same interface, so it can lead to tension if designers aren't used to sharing the space.

Content designers help with underlying structure of the experience. This can include creating an IA, developing naming for categories, and organizing content so people can find what they're looking for. For content heavy sites, like government sites, having a good content designer helps organize and label effectively.

In addition, they are responsible for the UX copy, or the written aspects of the experience. Every word on the UI, a content designer would be responsible, which includes calls to action, marketing copy, and directional copy. In more technical spaces, they might be referred to as a Technical Writer, and work on technical documents, manuals and help center information.

Education in Writing, is standard for Content Design roles. Some companies have invested in the role, and have a robust content design organization. Meta, and Intuit for example. However, in tech, it's not as common, and sometimes the responsibilities are divided between the designer and a product marketing person.

In Conclusion

So there you have it – a whirlwind tour through the world of UX roles. From the early days of separate Visual and Interaction Designers to the modern, all-encompassing Product Designer, we've seen how the field has evolved and how titles have shifted along the way.

Whether you're called a UX Designer, Product Designer, or even a UI/UX Designer (silly as that might sound to me), the core of what you do remains pretty similar. You're there to make products that work for people.

And let's not forget about those adjacent roles like Service Designers, UX Researchers, and Content Designers. They might not always be in the spotlight, but they're crucial in creating well-rounded, user-friendly experiences.

Remember, no matter what title you're applying for, it's your skills and passion for solving user problems that really matter. Don't get hung up on the specifics of a job title – focus on building your toolkit and understanding the fundamentals of good design.

As for me, I've worn pretty much all these hats at some point in my career. Each role taught me something new and helped me grow as a designer. So my advice? Jump in, apply for those jobs, and don't be afraid to learn on the go. The field of UX is always changing, and that's what makes it exciting.

Keep designing, keep learning, and most importantly, keep focusing on the users. After all, that's what UX is all about, no matter what title you've got on your business card.