Business: UX Professions

The role of UX Strategist has been popping up lately in job descriptions, discussion forums, and professional profiles on the Web. Clients have assigned this role to me on a number of consulting projects. Some of my colleagues have taken UX Strategist as their new title. But what does a UX Strategist do that’s different from, say, a UX Architect or a UX Designer or a Director of User Experience? Does this role open up a new career path for UX professionals, or is this title just a way of making our work sound more important? Recently, I did some research, and I’d like to use this edition of my column UX Strategy to take a stab at defining the role of UX Strategist as it stands today. Read More

This is a question that every UX professional faces at some point: is it better to be a UX generalist—for example, practicing both user research and UX design—or is it better to specialize—perhaps in a specific domain? Companies often question whether a team of UX generalists or a mix of specialists is best.

I might be the ideal person to answer this question. Over the last 15 years, I’ve had the unusual experience of starting out as a UX design generalist, becoming a user research specialist, and again becoming a UX design generalist. In this column, I’ll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of generalization and specialization for UX professionals and the companies that hire them. Read More

More than 200 global UX professionals completed UserZoom’s second annual State of UX in the Enterprise survey. Overall, our research findings show that the state of enterprise User Experience is strong and growing stronger. Nevertheless, many enterprise organizations still face common challenges. The good news is that there are lots of opportunities for companies and their leadership to grow and drive User Experience in the enterprise to the next stage.

While other surveys over the past few years have looked at the state of User Experience as a whole and at UX design in particular, the state of User Experience in the enterprise had not yet been analyzed in depth or tracked longitudinally—particularly in regard to understanding how enterprise companies are conducting UX research. That’s why, in 2018, we conducted our first survey with hundreds of UX professionals at some of the largest global organizations to better understand the culture of UX research and state of User Experience in the enterprise. In 2019, we’ve conducted our survey again.

Now, let’s dig into the survey findings. Read More