Design titles with meaning: Are you experienced?

What’s in a title?

Is it important that we use precise language to describe what we do? I think it is. Critical even as we designers try to explain to our workmates, and the world, the value of the work we do. Even though we designers love to explain, we could do a lot better and choosing our words.

Take the word “experience.” There are an awful lot of design jobs that include the word experience. Such as

Customer Experience Lead, customer experience designer, customer experience manager, senior experience designer, experience designer, user experience designer, user experience lead, user experience manager, experience design competence lead, customer experience specialist, hub experience product manager (this just from a quick search for Experience in LinkedIn jobs in the Nordics!).

Take the word “experience” in a title — it should mean, in a world of clarity, that your role is to help with someone else’s experience, that you are an expert in those people’s experiences.

Oxford English Dictionary defines experience as:

1. practical contact with and observation of facts or events.
2. an event or occurrence which leaves an impression on someone.

That would mean that anyone who has the word experience in their title should have practical contact and observation of customers and users and/or a deep understanding of their customers and users’ impressions of events and occurrences.

In other words, an experience expert should spend a significant amount of their working hours being with and understanding their customers and users. Alas there is a disconnection between this and reality.

If you have CX in your title it should mean that you play an important role in your Customers’ Experiences. To my mind that should mean that you devote a significant amount of time learning about customers: spending time with them, interviewing them, observing them, co-creating with them, and learning from them. Oddly enough I’ve met a number of CX people who don’t do much of the above. They spend time digging through data and occasionally do some task-based user testing. Which raises the question: can you be a Customer Experience Lead/Manager/Designer without qualitatively spending time with your customers?

If not, maybe a better title might be information architect, brand manager, digital strategist, or creative lead (even though all of these should also spend time qualitatively engaging with customers too, but the job title wouldn’t necessarily require it).

I’ve seen the same thing with people with UX in their titles: it means you play a role in your Users’ Experiences. It also means you should be devoting a specific amount of time with your users to understand what they need and how you can deliver it: spending time with them, interviewing them, observing them, co-creating with them, and learning from them. And same here, I’ve met a lot of UX people who don’t spend much time with that either.

If you don’t, maybe some better titles might be interaction designer, interface designer, front-end developer, etc. (even though all of these should also spend time qualitatively engaging with customers too, but the job title wouldn’t necessarily require it).

There’s nothing wrong with, and a very lot right with, designing great interfaces, products, or digital interactions. It takes a lot of talent and expertise to do these things well. I mean, we call people who design ballet or dance “experiences” choreographers, not customer experience leads. We call people who help deliver our travel experiences pilots and flight attendants not airborne user experience designers.

In grad school, my mentor’s favorite saying was:

“Muddled thinking leads to muddled communication.”

We humans to best when we strive for clarity and simplicity even when faced with complex issues.

How did so many people get an X applied to their job title without their bosses requiring that they actually spent time understanding the customer or the user?

My guess is that this is the culmination of the tug-of-war between traditional product, brand, and marketing on the one hand, and digital on the other. Since its inception, digital has pushed for a bigger seat at the table since digital sometimes is the main or only product/service, brand, and marketing experience. But as long as the job titles started with something like digital, web or interaction, the other groups wouldn’t and couldn’t make enough room for it. So, the digital folk decided to rebrand — digital strategists became CX leads, and digital designers became UX designers. The question is whether their jobs changed all that much.

Anyone have a better guess?

I urge everyone with an X in their title to make sure that they get space to spend time with customers and users: qualitative interviews, contextual observation, prototype testing and anything else you can think of to get under the skin of the people you design for. Push for it and if you get pushback, try playing your title card. I don’t know if it will work, but it’s definitely worth a try.