Recently a friend shared an article on how the term UX killed Usability. The article per se was (in my opinion) a personal opinion, with a lot of pointers signifying the same, from a person who is passionate about Usability, but the article also raised a very valid point that I often try to drive across in my workshops.
From the article “Usability as a term is pretty much dead and has been replaced (not very well) by UX, meaning user experience.”
This statement reminded me of the numerous discussions I have around this. Here I put down a few reasons on why I think the above is happening.
I think this is a classic debate that has been going on for quite some time now. I have often addressed this point in a lot of my workshops and insist that now it all comes under the umbrella of UX. I have often proposed that we address ourselves as UX professionals more than anything else.
I think the UX professionals are the most T shaped professionals (as outlined by the McKinsey & Co) . Though the arms of the T these days are too wide! Spanning from Design to Business to Technology!
This UX driven approach is also evident when I did a lot of recruitment for companies. While you want the candidate to be strong at one aspect, either Usability or Interaction Design or Graphic Design, you do intend to look if they have other skills. And that recruitment drives have often led to a lot of professionals present themselves as UX professionals.
I think going for a specific skill is more driven through larger companies, but for small and mid size companies the T shaped designers are more sought after. Having said that, we need to be thankful that at-least designers are being sought after, and its a basic human tendency to get more for less. So why not get a UX person (which I would like to be a T professional) rather than a specialist.
The challenge with the T is however to be sure that you really know the stuff around that vertical axis you project yourself on. So you could still be a Usability (or IA or Graphic Des or IxD) and still be presenting yourself as a UX professional.
If you still insist on being recruited as only a specialist (the Usability guy) then perhaps the larger companies are your target.
