Are You really a user experience designer? Many of you will proudly say ‘yes,’ but really, are you? Unfortunately, most of these professionals who call themselves user experience designers are actually user interface designers or mobile app UI design specialist. Not even knowing Balsamiq or UX Pin makes you a UX designer. In fact, the job title is the most abused and misinterpreted one in the tech sector. Many UI guys have added fancy to their portfolios while claiming to be the experts of user experience. If you are also in that league, it is high time that you know what makes user interface and user experience different.

User Interface Expert is the ‘What’ Person

•    He mainly deals with graphic aspects and visual details
•    He is familiar with the static applications only
•    He is updated with latest styles and trends
•    He is responsible partially for focusing attention of user on elements

User Experience Expert is the ‘Why’ Person

•    User experience is not just design and many are not designers
•    He is more of a project manager, coordinator and director
•    He is responsible for each product development stage
•    He is concerned for everything from the information architecture, voice and tone of the copy to the texture and color of the interface elements
•    He constantly advocates for the users
•    He is focused on psychology, research, testing and advocacy

The UX designer makes sure that non-user minded things like department conflicts and business interests doesn’t get prominence, rather everything is well balance in terms of user experience.

Now, the most significant question- could you really be a UX designer? For that, you have to ensure the following things:

Change Attitude

Adjusting your attitude is the first thing for an UX designer. Many UI designers are only concerned about their work, and don’t care much about the other areas. For example, if there is a problem in a content quality, he will complain, but won’t take any action to correct. Reason? It’s not their job and they won’t get paid for it. However, a UX designer will be responsible for everything that affects the user experience, even if that is not his area of responsibility. So, you have to get out of your comfort zone, accept the challenges and join hands with others for creating better user experience.

Work as a Team

You can never create a great UX alone, as the process involves too many disciplines and factors. This means you to associate with a wide range of experts such as UI designer, developers, content writers, SEO and online marketing teams, mobile experts, retailers, business strategists and more. Thus, you have to think about how users move between the devices along with how they are moving between channels.

User Experience is not Just the Screen

User’s digital experience is the most important aspect that a UX designer should consider. Digital interactions involve customer experience in broader aspect. If the customer experience is not up to the mark, even world’s best website will fail. For example, customer experience for a e-commerce website is not just about how easily the user can navigate between the categories and browse through the products. It is also important to provide excellent shipping and return policies. For example, a prospective customer is worried about the goods to be delivered at his home by a stranger. A UI designer would be tempted to add a line in the “terms & conditions” page that they are not responsible for any inconvenience caused by the courier company. The UX designer will take this matter into consideration and try to implement for security and safety by conducting police check of every delivery people, which will reassure the customer.

So, if you really want to fancy the title of being a specialist in UX design, you have to push the boundaries and overcome the shortcoming in every area of user experience.