Where I have seen the issue most is at career fair here at SCAD. Students and hiring managers have a really difficult time matching up with each other due to this issue.

That being said, the other issue I’ve seen is as someone looking for work, the variation of what a UX Designer can be is quite infuriating.

In general though I find the term is conflated. Biz Dev in my experience doesn’t have the big x-taxonomical problem where the term is used both for something specific and general–sometimes in the same talk.

People will use it synonymously as usability, or viz design, or experience, or service instead of the umbrella term it really is and best used as. As a group of people dedicated to clarity of systems, how can we be satisfied with “semantic blockage”. It’s our job to be the drano of “semantic blockage” or the exlax (pick your choice).

Just like Chris said, for those working in the industry this is not a big issue. That’s my experience too.

But one of my design team junior members is contemplating a move far abroad to get a Master’s on “UX with special emphasis on interaction design” and not so much visual or even service design.

It’s not easy at all for her to choose, which university or curriculum to take. There’s wild variation in what they emphasize or specialize on, and tuition costs differ with a factor of 10. Web pages don’t have enough information to make a decision. The only way to be sure is to talk to those who took it. But she doesn’t know any, so she needs to Google discussion boards.

Slashdot asked a similar question today, and the responses reflect what’s above: those working in the industry don’t think it’s a big problem, and researchers/teachers/students say it makes all the difference.

“Computer Science vs. Software Engineering” http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/11/17/2039231/computer-science-vs-software-engineering

Actually, if you think deeper, the term is pretty accurate. In the end, regardless of our titles, we are all contributing to designing experiences. Visual Design, Interaction Design, Information Architecture, etc are all means to the larger goal of good user experience. So it is absolutely fine to call all of us as User Experience Designers, because that is what we are doing in the end. We are either “Information Designing” or “Interaction Designing” or “Visual Designing” the “Experiences” for “Users.” Even John Dewey gave his seminal work a broad title “Art as Experience”, though in it he talks in detail about all the constituents of experience such as Energies, Expression, Form, Substance, etc. In the same vein, interaction, visual, etc are all constituents of experience.

I get the point but feel that that this will naturally play out on an individual practitioner level. You’ve nicely articulated what I might call a macro concern that will continue on regardless of any one of us until it evolves naturally through business speak. The business world hasn’t banished the umbrella term “business development” because it was unclear, unspecified, at times downright misused and misunderstood.

The term “UX” may be subjectively ‘ruined’ on an academic level but I have not once seen it get in the way of doing the job that needs to be done in a professional capacity and it most certainly is not snakeoil when talking to potential employers. The snakeoil comes in when you have people selling themselves as UX designers because they read a book or two and a Boxes & Arrows post. But hey, that happens in EVERY industry and is nothing unique to UX.

We *might* have a chance to cleanse the micro-culture of experience design professionals still debating the UX label but I don’t see it going away any time soon on a macro level or in a business discussion. I’d just as soon drop the conversation entirely as this discourse seems to give it more fuel.

I say all of this knowing full well that you can easily crush me (and likely will next time I see you ;^) on the academic underpinnings and complexities of why you feel UX should die as a term so I’m not going anywhere near that now. I simply don’t see it doing harm in the workplace. I actually see it gaining tremendous, positive, momentum in a good way that’s creating highly respected positions (aka. jobs) for practitioners of Experience Design and overall embracing of that line of thinking in the workplace. Hell, I’m now officially in Strategy. Crazy, eh?!

Buzzwords are unavoidable. Businesses are endlessly looking for competitive advantage and UX is, for better or worse, in the spotlight (which we should be thankful for, knowing that it WILL end) with “Design Thinking” & “Service Design” close on it’s heels and “Design Research” coming soon to a strategy meeting near you. I guarantee someone read an article about REI’s internal work and is now trying to figure out how to make “Cross-channel experience designer” fit on a business card as we speak.

Do I care? Nope.

Anyone good at what they do will find good work. The bullshit UX quacks will be filtered out. UX’ers as a whole need to focus on the power of professional networking, not labeling (in this case ;^).

You do great work and that stands for itself. The rest is semantic blockage.

Party on…