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Elijah Gartin
13,182 PointsUser Experience Designer = Systems Analyst
While I understand there are differences in that User Experience Designers reach a more broad audience. However, most of everything explained in this badge involve what the role of the system analyst in terms of a CIS degree. Not sure how many other certified ISA folk there are out there, but I know I'm not the only one. The UX name seems like a better alias to help people understand what we do.
Curious on other's thoughts regarding this.
1 Answer
Erin Olmon
2,271 PointsI don't think this quite gets at what your asking. But I think job roles communicate priority and bias in addition to responsibilities. In my UX practitioner opinion, branding oneself as a UX practitioner should be as much about what you do as what you believe.
There are many activities that UX practitioners undertake that might be conducted by others in different roles. If someone says to me that they are a User Experience [whatever] or Interaction Designer or any of the other really common UX specialties, what I know about them is that they are a designer and their priority in design is the user. That is the distinguishing characteristic of a UX practitioner: their bias and their goals are oriented towards the end user.
A Systems Analyst, where I work, might do some UX work, especially in projects that have straight forward and well understood interface requirements, but they have other responsibilities that don't overlap with UX at all. I know the priority of the System Analyst lies with the systems. Making a solution with technologies that is achievable and ensuring the technologies work together to fulfill requirements. A Developer's priority is code. A Project Manager's priority is the project. A product designer's priority is a product will be bought by people in a market.
In my UX role, I don't define which technology solutions are used to carry out my design. I don't tell the developers how to create good css. I don't tell the testers how to determine if an interface is accessible. (But I do care about those things and have opinions on good tactics and bad ones)
Team roles overlap in different ways at different times. But if people in those various roles get into a friendly debate with one another, what will they fight for?
User Experience practitioners fight for the user.