I’ve only worked once with a UX person and all they did was order other people to produce design documents before any software was written. Like, he didn’t design anything himself and didn’t even critique others’ designs. He made over $300K and eventually left for a job on the west coast making twice as much. He stopped talking to me entirely after the client had me write a prototype TV guide-type app for Blackberry. I created it entirely myself and the client loved it and wanted it released to the public exactly as it was. UX guy insisted (client didn’t care at all) that all software needed a design document before any coding could take place, so he was forced to order somebody else to produce a design document for my app which already existed. He wouldn’t even look at me when we passed in the hall after this.

I assume that this is not actually what a UX person is supposed to be doing, but I have no idea what their real job is.

The issue with newly emerging and poorly defined professions is that I could apply to any arbitrary position of that title, pretend like I’ve got expertise in a universal structure for it (managers love structure) and sound vaguely knowledgeable (hiring managers often don’t know the subject matter).

By the time they’ve figured out that I’m not actually contributing anything of value, I’m taking off to other pastures that aren’t about to wilt, my experience serving as selling point for the next sucker to hire me.

Of course, the people I just fucked over have no way of telling whether that’s me being a fraud or whether it’s the entire profession that’s actually worthless and overhyped. Some, like you, err on the side of “I assume that person was a cunt”, while others default to “UX is completely useless”.

UI designed existed for forty years at least. The problem, of course, is that few people understand what a designer actually does, unless they’ve met a really good designer.

UX designers will be quick to point out that it’s a related, but separate role from UI. The experience you have with a product starts before actually using it and lasts after you stop.

For example, your product’s presentation sets expectations, and so does the context in which you look for it in the first place. If the actual product doesn’t deliver on that, it’ll lead to frustration, no matter how good it may be at what it actually does. (Of course, if it turns out to be great, that may compensate for the disappointment, but “they liked it anyway” is not exactly what you want to gamble for.)

UX also covers the flow of actions, such as reading comment replies and replying in turn. I need some way to know that there is something worth reading and replying to (which the UI then implements as a red badge), that intuitively leads me to the thing in question (so the UI puts the badge on the Inbox, which then opens to the unread messages) and enables me to do what I want (with buttons, gestures or a menu, or all three).

Often, good UX requires a good UI, and a good UI designer will have a solid grasp on the way users think and act too. They’re closely related and you’ll see many people fusing the two roles, because there’s a lot of overlap between “how do users think” and “how do I communicate what they can do”.

I just think that most UX designers share the UI design responsibility, so it’s not that distinct of a job.

Your initial comment above came off as hostile to UX designers, which is why I felt the need to reply. Afaiu UX design as a discipline appeared around the nineties to early two-thousands, probably influenced by industrial design — so it’s not quite an ‘emerging’ discipline, but it’s surely vague.