An interesting article from “UX for the masses”.
In the early days of UX, UX professionals were a rare and little known breed (if they were a bird, twitchers – that is particularly enthusiastic bird watchers, would travel from miles around to marvel at their strange and unusual plumage). Often as the sole UX representative on a project he or she had to be a one man (or woman) band, a jack of all trades. Equally adept at whipping up some UI designs, extracting requirements from those tricky users, conducting user testing sessions and ensuring that accessibility is of course not forgotten about. As the UX industry has grown, and as the number of UX professionals has grown there is an increasing level of specialisation within UX. Now it seems that someone is no longer just a UX professional, now someone is a UX designer, or a UX researcher, or a UX strategist, or an interaction designer or a mobile UX designer, or a… the list goes on. Roles and responsibilities on a project are typically narrower and it’s often the case that there are designated researchers to carry out the UX research (user feedback, user testing and so on) and designated designers to carry out the UX design (wireframes, prototypes, user journeys and so on). Designers often have little involvement in research, and researchers often have little involvement in design. After all, we don’t won’t to step on anyone’s toes do we. Sure researchers and designers might work in the same office, often in the same team and maybe even in the same room, but they carry out distinctly different jobs. This is a shame. It’s a shame because it creates more of a gap and discourse between research and design. Not just in a physical sense but more importantly in a knowledge, understanding and empathetic sense.
Read More: http://www.uxforthemasses.com/designers-and-researchers/