How Do I Know What Type of Designer I Need?
Author: Lis Hubert
With so many different designers to choose from in the web biz, how does an entrepreneur know who they need to solve their specific problem? Figuring out the difference between a usability analyst, information architect, content strategist, interaction designer, interactive designer, graphic designer, etc can be an exhausting process. How does someone figure out the best pick for them? That is what I’m hoping to clear up for you today.
Before I begin, it is important to note that this is an ongoing debate throughout the user experience community, so be forewarned that everyone has a different opinion. This article is meant to give you an idea of the types of titles that are out there, and the basics that you can expect from each. Do, however, keep an open mind on this topic. Also, keep in mind that some people span multiple roles. I’ll do my best to cross reference these when appropriate.
High Level User Experience Role Definitions:
Content Strategist – In my experience, working with a content strategist has been pure joy (as long as they understand their role and are good at what they do). From my point of view, they do all the things that are vitally important to website design and development that I don’t like to do. They are, as their title suggests, focused on creating a strategy for the content that is and should be on your site. According to Kristina Halvorson’s A List Apart article, a content strategist defines for your site:
- key themes and messages,
- recommended topics,
- content purpose (i.e., how content will bridge the space between audience needs and business requirements),
- content gap analysis,
- metadata frameworks and related content attributes,
- search engine optimization (SEO), and
-
implications of strategic recommendations on content creation, publication, and governance.
Basically they help you say what you need to say to the people you are trying to say it to. Hire a content strategist when looking to do content heavy development, when putting up a new site and when looking to create databases of content based on user types.
Graphic Designer - In the UX biz these individuals have been referred to more and more as Visual Designers. They are the ones responsible for making the design digestible and appealing to your audience. They are also the ones in charge of your visual brand development including logos, color palette, and visual treatments. Many of the people in this role began their careers in print and then moved to digital, but this is not always the case. Hire a graphic designer when looking to do the things that YOU see. By this I mean designing logos, colors, page balance and layout, icons, graphics and branding.
Information Architect – Back when I first started in the user experience world, my title, and everyone else’s that I knew was that of information architect. In recent years, as the field has developed, I hardly refer to myself as an IA. Nowadays an information architect focuses much more on the categorization of the information on your site. There is, at times, a fine line between them and your content strategist. However, an information architect tends to focus more on how the navigation and content should be organized as opposed to what should be in there and how the navigation grows over time. WARNING: this is one of the fields that overlaps a great deal with others. For instance I still do a great deal of content categorization in the work I do, but I don’t call myself an information architect. Hire an information architect when looking to have a huge content overhaul and restructuring. This happens in redesigns of very large sites that have a lot of legacy content.
Interaction Designer – Ah yes, the interaction designer. This can be a confusing title and from what I’ve seen has two somewhat different meanings. I still define myself as an interaction designer a good part of my time. To me this type of designer is one that looks at the details of the page and page flows as well as the treatments that are used on the page. They look at how users react to certain interactions, and try to improve the design of their interactions to better fit users. (i.e. should we use a pop up or an overlay, a dropdown or a radio button, etc) Interaction designers go into heavy detail regarding how the product/service should manifest itself through online interactions. Another way that I’ve seen this defined is to add front end, or customer facing, coding along with the definition of the interactions. The people that possess the coding skills are usually the ones creating high fidelity prototypes of your site with dummy data in order to see what works and what doesn’t. Hire an interaction designer when building a web site: period.
Interactive Designer – I’ve usually seen this role referring to flash developers to be honest. I’m sure it could probably also referring to game designers, but I haven’t played too much in this realm.
Usability Analyst – I’ve always seen the usability analyst as the person who works with the interaction or user experience designer to gather requirements regarding user testing. They are then the ones that conduct a usability test and write reports or communicate results back to the team. This profession tends to be very research heavy. Meaning these people are researchers that really try to understand what is usable and what isn’t, and given that knowledge try to inform designers. At times, I’ve found myself playing this role due to my high exposure to the field, but I would not necessarily define myself as such.
User Experience Designer – A term that you’ve heard me use quite a bit, and probably the hardest term to define. I call myself a user experience designer because I firmly believe that is what I do, design experiences for users from start to finish. Along this pathway I may do some information categorization (information architecture) as well as some detailed functional design (interaction designer) but the combination of these along with the ability to develop and keep in mind the product and site wide strategy is to me what makes one a good user experience designer. When we are talking user experience we are talking about the whole as opposed to the pieces.Hire a user experience designer to develop the strategy for your site. Also, hire them when needing someone who can bring UX/Usability to your organization and yet still do some detail interaction design.
Visual Designer – The term that is being used more and more often for graphic designers (see above).
So, that’s the in and out of it. As I mentioned, these high level definitions are based on what I’ve seen throughout the industry, and other people’s views may be different. If there is a role here that I have not touched on that you are curious about, please leave a comment and I will do my best to provide a response.
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