I am honestly getting more than a little weary of the constant territorialism in our industry. It is perhaps a natural consequence of a relatively new discipline still trying to find its footing, and define its role and identity, but I wonder how meaningful it really is, and how much of it is just a distracting knee-jerk reaction.

As UX work becomes more prevalent and more commonplace, we see practitioners defensively narrowing their positions, and fragmenting their responsibilities – presumably to protect themselves against feared incursions from other disciplines, or perhaps in desperate attempts to appear more relevant. This results in a proliferation of increasingly niche responsibilities and skillsets, and it does not seem productive.

Fundamentally, these things are all interconnected. There is no reason to incessantly try to define and own little fiefs within the larger domain – it just reduces and limits us as UX practitioners.

Don’t get me wrong, specialization can be a good thing, but it doesn’t have to mean a conscious narrowing of scope. You can focus on something without losing sight of the broader context. Specialized expertise comes naturally with experience, and if you narrow your perspectives prematurely, you may actually end up strangling your understanding of the discipline, and reduce your grasp of the bigger picture. In essence, you’d be digging yourself a hole that might be difficult to climb out of.

UI doesn’t exist in a vacuum – in fact, it could be argued that this is the very reason for why the distinction of the term ”UX” was created in the first place, and why ”CX” even exists.

UX may not be synonymous with CX, but a UX designer will only stand to lose from being separated from the broader consumer context.

UI may not be synonymous with UX, but it is definitely part of it, and isolating it just means the discipline loses some of its cohesion.

UI may not be synonymous with graphic design, but pretending they are unrelated simply weakens the relevance of the discipline. UI used to be called GUI, the ”G” representing the graphic (abstract, visual) nature of interfaces. You really cannot divorce graphic design from UI; the former is the foundation for the latter. A UI designer really needs to understand typography, color, value, proportions, composition, texture, contrasts, etc etc. Yes, they do need to understand more than that, but those are the basics.

You don’t automatically become a good UI designer by being a good graphic designer, but if you don’t know the basics, you’ll be neither.

At this point, it seems to me, we need to be building bridges between the different disciplines, as opposed to creating islands.