I don’t code, I have never done wireframes or designed icons, for me those are software engineer tasks. But I do know a huge amount about usability, testing, and user behaviour from the individual to the organisational and social/cultural. I know nothing about branding, in the UK there are chartered members of the institute of marketing who do that stuff. I have worked with users, run usability tests, done card sorts, project managed user centred design processes and helped develop international standards in user centred design. I have never done personnas or the user journey but I have done user requirements (ethnography) and user observation, I have defined users’ characteristics. I have never done the information architecture but I have done task analysis and applied psychology and GUI standards to interface design.

The problem with our area is too many people are running around saying they can do all these things and web agencies ask for people who can do all these things. Most are amateurs who have been to a few workshops, read a few books and can code a bit. Very few are qualified professionals in a specific area e.g. applied psychology, marketing, software engineering etc. The result is that they are re-inventing methods, standards and processes

I have had these people stare at me in disbelief with comments such as “you can’t have been in usability that long it all started with the web 2002″, “if you can’t do wireframes you are not a user centred designer” (oops I wrote the standards); “ergonomics is soooo last century”; ” you are just NOT in our space, usability is about facebook, twitter and branding – that’s the user journey”. “GUI standards do not apply to web, they are too old fashioned”. Again oops with rich internet applications GUI standards are very applicable. Also I have never worked in a web agency and I am not young, sexy or hip person who splashes my personal life on facebook.

So as a middle-aged unemployed usability and user centred design expert who has faced these misconceptions, prejudices and requirements for the impossible individual (must do everything from user requirements, coding to usability testing and through life support with some branding thrown in) I do not believe in the UX Tribe.

I DO believe in the need for highly qualified individuals from a range of disciplines working together. So fewer amateurs and more professionals are needed with a real understanding of the long history of usability (BW -before web) and the complexity that user centred design is and should be.

I don’t think UX as an “umbrella term” is fallen. Frankly, it’s an easy “elevator pitch” term to use with the outside (“real”) world. But, is your beef really with UX? Because your post seems to use IxD vs. IA as the issue…

How about this metaphor: Someone in the culinary or food services industry may refer to themself as a “chef” but we know this is not an accurate term. It is an easy term to use when “talking to the outside world” but it does not fully articulate his or her skills. Is this person an executive chef, a sous chef, a station chef, a pastry chef, a pantry chef? One could even argue that a pastry chef works on an entirely different “product.”

Now, do each of these roles have similar goals despite possessing different skills? Sure. Are some roles more skilled than another? Yes. Is one role more important than the other? It’s debatable. Can one person who wears one of these hats also wear another? Sure.

Now although you’ll likely pick apart my metaphor, my simple point is to say, “So what?” Yes, there are both similarities and differences. That’s why we use “UX” to describe a whole cadre of “tools” that can be used. I think it becomes confusing when we intermingle the skill (i.e., interaction design) with the identity, or how we identify ourself to others (i.e., I am an interaction designer). It’s the label we place on ourselves that is too limiting, IMHO.

Why does a discussion of similarities or differences need to be mutually exclusive? I have strengths and weaknesses as a professional in this “UX” landscape. If I don’t have one tool, I either get it or ask someone who has that skill for help.

Perhaps the real discussion should focus on needed skills for the profession and knowing when it’s worthwhile to acquire them vs. asking someone for help.

What we call ourselves isn’t important. If you look at our DNA, it might be similar to how Todd Zaki Warfel screates personas with “DNA” – http://toddwarfel.com/archives/persona-templates-v2/ That is, if you lay out all of the UX skills that a person can possess, we would all register at varying levels for each skill, regardless of what we call ourselves.

We need the notion of user experience to reflect the focus of our design efforts – it’s where the people meet our products.

Most importantly though, I’m glad the title is serving you well. Keep using it for your cultural battles that you seem to have. I think though that since Graphics, ixD, and ID are not limited to the software world where UX really resides/was born, holding onto it for these disciplines is not helpful, and in fact is negative.

I still fall back on, do GOOD software design and that entails using the philosophy of UCD to guide your process. Calling it UX in any way is a distraction to really achieving that. Maybe I’ve just had some bad experiences, but I’m stickin’ to it. ;-)

The reason it’s nice to use the term “experience design” and to cast a wide net for skills is that, on most projects, you get only one such person, whatever it is. So that’s why the T-model approach to skills span is nice….someone who has a breadth of skills but maybe is really focused on IxD…but you still need that person to do some usability engineering, or perhaps come up with a menu system for the software, or apply an opinion on the visual design of the frame of the software.

I’m thinking too of Terry Winograd’s “Bringing Design to Software” (1996). Amazingly, 13 years later, it still stands up a s quite valid and appropriate book. Seems to apply to this discussion, too.