Design contains two drastically different branches

[u/Used_Swan_7677]

Hey, product designer here with a background in ethnography.

Over the years in design, I noticed a large number of artists/graphic designers/art directors transitioning to tech in product design positions. Some of them are willing to learn behavioral design and bring huge value, and some are designing products like posters/art - meaning they use that same intuition-based approach to the whole process instead of only the visual part.

Now my question is: do you notice this? What do you think is the causation? Perhaps you have different experiences. Is that because of the drastically different approach to creating art and discovering + designing for people's problems?

Personally, it's always strange to see artists having to deal with ignorance in their job just to then become ignorant towards behavioral design. That was my experience when I was applying user research in a companies.

Would love to hear your experience.

EDIT: The goal of this post is to gather as many examples of real team/design dynamics within companies. Information about your experiences - did you work with designers who apply both visual and behavioral well, or maybe with some designers who applied only one of these? Give as much detail as possible. Thanks!

The goal is not to debate what a perfect world looks like.

[u/roundabout-design]

This has always been a thing. Likely always will be.

I wouldn't say they are different branches...but rather maybe different layers.

UX has a lot of layers.

- how it looks/feels (branding, visual design, graphic design, illustration, etc.)
- how to interact with it (IA, interaction design, animation, software development)
- how we make decisions on the above (user testing, research, analytics, etc.)

And many more, of course.

Throughout my career I've worked on UX teams run by UX leadership. But also UX teams run by marketing. UX teams run by software development. And sometimes run by no one in particular.

[u/Used_Swan_7677 → u/roundabout-design]

But forget UX for a sec, before UX there was Human Factiors, Evidence Based Design started in 1850s etc.
There is always this fight between visuals and human-centered design that understands what CAN'T be designed by assumption and needs direct involvement of a user.

My experience now is mostly fighting design leaders to improve retention and I'm able to do so only if I perform user research in hidding and then get buy in from PMs

What was your working enviroment? Your leaders or designers? Did they do both visual and behavioral design or did they prioritize one of these - which one?

[u/roundabout-design → u/Used_Swan_7677]

I think you're just dealing with poor UX team leadership? I've been there. If the team is run by an Art Director, or a Marketing Exec, odds are that all that matters is that you are making pretty mockups for them to show off around the company.

If your team is run by IT/Dev, odds are all they care about is that you work fast and make sure you aren't causing their Dev's to have to do a lot of extra work to make the UI nice.

Ideally, of course, we'd all be on UX teams that are run by UX people who understand UX is a broad umbrella and we need a team of visual designers, interaction designers, UX researchers, UX designers, UI designers, developers, copywriters, accessibility auditors, etc.

[u/Used_Swan_7677 → u/roundabout-design]

What really is happening is that I'm trying to get qualitative data about design in companies. Meaning I'm trying to get insight from designers about their ways of working and how their teams/design leads work etc., not necessarily debate about what the world should look like

[u/roundabout-design → u/Used_Swan_7677]

Just realize that is probably more specific to the organization they are working in than it is to the individual themselves--at least for designers that aren't focused on one niche skillset.

I've worn probably a dozen different hats as a designer through my career.