Do you feel that while UX is at one end of the spectrum, visual designers at the other - UI Designers sit squarely in between them?
I ask cause I love visual design, making elements pleasant to look at, enticing user to push buttons or guide their eye to areas I want them to look at. But I also spend huge amounts of time time thinking about user flows, scenarios and tasks, how one page flows to another, how it all connects and constantly going around asking/testing with people if the flow is confusing or interfaces aren't clear on what they should do.
To paraphrase from Yves Behar, "there are two kinds of designers. Good ones and bad ones. Good ones can do all kinds of designs. Bad ones invent new subsets of design to excuse their failings."
To me, the spectrum ranges from Functionality to Aesthetic; each type of design can be approached from a more functional or more aesthetic approach.
There is UX that 'feels' amazing but is used in an insubstantial product (aesthetic UX) just as there is functional visual design—think of the IKEA catalog which emphasizes visual simplicity as a means to sell, in addition to the 3D rendered scenes used to save in production cost.
Personally I don't like the "UX designer" job title, but would put UI Design and Visual Design under the umbrella of UX (ala JJG's classic "elements of UX" diagram http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf)
Do you feel that while UX is at one end of the spectrum, visual designers at the other - UI Designers sit squarely in between them?
I ask cause I love visual design, making elements pleasant to look at, enticing user to push buttons or guide their eye to areas I want them to look at. But I also spend huge amounts of time time thinking about user flows, scenarios and tasks, how one page flows to another, how it all connects and constantly going around asking/testing with people if the flow is confusing or interfaces aren't clear on what they should do.
I guess UI Designers are half UX and half Visual?