Is UX Designer a Generalist or a Specialist

 
The term "User Experience Design" in digital product development is a full lifecycle of research - define - design - prototype - iterate - test. The specific roles that align to these functions could be anything from user researcher, specialist, graphic designer, art director, content strategist, interaction designer, front-end developer, etc. UX Generalist is a designer who understands this cycle and can contribute at any phase. This has recently been rebranded as a "Full Stack" UX designer, although with more focus on being able to code testable prototypes. It's the T shaped people things - The digital talent should all be generalists with a specialism !
UX is about in-between skills. The ability to understand processes and the workflows making those processes function smoothly for both provider and user. Particularly in this day of age where online is about seamless movement between a combination of tools and services. Knowing tools and processes is good, but our ability to effectively solve problems and teach others how to do the same is the ultimate reason to work in the field of UX Design. The core of experience design is using process and contextual inquiry to gain perspective, which then allows you to simplify the journey and add weight to the remaining emotional fulcrum points. Key words are: PERSPECTIVE and SIMPLIFICATION.
The core of experience design is PERSPECTIVE and the natural enemy of perspective is PRIDE. The core of front end development is a hybrid between elegance of expression, efficiency, and perfectionism. Iteration in development is a very different task from iteration in experience design. Being a perfectionist again comes with a healthy dose of professional pride. You know you're very good, you've worked to be that good, and you're damn proud of it. Key words are PERFECTIONISM and PRIDE. The core of UX design is craft, which means falling in love with your design. An act of love, particularly in this setting, comes with well deserved helping of professional pride in one's work. Key words here: LOVE and PRIDE.
A generalist still has a specialism. You may be knowledgeable about a lot of subjects, but there will always be something you're really good at. In turn it's this overlap of your strengths that creates a specialism that other's don't have. If you are a broadly thinking person and like to consider yourself as a generalist, try to develop a helicopter perspective and you will be asked to give advice as soon as the "specialists" have come up with something which looks good from a very close distance but misses the general problem because he/she is just a specialist. The problem is: to be a good generalist you will need quite some knowledge of quite some fields.
It is about understanding all of the general parts of design and then having specialties makes a lot of sense. A computer scientist can be a generalist in the sense that s/he gets the difference between functional and object oriented code. Might understand the general patterns, but generally, they'll prefer one or two languages and really understand all the subtleties of each. Companies with more experience and a deep understanding of UX are aware of this conundrum and consequently give UX talent an opportunity to work exclusively in discovery and representation of the user perspective on the product. A person who develops UX, must be willing to learn, it is perhaps the most essential to develop this type of work tool, you must be abreast of trends and meet other colleagues have solved problems similar to yours. Specialty in some particular field is always helpful and due to the self-interest of each profile has more knowledge in some area, but it is essential to develop learning in the area required and know where to seek knowledge, but after course there are problems solve specialist so one must be able to meet the right person to ask for advice or where to look.

UX is not just a single business or technical project, it is an important element of your digital strategy, from research to planning; from multi-lenses inquiries to multiple-stage reviews; from visual arts to wire frames, it is not just about a user interface, but an end-to-end” customer experience and about your brand and competency. So UX designer needs to have ‘T-Shaped’ talent.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu