Not Just Semantics
In a few months, I’ll start a new role as «Design Operations Specialist». It sounds impressive, structured – maybe even a bit mechanical. Compared to my current UX/UI title, it feels … less human somehow. Less like someone who thinks about people, and more like someone who manages systems.
And maybe that’s the point. At Vorwerk, I’ll be working closely with our internal design system. The users I’ll be designing for are no longer end-users in the traditional sense – they’re the designers and developers inside the company, the ones building the interfaces. It’s meta-design work. Necessary and interesting, but it feels more like "enabling" than creating.
At V-ZUG, I work as a UX/UI Designer. A broad title – and that’s why I like it. It leaves space for ambiguity. I’m designing screens, sure, but also asking questions. Talking to people. Digging through problems that aren’t always visual. Right now, we’re in the middle of a full app redesign. We’re aligning it with the brand identity, rethinking interaction patterns, figuring out how to make an app for ovens and washing machines feel … human? I guess? That’s not something you can automate – or reduce to a best practice.
And yet, in this job and the next, I still just call myself a designer.
I read recently that both Shopify and Duolingo dropped «UX» from their job titles. Now everyone’s just a "designer". On paper, it sounds simpler. In practice, it feels like a slow erasure. «UX» was never just a label – it was a way of saying: this person speaks for the user.
But when we strip labels down to the bare minimum, what else gets lost?
The word «UX» was never perfect. People misunderstood it. Confused it with UI. Or saw it as vague, soft, optional. But it stood for something – it meant someone was paying attention to how a thing feels, not just how it looks. It meant there was someone at the table thinking about edge cases, user research, real-world constraints.
To be honest, a reframing of the discipline as "just design" feels like a step back. Because when everything is design, then nothing is. If the same word applies to graphic design, product design, wallpaper patterns, and UI systems – what does it tell us, really?
I’ve been in rooms where the user’s voice was the first to disappear. Where stakeholders imagined themselves into the user’s shoes and called it research. Where design became decoration. In those moments, titles mattered. «UX» wasn’t a badge of honor – it was a reminder of responsibility. A signal: I’m here to represent people who aren’t in the room.
So when people say titles don’t matter, I disagree.
They matter to recruiters scanning resumes. They matter in meetings, when someone asks for "just a quick design" and you have to explain that no, what you need first is a better understanding of the problem. They matter when AI tools like Figma plugins promise to generate UIs from prompts, making everyone feel like a designer – but forgetting that design is more than assembling blocks. It’s thinking. Choosing. Making trade-offs.
That’s the part AI doesn’t do. That’s the part fast tools can’t replicate.
So I’m not nostalgic about the title itself. I don’t need to defend UX as a brand. What I want is clarity – and space. Space to keep the focus on the people we're designing for. Space to keep reminding myself and others that this work isn’t just about elegance or efficiency – it's about empathy, too.
Maybe that’s why this shift in vocabulary unsettles me. It’s not just semantics. It’s the frame through which we understand our roles. And when the language gets blurry, the priorities do too.
Maybe that’s why I still care about the words. Not to sound important – but to stay responsible.