UX engineer: The essential role no-one’s heard of
Does it sometimes feel like your engineers are talking a different language to your UX designers? That’s because, in many ways, they are. But this isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s great. It means they’re true dab hands in their respective fields. It’s also why engineers and designers can struggle meeting in the middle when it comes to UX.
When your engineers are saying “React this” and “Node that”, it’s because their happy place is at the back end of product development.
But so much of what’s important from a UX perspective happens in the browser with HTML and CSS, which sits further towards the front end of development. And then there are your designers, whose focus is creating a product that’s straightforward, functionally delightful and visually stunning. Their work impacts the front-front end of development, where it is turned into HTML/CSS by your engineering team.
Here’s the thing though: users can’t actually experience your product if your designers’ concepts aren’t faithfully developed.
Great UX design without thoughtful, intelligent development is like making a car without doors. It looks lovely from the outside, but you can’t do much driving if you can’t get inside it, can you?
Sound like you’re missing a piece of the puzzle?
Enter the UX engineer: someone with expertise that stretches across design AND development.
These wizards have the know-how to ensure brilliant design work is transformed into a product that will flourish in terms of its accessibility, architecture and aesthetics.
And, quite remarkably, almost every company and UX design agency doesn’t seem to have a UX engineer (or even know their role exists ).
So what is a UX engineer?
It’s somebody who is a developer at heart, with knowledge of everything from React to HTML/CSS, but with a focus on UX.
A UX engineer bridges the gullies between your engineers and designers by having an understanding across both disciplines. Essentially, this means UX engineers appreciate that great code (and following coding best practices) is the bedrock of great UX.
What’s a good analogy for a UX engineer?
Think of them as someone with skills that lie between an architect and a builder.
They can read and help draw (or engineer) the blueprints for your house, but they also understand bricklaying, roofing, wiring and plumbing.
It means when the decorators (or designers) come in to feng shui your swanky pad (or digital product), there’s no chance of bumpy walls, leaky pipes or wobbly foundations. Your decorators can just get on with their job.
How do UX engineers help the user?
They understand that performance is more than just page loading speed, taking a holistic approach that ticks all the boxes across development and design.
Alongside your designers, UX engineers will be on top of applying best practices for usability and accessibility, like page layout, visibility and colour contrast, unique situational challenges for your users and, of course, user testing.
They’ll help make your product an inclusive experience for all your users too. Thinking about data input options for people of all gender expressions, international alphabets (for users who span different continents and cultures) and minimising data download (for users in areas where having WiFi and 4G would be a luxury not a given).
Supporting your engineers, they’ll cover all the other crucial bits and bobs that contribute to great UX, like internationalisation and localisation techniques, adaptability and performance across different browsers and devices.
It’s a lot to take into account (in fact, the above is merely the tip of the development iceberg). And it’s no surprise when some of these UX must-haves get lost in the gap between engineers and designers.
Why not just train engineers in design skills (and vice versa)?
There are many great reasons to familiarise your engineers and designers in each other’s disciplines (as we discovered at Config), but that can only take your team so far.
The UX engineer is a specialised role with all those wonderfully unique, cross-functional skills above. And your engineers and designers are boffins in their individual fields for a reason. That’s where you want them to focus their energy (even if it’s beneficial they have an appreciation of one another’s artistry).
OK, I’m sold. What now?
It just so happens that we know a couple of these unicorns. The UX engineer helps ensure that the UX designs we create with our clients are implemented with such expertise.
Interested in integrating this role in your team? Let’s chat.
