A few months ago I was thrilled to be officially deemed a "UX Engineer" (UXE) at LogMeIn. I was going to get the chance to build Design Systems! Bu...
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Emma, thanks for the awesome article. The description of your role seems like the job I'd like to have someday.
How is your interaction with other front-end developers that rely on your guidelines, style guides and so on? Do they have a say or participate in some level on your flow?
They 110% participate because they're my main stakeholders ;)
Thanks for your answer!
My overall feeling about this is being stuck, though. I can’t seem to figure out how to fit that expertise in my team. We don’t have designers. The team decides together the best solution to build in our applications, we pretty much vote for it.
So how do you think, in this scenario, would a UX Engineer fit? If I look at your example, you mention being the translator between design and pure front-end, does that mean I’d need to take the role of designer along with UX?
Emma does
This is awesome. Thank you for sharing! I hope more UXE jobs will become a thing in the near future.
Me tooo!
Haha, yes me too.
I tried this a few years ago. After I finished my computer science and media bachelor, I started as a front-end developer. Then in my master studies, I focused on usability and such things.
Tried to get into the User Experience field, but I had the feeling that Germany wasn't ready. There weren't many jobs. The jobs that were didn't have any engineering aspect, often they were about writing formal design specifications and on the top of it, they were all much worse paid than my previous development jobs. :/
Great article. Thanks for writing it. Do you work much with marketing in your UXE role? I'm just wondering if / when the line between marketing and development will close. I think there is already an overlap in the skills required to be a great marketer and a great UX engineer but have not heard much of them working directly together.
Not so much! But I'm open to it!
Great article! Late last year my job title was redefined as "UX Engineer", so I'm glad this is something that's happening in other companies as well!
Experiences will differ for everyone, of course, but being a UXE in a large organization surprised me in ways I didn't expect. Here are some of those surprises, in no particular order:
I've been operating under Brad Frost's description of a Front-end Designer to describe the role I fill as a more user-focused front-end developer but most folks think I'm a visual or UI designer. I really enjoy the UX Engineer title and description, it fits what I do better, including existing between the design and engineering teams.
Thanks for this article!
Awesome!
I looked around on the internet about the role of UXE a while back but didn't find much stuff on it. I am a FE and I've always had an inclination towards UX and design. I hope they become a thing in India soon! 🙂
Interesting, this is the first time I've run into the term UXE, but it seems to describe a lot of what I do as a "Design Technologist", except that I came from the design side instead of the dev side of things.
Yes, Design Tech is also the term I'm familiar with -- sounds like they're different titles for the same role.
I'm curious why you've put REST API to the frontend. Sure, the frontend is the consumer, but does this involve designing the REST API? I thought this was the task of the backend.
If the REST API was designed after the requirements of the frontend, but the data model stays the same, the controllers/views need to fill the resulting gap and become fat. API optimization for a specific consumer also hinders reusability of the REST API by other consumers. Aren't skinny controllers/views what we should strive for?
So I explained to someone else that at IBM the FE devs were responsible for REST APIs. This can also be a BE responsibility. Depends where you are!
And what do you think works better? Any general advice or does it depend on the project?
I assure you that you will regret letting today's typical front end developer own performance. Performance is a user experience concern and today's typical front end developer is more like a backend developer when I got started in the industry. The vast majority are inclined to impatiently dismiss the the diverse needs of end users.
Awesome article! Thank you! Based on your description this sounds like a job I would LOVE! I am new to the tech world, barely getting me feet wet with coding. I wanted to know, did you go to school for any of this? I am debating on studying computer science, but I’m not sure about it just yet. I would love to get into developing and design but I have no idea where to start. Tech is so vast, I want to do it all! 😭 any tips would be greatly appreciated!
Really good article, this should be read by many product chiefs. based on my experience, most of the small- and middle-sized companies have UXE hired as FE devs 😅
however, this merge of designer and FE dev seems like the story with full-stacks. They know stuff from both worlds, but it's impossible to be good in both. good FE developer is always better in FE than good full stack. for me, at least, it is important for a specialist to work on their field constantly, then they always has up to date knowledge and growth as a professional.
I would rather have one good designer, who is really into UI and UX, work closely with FE developer, who is really good at front end, to build a Design System.
Hi Emma. Interesting concept, I hadn’t heard of it before.
The only thing I didn’t quite like was the pizza diagram. I’m the beginning you said that UXE is a subclass of FEE but then you separated them on the pizza and even put REST API for FEE whereas it should be backend. The way I understand it, Frontend Engineers can lean towards architecture, performance, design or UX. The UX ones are called UXE as you’re explaining.
Thanx for sharing.
REST APIs can be FE or BE depending upon which company and team you work for. At IBM FE devs were responsible for coding it in Java. Don't ask me why lol. The separation there is to indicate the skills that don't necessarily overlap, but I can see where the confusion could come into play. Thanks!
Oh... here's where you've explained it to someone else. :-)
The way I interpreted the REST API in the front-end is that, to a consumer of that API, the REST API is the front end of your system. You may have an actual UI that consumes it, but have other systems consuming the REST API to get at your data. A badly-designed API is a user-experience nightmare for those that consume it.
Thanks for this article, I think it's really helpful to better define these type of roles.
It seemed like more topics were focused on the aesthetic UI layer with hints of UX isolated to the usability of components. It seems like you also have the opportunity to be the liaison for more than just the singular usability of a component, but also UX principles in general, such as the 10 heuristics of user interface design (nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability...).
For example being sensitive to the user's need in your context and the flow and actions taken to achieve their tasks. Then using that knowledge to collaborate with the front-end team to ensure the intent behind the design is captured, or extending it in way that satisfies the user's needs and not just the design language.
This comment issn't as much of a critique, as it is an excitement to see the opportunities these type of roles provide us as a way to ensure a user centered design process.
Thoughts?
No no definitely. I incorporated more UI principles in here because they're a bit easier to comprehend for non-designers and they're a bit "sexier." I could have written about information architectures, user flows, etc. but those aren't as fun :P Seriously though I think I'll update it! Thanks!
Thanks Emma for the great article and I finally think I found the perfect title for what my daily role is.
One question though, have you found yourself being pulled into developing complete features on top of primary role? It seems like the if the cut off point is done properly, the development should take over for the implementation steps or is that line still blurry?
At some point the dev teams must connect the store to the components yep; that shouldn't be your job too
Indeed - thanks again. Cheers
Thank you for posting a very nice article!
UX engineers are not yet widespread in Japan.
So we would like to translate this article into Japanese and post it here.
Would you give me permission to translate and publish it?
Thanks for finally sharing! All jokes aside, great article!
Long ago, this was called a "User Interface Architect", to differentiate from a UI designer (who specified UIs) and a UI developer (who built specific UIs). The "architect" label is often used for roles that work across projects, such as managing design systems. As design systems become more popular, we will need more people in roles like this. Thanks for sharing your story.
Brilliant! I have been a UXE for over a decade and have never seen it defined before. For me it was born out of necessity at a place where there was no UX, just graphic designers and front end devs who HATED each other. Used UX as a tool to bridge the gap.
Book or any other resource to know about basic UX design principles ?
Lean UX, Refactoring UI (more UI than UX), Hooked
TIL I'm an UX Engineer
Would you say that the push to adopt web components over a framework in a given company might start with the UXE?
Absolutely!
Thanks for this article!! For years I've struggle trying to be a front end without having a degree in computer sciences, and having a design approach to it. Always trying to figure out if I am a designer or front end, always in the middle. For a long time I thought the role was dead. Now I know I am a UXE, because I love CSS and UX and implement designs with interaction.
I hope more company's start realizing that they need a UXE.
Thanks
It's really interesting had not heard about UX engineer before, a very interesting breakdown of the what the role is about.
This sounds like a 'force-multiplying' type role, which makes the most sense after you have reached a certain number of UX and FE and one UXE would be better than one UX or one FE.
What sort of ratios/scale do you think works best for UXE? One UXE supporting 5, 10, 20, or more FE's?
I've never realized it before, but going by this article I'm more of a UX Engineer than a Front-end Developer!
This essentially describes and should define what a Senior Front-end Engineer is and should know.
In my opinion it should be what all good Front-end engineers should know and do and the UX part should be an obvious concern and responsibility of the Front-end role in general.
Emma; First, thank you for this article. This is very similar to the role I'm currently working in. Can I ask how you manage the pull request process for versioning control? I've been asked to find case studies or examples of how other teams are better incorporating their UX Designers into UX Engineer roles where they actually create PRs and manipulate the UI code a little more so the developers can focus more on backend functionality.
Hey Emma, really nice article! Thanks for the guidance!
Can recommend something to improve problem solving skills ?
Wouldn't surprise me that these sorts of roles would eventually crop up. I define the whole stack engineer process as design, the coding to bring about that design, the middle end that deals with communication between that design and the back end, and the back end, with heavy collaboration between each parties partner (meaning the middle ends get more interaction because they sit beside more neighbors).
From what I've seen, the area is growing, I just did not know exactly what division I would have with the other areas.
Very good explication.
I love the definition of the role! Nice article
Wow! Thank you so much for writing all of this up. It's very exciting to see this role starting to emerge!
Thank you for sharing information.
Thanks so much for this. I don't know how to say this but it really helps me a lot.
Thanks Emma, thanks to you I now have something of a title to describe my work (for years), when I couldn't explain that I do design& code AND meddle into UX decisions :D
I love this. This is my ideal role. Going to see how I might transition to something like this at my current job. Thanks for providing so much detail!
I'm a UXE too from 5 years (previous known as Frontend Designer / UI Engineer) but in my country this role is legendary. Do you know a way to convince companies instead of UXE?
Hmm. I guess I finally found a better word to explain my job.