One of the most common mistakes I see made by business people is confusing user experience professionals with graphic or GUI designers. Often when I am interviewing for a position I am asked to show a lot of design samples of my work just like a designer would be asked to do. This very typical line of questioning exposes that the person doing the asking doesn’t really know what they’re after and doesn’t understand the differences between usability and graphic design.

So what is usability, what is graphic design, and how are they different?

Here are two definitions from the Usability Professionals Association website, of which I am a member, for usability:

“[Usability refers to] the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.” - ISO 9241-11

“Human-centered design is characterised by: the active involvement of users and a clear understanding of user and task requirements; an appropriate allocation of function between users and technology; the iteration of design solutions; multi-disciplinary design.” - ISO 13407

In the first definition there is no mention of graphic design while the second definition defines design as a part of usability, which underscores my point that usability and design are not the same thing.

So what is design?

According to Jacci Howard Bear, graphic design is

“ the process and art of combining text and graphics and communicating an effective message in the design of logos, graphics, brochures, newsletters, posters, signs, and any other type of visual communication. Today’s graphic designers often use desktop publishing software and techniques to achieve their goals. ”

And what is the difference?

Usability and graphic design overlap in some of the human-centered design process, but usability starts way before a GUI is defined and includes middle and back-end concerns (e.g., load balancing, response times, definitions of query ladders) that have nothing to do with how pretty the site looks or if the branding is consistent.

Good graphic design can improve the ease of use of a site or application by supporting the tasks and workflow most appropriate to a user group for a site and bad graphic design can make it a nightmare for users.

So how do I gently tell clients that there is a difference between the two and that I am not a graphic designer? Just by laying out what I have above and then showing them what I do have to show as work samples. The kind of work I like to showcase are site evaluations, information architectures, and workflows. I am a firm believer that the majority of usability problems can be solved by analyzing workflows and redefining them; put tasks in their logical order of completion for the user and 80% of your site’s problems will go away.

And what do I do when a client insists on before and after designs? I scrounge around to find a few that I have and again explain the differences between design and usability. It can fall on deaf ears, and that’s ok. I don’t really want to be hired as a usability expert when what the client really wants is a graphic designer who will create a GUI to their needs and not those of the user.

N.B. Since I’ve taken the time to discuss this issue I will be making a concerted effort over the next few weeks to finally build out the ‘Work Samples’ section of this site to display my work.