I recently came across this interesting post defining the different industry job titles and their functions.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3032719/ui-ux-who-does-what-a-designers-guide-to-the-tech-industry

As a designer with hands-on front-end programming skills, and as one who has managed and built design teams,  I’ve always felt that hands-on programming experience allows designers to execute better designs.

Understanding what it takes to produce a design (beyond crafting wireframes, composites and  graphic assets) often means that scalability, ease of future release changes, and production efficiency are considerations reflected in the design solution. I’ve worked with designers without this knowledge and have seen them create stunning solutions that unfortunately are difficult-to-implement, and even more cumbersome to maintain as upgradable entities.

So does the design-only team model lead to programmed solutions that require more development hours to produce, maintain, and release?

Looking at the functional descriptions of the roles detailed in the article, I see none explicitly include any hands-on front-end development tasks.  I’ve yet to work in a team environment where front-end development was a separate function performed entirely by a different group.  I know this model exists, though I would truly be disappointed to find myself entirely relegated to development-free tasks.

I also have to wonder: do other designers like myself with front-end development skills feel limited or disappointed in roles where they’re not building at least some piece of their designs?

As I get ready to embark on a search for my next role, I also worry that my next design job will be development-free, and my technical skills will downgrade and suffer as a result. In turn, I may lose the ability to consider production efficiency as I design.

I also know I wouldn’t be happy as front-end developer without design responsibilities. My strength as a designer is my primary trade, and my development tasks and abilities are better suited to creating templates for build-responsible productions teams. Naturally I’m slower at producing code, because I’m concentrating on writing it for efficient and easy production by others, rather than mass-producing a high volume, myself.

So where does someone with my skills fit into the UI/UX world?