One factor to consider is the strengths of the area you are targeting, that may explain the abundance of UI/UX jobs. Sometimes you have to be willing to relocate to find the right career advancement opportunities.
Here’s a new title I hadn’t seen before, “Physical UX Designer”.
I thought perhaps the role would be designing how users would interact with physical, screenless products, almost like re-inventing industrial design from a UX starting point, which would be interesting. Turns out it seems like just doing usual UX stuff on the screens of a physical object that isn’t a phone or a computer.
These overlap roles are interesting, in theory they could take the best of Industrial Design and UX design, but oddly they seem under-explored. Any idea why this is? The “interactive device” problem is not rare, look at coffee makers, for example. The buttons are nicely designed, but people seem to struggle to figure out how to use them, on both high end and low end machines.
Would love to hear your perspectives or stories. I’m teaching a “Tangible Interface Design” class at Pratt, exploring interaction design without touch screens. It’s interesting to see designers think of an object during use, in addition to its form.
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@Sturbek I totally agree! I think it goes back to a term I find comfort in: haptic feedback. TV’s used to have knobs to change the channel, now you have smartphone remote control apps to operate your smart tv’s. I think people are realizing this a bit more now. I’m currently in the kitchen countertop appliance world and I work to avoid excess capacitive touch or LCD touchscreen madness. I don’t want to poopoo the idea in general, but for simple products, you want simple solutions right?. My heart aches each time app connectivity enters the conversation for a product as simple as a griddle or a toaster.
As a matter of fact, I strongly disagree with companies that don’t condone planned-obsolescence. The screens are the first thing to age the product, not to mention its the most difficult part of the puzzle to troubleshoot.
@Sturbek I’d love to hear more about your new class at Pratt! Please keep us in the loop, and please reach out if you want any assistance!
Yeah, I can relate to this. It does feel like most job platforms are heavily saturated with ui/ux design roles, even when you’re specifically searching for industrial or physical product design jobs. That overlap in titles makes it harder to filter relevant opportunities.
Using more specific keywords and filters like “industrial design,” “hardware product design,” or excluding ui/ux design terms can help a bit, but it still requires a lot of refining. The way “product designer” is used now has also blurred the line between physical and digital roles, which adds to the confusion.
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