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The Million-dollar UX career question: Generalise or specialise?

The struggle of UX designers continues with this controversial topic of diversifying or finding a niche

Melody Koh 🤔
Prototypr
13 min readFeb 20, 2023

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A generalist and specialist met at a co-working space, and realised they do the same thing. Thanks Charles for the picture.

I wrote a while ago that designers shouldn’t fall into the UX generalist trap, and that article was targeted specifically at struggling, unemployed UX professionals and junior designers for 2022’s bullish hiring market.

It didn’t sit well with me after; while I know specialising or framing your unique offerings will help you get employment now, the technicalities of this strategy doesn’t really make sense.

There technically is no such thing as generalist or specialist design role, and the only thing that really makes a designer successful is their ability to do the different types of work and deliver.

I specialise, but I am also a ‘generalist’

Those that went to stalk me on my LinkedIn profile would know that I primarily dabble in Fintech, and that industry is seems like my specialisation for product design.

But in my previous job hunt, I was offered positions in other industries like Edtech and enterprise innovation. Both of which I am more than competent enough to take on as a professional.

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Published in Prototypr

Prototyping, UX Design, Front-end Development and Beyond 👾 | ✍️ Write for us https://bit.ly/apply-prototypr

Written by Melody Koh 🤔

Senior product designer ⭐ I write provocative things because I am a provocative person | Follow on LinkedIn: https://shorturl.at/fwyQ0

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