[mtjl79]

No, you're incorrect.

UX (User Experience) is about designing exactly that - an experience. It's about being extremely detail oriented, mathematical inclination (sifting through metrics, a/b testing data, CTR, bounce rates, etc.), willingness to sit down and focus on one concrete task at a time, sifting through hours of user video seeing how people interact with an application and then finding solutions to make the UX more smooth. Sound familiar to what you wrote about your "programmer"?

Not so different after all it seems.

EDIT: Everyone seems to confuse UI design with UX design. They are very different, and in some cases are different job descriptions.

[phamilton]

UX is about empathy. Understanding how other people think and the emotions they feel. All those tools you mention are metrics to keep score, but without an understanding of how your users think you are playing a fun game of guess and check. Sure with enough iterations and metrics you can figure out anything, but your users won't give you that many chances. Someone who can get the initial design in the right ballpark and use metrics to fine tune it is your UX guy. As I programmer I really struggle putting together a viable initial UX, and I don't think I'm unique in that struggle.

Quite frankly, it's because I think very differently from most people and have trouble understanding their thought process. I'm not introverted or especially socially awkward or any of those engineering stereotypes. Everything from my ability to creatively approach problem solving to my subtle dry sense of humor is because of my different way to think about things. But when I need to think like everybody else, I just can't do it. That's why I need a UX guy.