With all the terms like: experience designer, interaction designer, interface designer and graphic designer floating around out there you could be a little confused. Employers and companies like to put titles on positions, assign duties and pre-requisites for those positions and this is where the confusion starts. Many professions actually overlap and nowadays web designers are required to perform multiple disciplines within their roles.



It is not to say that you could do with any one type of designer, but by knowing the key functionalities of their work, you could decide whom to stress more on

Let me explain the meanings of common titles in the web industry:

Graphic Designer

A graphic designer is responsible for the graphic elements on a website which includes logos, images and buttons. A graphic designer is responsible for all aspects of visual communication to the visitor.

If your website deals majorly with graphical elements, then it is best to stress on this part. The graphic designer can be briefed about what exactly you need of the website to look like.

Interaction Designer

An interaction designer is usually more concerned with how the user interacts and behaves with the website and of course how to website reacts back. They would mainly be concerned with the interactions with the user.

User behavior constitutes critical data and information about consumer preferences and habits, on which you can design your marketing techniques. By knowing what exactly your customers need, you could give them exactly that.

Front end designer

The front end designer usually is responsible for the graphic design that constitutes any HTML, XHTML and CSS coding. Front end designers are quite common and are tasked with many static websites. Once the design requires some database interaction or large functionality it is usually passed off to a developer.

Experience designer

Experience designers focus on the overall holistic experience the user would have with the website or application. Experience design encompasses and overlaps the disciplines of information architecture, graphic design, usability and interaction design.

All these areas of work overlap. And with these role descriptions, you may have come to realize that you cannot do with any one of them. The best deal would be to hire a designer who has considerable knowledge of all these key areas, or else hire a service provider that has team of all these types of designers.