Is the User Experience Designer job title changing?

I find interest in reading job descriptions, for several reasons. One is to know where the industry is going and validate my own competence within the industry. Do I need to learn new things or is my line of work not of use? Questions I like to reflect on when I read job descriptions.

A few years ago one could read job descriptions of User Experience Designer close to what I studied at the university. Still best represented by Jesse James Garrets 15-year-old illustration of The Elements or User Experience:

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Source: http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf

This year however I see a change of the User Experience Designer. On almost half of the job descriptions I’ve read (in Swedish) the User Experience Designer is described as an employee who will work with:

  • HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript
  • Photoshop
  • Mobile API

To me this is a Front End Developer with knowledge in Graphic Design, but not a User Experience Designer. But I’ve been wrong before and maybe the User Experience Designer job title is changing?

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