Are UX Designers the artists of the new era?

Ok. I know the answer is probably no. But I caught your attention, didn’t I?

As a visual artist I was taught to try to capture the main thoughts of our time. We supposedly, instinctively or not, represent the thoughts of the society we are inmersed in. Well, certainly me, personally and individually as an artist only represent myself. But great artists reflect in their works the problems, the main concerns of their eras. And it is definitively not an easy job.

While I was studying the key question that teachers used to make me (and that hunted me until very recent time) was: “What are you trying to convey?” Of course, I was much younger than today and, especially during my first years, I didn’t have an answer. It was only after I finished the bachelors’ degree that I realized some main points of my thoughts that I tried to convey.

To explain it as simple as possible: I wanted to guard and represent the main core of human civilization, of culture and contrast it with modern life and globalization. The “old” with the “new”. I was hunted by Hegels’ thesis, antithesis and synthesis. There is something uniquely imbibed in embroidery, for example, that is the conception of time. Time, as we measure it today, was not known during the 19th century and the other way around. The idea of endless time to pursue perfection in a handcrafted item that will only serve as a handkerchief. And, ultimetly, contrast it with action painting, something very brutal. This was the center of my thesis.

That idea of time today is useless. Today is fast an stormy, unpredictable and constantly moving. We as a society are also way pass the idea of time is money, time today is everything. We are not going through a civil war as Picasso’s’ Guernica expressed more clearly than anything else in his time. We are going through a pandemic time where social distance is key. Even before COVID 19, our time conception differed from the 19th century’s conception. We don’t even have time to make a phone call. We have constant exposure to stimulus online every second.

Nowadays the apps that keep us on constant movement and connections with other all around the world are thought by UX /UI designers that came up after research and analysis of the users with the app and design that best suits our needs. Needs that we, as users, may not even put into words properly. They… maybe in a near future I will join their ranks, put into icons, layers and wireframes the needs and thoughts of our time. Isn’t this closely related to performing arts, for example?

I absolutely loved my first career. However I thought that something was missing. I don’t consider myself as representative of my generation or any less. I didn’t want to make beautiful art to hang form a wall. Something was missing. I wanted to do something that surely improved people’s lives, that helped, that have a function. That’s why UX /UI Design came to me as a life’s savior. Is design, it has functionality. And only then, it’s beautiful.

Please, let me join you.