Becoming a UX Unicorn in 5 Easy Steps

UX Strategy with Jared Spool, a Center Centre — UIE newsletter focused on bringing UX to a strategic level inside your organization.

We call them unicorns because they are supposed to be mythical creatures-something that doesn’t exist in the real world. That’s how the nickname came about.

Yet, over the past couple of years, we’ve started meeting people who fit the description of a UX unicorn. They are very real and they are amongst us. We know because we’ve met and studied several dozen of these multi-skilled designers over the past two years.

Guess what we learned? You too can become a UX unicorn.

Welcoming the Jack of All UX Trades

We first heard the unicorn moniker bandied about when job ads started showing up asking for designers who could do interaction design, information architecture, visual design, and even a little coding. The hiring managers seemed to want someone who could do everything. “Who could that possibly be?”, exclaimed the seasoned designers. “Nobody could do all that and be any good,” they’d say.

Since nobody could do all of these things, the jobs would be dismissed as a unicorn hunt. The expectation is the company would come to their senses and hire a team of folks to get the collection of skills they need.