As someone who’s inhabited the user experience field for a while, this recent change of personal and professional context also makes starkly clear – at least to me – how the applied semantics of professional labels persist in being context specific, to cultures on the level of IT / marketing / sales, and to Cultures on the level of American, Dutch, French, etc.

Accordingly, I’m staying away from hard labels as much as possible when working with other people on a problem, be it design, process, UX, biz model, metadata management strategy, whatever.

This is a calculated risk to trade on the strength of the context that I bring with me walking into the room – my personal brand, to the (very!) limited extent that it’s known – show I have confidence in my own value in being in the room and the people who brought me into the room in the first place, and widen the range of my potential contributions and the role I might play by avoiding barriers / boxes / tight definitions.

When working with people who don’t know my personal context – clients, management, the electrician, etc. – I choose a label in cooperation with someone who knows the local lay of the land; how the semantics will apply in the room.

I’ll let you know how it works out.