Towards professionalization in an online community of emerging occupation: Discourses among UX practitioners

Yubo Kou, Colin M. Gray

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

26 Scopus citations

Abstract

The occupational landscape of the digital economy is rapidly changing, resulting in the emergence of multidisciplinary occupations. Emerging occupations such as user experience (UX) design are in high demand, but these occupations lack clear boundaries and have yet to develop into a profession with a specified, coherent body of knowledge. While traditional occupations such as medicine and law successfully claimed their professional jurisdiction and high social power and status long before the Internet, how do these emerging occupations work towards professionalization, particularly as they are increasingly supported by and through online communities? In this paper, we investigate an online UX community to understand how UX practitioners specify their occupational knowledge and professional boundaries. Using this case as an example and provocation, we discuss how online communities support the emergence of new occupations and may play an indispensable role in modern day patterns of professionalization.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationGROUP 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Conference on Supporting Groupwork
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages322-334
Number of pages13
ISBN (Print)9781450355629
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 7 2018
Event2018 ACM Conference on Supporting Groupwork, GROUP 2018 - Sanibel Island, United States
Duration: Jan 7 2018Jan 10 2018

Publication series

NameProceedings of the International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work

Conference

Conference2018 ACM Conference on Supporting Groupwork, GROUP 2018
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySanibel Island
Period1/7/181/10/18

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Computer Science

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