‘UX Professional’ is a bullshit job title. It’s just a way to over-charge naive clients. All web designers should be UX prosless than a minute ago via 
ryancarson
A web site or web app should not be the result of a production line of people.
A web site or app should be the product of a Web Designer and a Web Developer (who occasionally are the same person, as demonstrated by Shaun Inman). Anyone else who is added into this equation is a waste of money and time.
[Update] A lot of folks in the comments and around the web are attacking the above sentence, so let me clarify. At its core a website should be the product of a web designer and a developer. Obviously on larger projects you will need to add various people because the workload would be two much for just two people. However, these people are added for logistical reasons, not strategic. I still strongly believe that if the lead web designer on a project needs someone who specializes in UX because they don’t have a good understanding of solid UX principles, then they shouldn’t call themselves a web designer. Web Design and UX are not two separate disciplines, and UX is not something you add to a project because you have a large budget. [END UPDATE]
I’ve worked in the web industry for 10 years at three different web design agencies and now run my own company who produces websites and apps.
Wikipedia defines User Experience Design as ..
A subset of the field of experience design that pertains to the creation of the architecture and interaction models that impact user experience of a device or system.
I define it as
Advanced knowledge of …
- HTML (including HTML5)
- CSS (including CSS3)
- Responsive Design principles
- Accessibility
- Usability
- User testing
A basic knowledge of …
- Copy writing
- JavaScript
- Marketing
- A/B and multivariate testing
You cannot be a ‘UX Professional’ if you are not an experienced Web Designer and involved in the day-to-day process of designing, building, testing, marketing and updating a web project.
