Many years ago, it seemed to me that usability positions were largely the same. Gradually, the usability field has subdivided (or, I've become aware of the subdivisions!) so that we now have at least user researchers, usability testers, interaction designers, and visual designers. Increasingly, I feel like I'm seeing the emergence of what I might call "emotional designers".
I've been at a couple talks lately where people have spoken of a product as involving functionality, usability and delight. Sometimes "brand" gets added to that list, but I think that "brand" is probably more a byproduct of those rather than another category. The "delight" aspect was sometimes spoken of in the past, but it is more prominent these days.
I became very aware of this today in a design meeting. We were discussing the design for a wizard. I was making the point that from an interaction design standpoint, the first several parts of the wizard were irrelevant to the user. The user knows they want to install something, so the whole "welcome to this wizard" panel, for instance, is really a nuisance. Indeed, the splash screen, welcome, and license agreement pages are things I think most people get through as fast as they can without reading them closely, so they're a detriment from a gestural viewpoint.
At the same time, my colleague was making the point that the presence of the welcome page provides the user with a sense of comfort and security. Something like "Ah, now I know things are under control, I'm not being pestered by the computer and I can proceed when I want to". He was right, of course. That emotional state is important. Wizards are usually a pain. Why add to that pain by immediately interrogating the user with a 'where should I install this" question?
Pleasantly enough, we eventually found a possible solution that satisfied both of us, so all ended well.
For me, though, the interesting thing was that one of us took on the role of arguing for interaction usability while the other took on the role of arguing for emotional usability, and this was a surprisingly easy separation to make.
I think we'll see more and more attention to the emotional impact of interfaces in usability circles as time goes on.