There are still many courses here in anthropology, social & cognitive psychology, etc. In other countries, where Human Factors certification is prevalent, you still find that very few people calling themselves web UX specialists have any of these quals – coming predominantly from graphic design or coding backgrounds. HF, anthropology, and psych ppl in technology usually work in mission critical jobs.

@Ash – Do you think that some of the issues around the lack of certification is the small availability of psych/human factors course? I did human factors through remote learning…but the remote course was shut down quite a few years ago.

The closest you’ll get me to front-end dev are tools like Axure or OmniGraffle. I only use the minimum effort required to communicate to my respective audiences how the system will work. Most of the time, I don’t need more than pen & paper – or to formalise it – a few wireframes in a storyboard.

For you, though Gary, since you’re comfortable getting messy in code, perhaps HTML/CSS is a useful tool to convey your message?

Oh, and contrary to what you say in your post, I’ve noticed (via job ads that fly past me) that in the US and UK you’re not very employable at the agency UX level unless you can prototype in HTML/CSS/jQuery. Paradoxically, these demonstrable skills seem to be more important than a basic understanding of human cognition & behaviour (you’ll rarely see certification in any flavour of psych or Human Factors as a requirement these days) for people employed as “User Experience Designers”.