The 2 types of designers — thinkers and doers

You’ll often find that a designer’s process and work ethic is defined by whether they’re primarily a thinker, or a doer.

Ankur Bagchi
UX Collective
Published in
4 min readSep 17, 2020

Each type has their own strengths and weaknesses; in fact a well-rounded team often consists of both. Here’s a breakdown of the two types, as well as tips that would help optimize their workflow.

Thinkers

You’re a thinker if you like understanding every aspect of the problem statement, solving it in the abstract confines of your mind before you even put pen to paper. People know you for being thoughtful, precise and consistent.

Black and white image of someone staring wistfully towards a lake.
If you’ve found yourself staring into the distance while pondering what kind of toggle switch to use… you may be a thinker. (Photo by Sunyu Kim)

You start with the broad picture, making sure to dive into the reasons behind each decision before looking for a solution. You’re often very strategic and do well in leadership roles where a long term lens is required.

Strengths

  • You always have a bird’s eye view of your product — this helps in making great strategic decisions about the product and which features to prioritize.
  • You do great in design reviews, as you’ve thought through every little choice you’ve made as well as the edge cases.
  • You’re extremely detail-oriented and can always handle the consistency and tone of your flows. You‘re good at maintaining the design library.

Weaknesses

  • You suffer from analysis paralysis — you have a hard time making strategic decisions when there’s not enough market data available. can be especially tough during early ideation of a new product or feature.
  • You find yourself agonizing for hours over little details and edge cases. You may spend more time on a couple of edge cases than the happy path.

Tips for Thinkers

  • Follow the famous 80–20 rule (or the law of diminishing returns). You don’t always need to understand 100% of the market. You don’t need to optimize your flow for 100% of edge cases. Understand your main personas and put most of your time into the scenarios that would occur 80–95% of the time. This doesn’t mean skimping on the unhappy path, but don’t base your decisions around exceptional scenarios.
  • Time-box yourself in every sprint. Whether it’s brainstorming, user testing or prototyping — set clear deadlines for yourself. Take these deadlines seriously. You may find it hard to stop perfecting your product’s little rough edges, but remember — putting it out there quickly will get you far more usage data and let you build a much more polished product over time.

Doers

You’re a doer if you’re known for taking action. You love solving problems and believe in rapid iterations. People know you for making decisions and moving quickly.

Stock photo of someone’s hand putting together a wire flow.
If you’ve found yourself making 3 prototypes within 5 minutes of hearing the problem statement… you may be a doer. (Photo by Alvaro Reyes)

You’re a firm believer in lean, agile systems and failing fast. You’re known for being adaptable and tactical.

Strengths

  • You’re not afraid to be scrappy and find quick ways to test your ideas. You believe the best data is gathered first-hand, and are not afraid to go ask your users directly.
  • You’re great at spotting market opportunities for your product. You’re not afraid to capitalize on trends to give your users the best experience they’ll get today.
  • The team loves your creativity and speed. You’ll always have something to share in every meeting.

Weaknesses

  • You get caught up in your whirlwind of ideas and might miss the mark on the business reasons behind putting together a feature. This could lead to not hitting key objectives for the feature down the road.
  • You find it hard to maintain consistency across all your mockups. In your drive to find different solutions to the problem, you end up creating flows that don’t fit within existing design patterns.

Tips for Doers

  • Talk to key business stakeholders during your kickoff meeting, and throughout the sprint. Understand their needs and constraints. Remember — empathy isn’t just for the UX process, it’s for every human being around you. Figuring out the key drivers behind the product will often help you shape it better and align it to business objectives.
  • If you don’t have a design system, create one. Having a set of templates and components to guide you will go a long way in ensuring consistency. If there’s someone else on the team maintaining it, set up a few sessions with them to learn how to use it. A little bit of time invested now will save you hours of headache in the long run.
A  statue of The Thinker, with a second empty pedestal with footsteps leading away. The second pedestal is titled ‘The Doer’.
He’s thinking about the wet cement left behind by the Doer. Credits to Dan Reynolds.

Most people find themselves somewhere between the two extremes of thinker and doer. At the end of the day, your responsibility is to create meaningful experiences for our users, and that rests on a lot of variables. It’s your job as a UX designer to identify the needs of the situation and adapt your mindset accordingly.

The UX Collective donates US$1 for each article published in our platform. This story contributed to Bay Area Black Designers: a professional development community for Black people who are digital designers and researchers in the San Francisco Bay Area. By joining together in community, members share inspiration, connection, peer mentorship, professional development, resources, feedback, support, and resilience. Silence against systemic racism is not an option. Build the design community you believe in.

Free

Distraction-free reading. No ads.

Organize your knowledge with lists and highlights.

Tell your story. Find your audience.

Membership

Read member-only stories

Support writers you read most

Earn money for your writing

Listen to audio narrations

Read offline with the Medium app

Published in UX Collective

We believe designers are thinkers as much as they are makers. Curated stories on UX, Visual & Product Design. https://linktr.ee/uxc

Written by Ankur Bagchi

I’m just a product designer hoping to make the world a little bit better. Find me at ankurbagchi.com.

No responses yet

What are your thoughts?

She doesn’t have to be a cook — but she has to be an adventurous eater, or she’s out.

I feel like everyone who comes up with some wacky, left field, pass/fail interview criteria thinks they’re really into something.
I read another one of these style articles where the hiring manager would offer a glass of water to the candidate and if…

“I don’t think a junk-food-fuelled designer can be a great designer.”
This honestly reads like “no fat girls allowed”. And regardless, I can’t imagine judging design candidates based on whether or not they’re foodies, and think I’ve stumbled onto…

Yikes, you don’t hire people based on how they enjoy food? I feel sorry for anyone who works for this entitled snob. Clearly 12 years of success has done nothing for your character as a person.