To grow as a designer, think beyond design
After a certain point, continuing to be a better Designer will only get you so far.
Imagine this scenario: You’re a user experience designer. You’ve been practicing for a few years. You’ve made your mark as a solid designer with a reputation for your information architecture skills and as a Jedi when it comes to Sketch. Yes, there are areas you’re working on, but all in all you feel pretty confident about your design chops.
Then one day, your boss is unexpectedly out of the office and you’re asked to join a big, important-sounding meeting in their absence. You have two choices: either you (a) recommend that the meeting be postponed until your boss returns, or (b) agree to step up and see how you can help. Being the proactive, helpful person you are, you choose the latter.
When you get to the meeting, you see some faces you don’t recognize but manage to piece together that the meeting is with leads from other disciplines: Engineering, Sales, Product, Marketing, Testing, etc. Half an hour goes by and you’re still struggling to figure out what the conversation is about. So many acronyms... OKRs, KTLO, ARPUs, DAUs over MAUs. Terms like burn rate, conversion, opportunity cost, tech debt. It’s as though they’re speaking a foreign language. You have no idea how to contribute to the conversation and wonder how you even got here. You plot different ways you might exit the meeting early: A sudden onset of appendicitis maybe? A time-sensitive need to re-arrange your Micron pens by color? No, they probably wouldn’t understand. Instead, you distract yourself with your email hoping you don’t get called on to answer a question.
How did you go from feeling confidently capable, to wondering whether you were invited to this meeting by mistake? Putting aside a healthy dose of imposter syndrome, how is it that you felt so unprepared for this day?
How this happens
For such a long time, the education system and corporations have optimized for “I-shaped” roles (“I”, as in the letter “I”). I-shaped roles are so named because they refer to roles with depth in a single specialization.
While there’s merit in gaining depth in a function — it can be hard to land your first job without it, in fact — your growth can be hampered if you continue on this course.
What you can do about it
The alternative is to develop your skills early in your career to become more “T-shaped”. A T-shaped role is one where the main specialization (such as the one in the I-Shaped role), is complemented with the ability to be conversant in a range of others.
The term was popularized by IDEO’s Chair and former CEO, Tim Brown. But in truth it’s been around for several decades, and is thought to originate from David Guest’s article “The hunt is on for the Renaissance Man of computing”, written in 1991. It is frequently referenced as part of the Agile software development methodology in the spirit of having sufficiently versatile team members to complete a Sprint’s goals.
In the context of a UX designer, the vertical bar represents your design specializations. The horizontal bar corresponds to knowledge you acquire and become comfortable with outside of design. That doesn’t mean you need to be a confident coder or Marketing pro (although it doesn’t prevent you!). It just means you should become more familiar with the language and context of the key disciplines that you’re collaborating and interfacing with. For me, that’s Engineers, Marketing Professionals, Business Leaders, Product Managers, QA Leaders, Data Scientists. That means knowing enough about software development methodologies, the capabilities/limitations of the technology I’m designing for, systems level thinking, marketing, business, statistics, management theory, product management, testing methods etc etc.
Becoming a T-Shaped Designer
Broadening your knowledge in this way will enable you to speak the same language as your partners. This means fewer misunderstandings and less time in meetings in which you’re the only one having the context explained (which can be a bit uncomfortable). Knowing about your counterparts’ functions means you can better anticipate their pain points and struggles. You can feel empathy for them, and in turn they feel heard and understood.
It will also make you more impactful in problem solving situations because you’re more capable of facilitating conversations and building on others’ ideas. The consultancy Adventures with Agile describes the benefit of having T-Shaped team members in being able to “reduce handoffs between knowledge silos, avoiding information loss”. This in turn makes you more dependable; a trusted UX advisor that can be turned to time and time again.
On a macro level, this can mean results far beyond your design review meeting. As part of their research of 300 publicly listed companies over a five-year period, McKinsey & Company noted in their 2018 “Business Value of Design” report that “T-shaped hybrid designers, who work across functions while retaining their depth of design savvy will be the employees most able to have a tangible impact through their work”. They also measured differences of seven percentage points in compound annual growth rates of those companies who were most able to “break down functional silos and integrate designers with other functions”, compared to those who were least capable in this respect.
Let’s look at some other concrete examples. Having a sense of the technical capabilities of the platform you’re designing for will make you more aware of how expensive your design is to build — or if it’s even possible. Knowing this upfront means you’re less likely to have to re-do a design because it wasn’t feasible. And it means you are less likely to waste everyone’s time pitching a concept that is never going to work, which in turn can impact your credibility.
Furthermore, being able to fully understand the business goals will help you to translate design changes into impact on the bottom line. The Business Leader will gladly approve the funding for your project once they understand how your proposal to change a three-step flow into a four-step process, would bring clarity to a complex purchase order. And that this improved usability is what is needed to increase the likelihood of customers completing their transaction, which, at scale, translates to a substantial boost in sales.
Actionable ideas
So how should you get started, and when? As with many things, it’s never too early to start developing these new skills. Start simple: think about your current interactions with the non-designers around you. If your typical routine is to fire off a Slack post containing your design to the Engineers, how about sitting down with them and walking through it instead? And how about doing it in person, instead of video conferencing, so that you have their full attention? Is it possible to move your desk to be located next to your key collaborators? You’ll organically absorb information about their disciplines without even trying and you’ll feel more connected to those team members.
Ask your key collaborators to show you what they do. Be curious; ask questions. Most people love to talk about themselves! Be authentic, but try and build some rapport to make it easier to ask for their time. Which tools and technologies do they use? What challenges do they face? “Interview” them like you would one of your end users. Even better: allow them to ask the same questions of your line of work, or invite them to your user interviews - look at it as a fun cultural exchange!
Another avenue is to find out who the key thought leaders are in those different fields, and follow them on Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo and podcasts. Set alerts so that every time they publish something you’ll be notified.
Bottom line: it’s never too early to start broadening your knowledge. Continue to hone your design skills and keep pace with changes in techniques and design thought leadership. But also be curious. In an ever-changing world, there is never such a thing as “knowing everything” so adopting a lifelong learning mindset is important. You need to know just enough to be able to ask the right questions.
If you’re looking for some good sources for broadening your knowledge, I have a shameless plug for one of my other articles, outlining three non-design related podcasts I’ve been enjoying recently. I’m also keen to learn from you: Which techniques or sources do you find useful for amassing information in this T-Shaped way? Drop me a line. You can find me on LinkedIn or Twitter.
