Anatomy of a Design team

Tetris—a game that enlightened us with the concept of needing the right shaped pieces to structure the base & level up. Even if that means rotating the shape a couple of times to figure a fit into the space.?

A paradigm to implement when building your design team, whether for your company or a project. Each designer is a differently shaped piece with their natural thinking style. A well-structured design team can unify different disciplines and lead to improved consistency, efficiency and much more.?

It’s the recipe to get good quality product output. A well-rounded team is where everyone plays to their strengths. Lateral thinking is crucial to flourishing as a designer. It can appear in different shapes and forms throughout the design journey; depending on which part of the design process it appears, the complementary skill varies.

Lateral thinking: Solving problems using an indirect and creative approach via reasoning that is only sometimes obvious.

A combination of these 4 lateral thinking skills makes up a well-rounded team:

Convergent Thinkers: Designer with a Bird’s eye view

Visualizers for the entire ecosystem, a schematic designer enjoys complex structuring and exploring unknown systems. They first tackle knowing the unknown & ensure the team is prioritizing the right problems—a well-configured workflow. They are your go-to when aiming to build impactful products from scratch within tight deadlines.?

Divergent Thinkers: Designer with a worm’s eye view

Detailing is what gets their brain juices flowing. The inspector of every element, the divergent designer, is good at exploring different design possibilities in a product at a microscopic level. Although it takes a little creativity when it comes to this type of thinker, they use their intelligence to stimulate imagination & build solutions.?

Visual Thinkers: Designer with a graphical eye?

The visualizer for clutter-breaking products, a visual designer, enjoys breaking the grid to create a visual hierarchy where the most impactful message is highlighted. They ensure the product has a unique look and feel in the cluster of competitors. Their imaginations are likely why your users recall the brand (Powerful branding is significant). They are the mood & tone setters for your product which onboards customers in setting the proper context.?

Methodical Thinkers: Designer with a solid system

A methodical designer, the commander of the design systems ensures consistency across all product pages by implementing a design system. This system ensures the entire product looks one & saves countless hours across the whole design team by centralizing all changes. For Example, if you want to change your branding to a slightly darker blue, you can change the color across 200 screens in less than 5 secs. Furthermore, when outputs are created using a design system, it significantly reduces the development effort.

When we are designing a product we include the above 4 thinkers, depending on the type and stage of the product the time requirement for each thinker type will wary.

How to help your designer identify the category of thinker they belong to, knowing the way they think allows them to understand:

• What motivates them to move and take action
• Why they find certain things are challenging or boring, and what they can do to enhance areas of their life to reach the goal
• What’s the most efficient way for them to manage people
• How to develop a better team dynamic with the peers
• How to become smarter about their personal productivity and growth mindset

Ready to build your dream design team??Write to us at [email protected]