UI / UX / Product / Interaction / Web / Digital / Visual / Full Stack — Designer

Contributing to the endless debate around the title and essence of being a digital product designer

There are no two identical product processes

Talking to many product managers and designers from companies as big as Google and eBay to mid size startups as Fiverr and down to small teams — Nobody is practicing the same process.

Of course, they all know The Lean Startup by heart, and swear by their scrum or kanban boards, but every organization has optimized its agile process to fit the skillsets of people on board and to help them bridge any communication gaps they might be having. In that sense, from what I can tell, a lot of companies look at processes very carefully and try to have as little process as possible to get shit done fast without becoming a bureaucratic mess.

Companies customize their agile process to fit their workforce skillsets. The same rule applies when recruiting talent in general, and designers in specific. Companies are trying to find the person with the most relevant mixture of skills to fit what the company needs in that particular moment.

There are no two identical designers

Pardon my kitsch — each and every one of us is unique. I think it was Tim Brown who coined the phrase “T shaped person” to stress the idea that we all have one very strong skill and some “OK” skills around it. Every desinger has a different mix.

Building on that phrase from the company perspective brought me to think of a “U shaped company needs”. Meaning there’s a big gap to bridge in one area of each department and smaller gaps in other areas. When a company finds a designer with the right set of skills to match its current needs, a value is created to a multitude of stakeholders, from the end user to the CEO.

Designer Skills + Company Needs = Value

This equation differs from place to place in what stands behind every part of it. In some companies value is created when designers do heavy front end development on a daily basis on top of some UX design (Go figure..), and in other companies a value is created when designers do UX design, some product work and UI design on top of that — This is the classic requirement in most early stage startups and the most challenging and exhilarating based on my experience. The point is, that everything goes as long as skills and needs are met. if not, one side usually has to adapt.

Getting back to where I started — There is no “One Designer Title Fits All”. There’s no point in trying to make one or fight about it. That automatically applies to the essence of the job and to the skills we might believe are a must for every designer.

We all must find the title and skills that fit best with our T shape talent, and try to figure out what the company we are working with, or talking to, really needs in order for value to be created.