Building High Impact T-Shaped Digital Design Teams
By: Od Ntuk
Tags: User Experience, Design Thinking, Design

Some people call them unicorns, others call them rock stars — I just call them t-shaped designers. To understand the concept of a t-shaped designer, consider removing your preconceived notions of what a designer is, at least in the traditional sense. Conventionally, the term “designer” has been primarily associated with people who have visual design skills. With the shift towards lean UX, design thinking and design systems, design is now focusing more on bridging the gap between strategy and creativity rather than just implementation. Design teams now consist of multi-disciplinary skillsets such as visual design, prototyping, motion graphics/interactive design, research and testing, and product strategy. This article covers how I have built a design team around t-shaped designers here at Atom, an Ed Tech startup within Kaplan Test Prep.

What Makes a T-Shaped Designer?

T-shaped designers are full-stack designers who are influential design thinkers. They are capable of conducting research to unlock opportunities, forming hypotheses of what should be created, putting together visual assets and prototypes, and testing assets to validate their hypotheses. T-shaped designers are strong communicators since they need to align outside teams and influence decision makers. One day they might be leading a brainstorming session; another day they may be putting together prototypes and running user tests; and, the next they could be leading a presentation to reveal their findings. Each day is a challenge that may need varied skillsets to be effective. A good t-shaped designer is nimble enough to achieve validation quickly.

I like to hire t-shaped designers who have a strong core competency that I look to target, which I call their “middle t” — the stem of their t-shape. On my team here at Atom, I have designers who have a healthy mix of skills in motion graphics and interaction design, mobile design, native app design, web design/responsive design, visual design and iconography, and user research/testing. Ensuring everyone on the team has a core-strength or “middle t”, while still having the ability to fill many gaps, allows me to have a smaller, more flexible team. Team members naturally work together to close gaps on the projects that they are assigned, rather than having to wait on the one skilled person to complete a specific task before they can do their share of work.

How I Assess for T-Shaped Skills

When evaluating candidates, the first thing I do is quickly skim their résumé and portfolio for the baseline design skills that I’m looking for. I don’t put much focus on how many years of experience a candidate has since I care more about the projects they have worked on and how they go about solving complex design challenges. A portfolio does a good job of showing processes and finished work, but design is so collaborative that I tend to have a hard time evaluating what the candidate in question was actually responsible for and how much of an impact that they made. To start the evaluation process, I screen for their middle-t core skills that I am targeting. I also ask the candidate a series of questions to assess what new skills they have learned over time that have enabled them to cross their “t” and become a more well-rounded designer. I look for candidates who aren’t comfortable with being stagnant and want to continually learn and grow.

It’s tough to evaluate design thinking and communication skills without a design challenge, and this is what the final round of my interview process explores. The first few rounds involve getting to know the candidate better personally, their career ambitions, what interests them, and why they are interested in the role. During the final round, I ask candidates a hypothetical question. It is intentionally very vague because I want to assess whether or not they can ask the right questions to reach a viable solution. We work in a fast-paced environment where we do not have all the answers, so it is necessary that candidates have the skills needed to solve complex problems and the creativity to introduce new ideas or fill gaps.

The Design Thinking Challenge

I tend to use the following example to prepare candidates who may not be used to this process.

I own an e-commerce store and my sales have dropped. How can I improve my sales?

Adequately skilled candidates will be able to do the following:

Ask the right questions to get clarity Define the problem based on the answers they are receiving

3. Come up with a hypothesis for solving the problem

4. Sketch out their solution to solve the problem

5. Share how they will validate that their solution is viable

What are some potential clarifying questions?

1. What industry are you in?

2. When did you notice your sales drop?

3. What is your best selling item?

4. What items aren’t selling so well?

5. Why do you think your sales have dropped?

6. What KPI do you want to improve the most?

I often have a team member serve as the stakeholder for the test. Their responsibility is to answer the candidate’s questions and steer them towards a feasible direction. Part of my evaluation process is gauging how well a candidate can listen and take direction. We also intentionally try to give them an answer that does not make logical sense, to determine if they can adequately push back and offer a correction or if they will go along with it and end up in a non-viable solution. These scenarios are all designed to analyze how logically a candidate thinks, how they structure their thoughts and resolve the issue, and how well they can communicate. All of these skills are essential to being successful in our fast-paced environment.

If I’m acting as a stakeholder for this particular design challenge and I mention that:

“I sell women’s clothing and dresses are my best selling item. I’ve noticed my sales have dropped off in the summer months which is one of my peak sales seasons and I think this is due to an increased amount of returns which is cutting into my profits” — a candidate might assume that the returns are caused by incorrect sizing.

The weight of an individual fluctuates over the course of a year. Maybe during the summer months, people are more active, so their size drops. Therefore, a candidate may want to suggest creating a summer fashion styling service, whereby an algorithm could be used to determine the user’s ideal style based on their preferences. To prevent as many returns as possible, the box could be made up of similar dresses in multiple sizes. To increase up-selling, maybe accessories such as bracelets, sunglasses, and hats could be included in the box. The customer could try on what they like, keep the items they want and return everything else. They are then only charged for what they decide to keep. The candidate could then complete the scenario by mentioning that they would run a limited trial in one particular region, in order to see if the idea increased sales while decreasing returns. If proven successful the idea could be expanded to the full customer base, and potentially even lead to creating style services for other times throughout the year.

We don’t really care what outlandish ideas the candidate comes up with, so long as they can justify their opinion, adequately sketch out what they are thinking and demonstrate a conducive thought process. For candidates who succeed but do not have a lot of work experience, I typically ask them to go a step further and apply design to their sketches using our design system. This will show me if they have a command of our design software, as well as the ability to follow our grid and design based on the color palettes and standard components that make up our system.

Equity and Inclusion in Building Diverse Design Teams

I’m proud to work at a company that realizes the importance of a diverse workforce. Building diverse design teams is something that is important to me. I like my teams to be comprised of people from different socio-economic backgrounds, races and ethnicities, religions, genders, and sexual orientations. Creating teams of people who come from different backgrounds and who see the world in different ways helps to add an additional layer of empathy to design. Diversity can also lead to more impactful hypotheses for tackling opportunities based on the influences of the personal backgrounds of team members and guards against unintentional insensitivity. I genuinely believe that using résumés and portfolios to assess baseline skills, and then assessing how logically people think, opens the door to a wider breadth of candidates which will help diversify a design team and ultimately lead to more value and growth for a company.

What is your “t”?

Now that you understand the concept of t-shaped design you may get asked:

What is your “t”?

When you get asked this question someone wants to know what your core skills are and what you have learned over time to cross your “t”. In case you are curious about my “t”, my core strength is in lean UX and rapid product development through research, prototyping, and testing. I also consider myself fairly technical as I was a developer before I moved into user experience and product management. I have crossed my “t” over time by learning about visual design and design systems. I’m always reading up on the latest design trends and processes to make sure that I do not get stagnant and that I continually improve the design processes within my design team.

Special Acknowledgement

I would like to acknowledge a LinkedIn connection Justin Paul Baker, who posted about t-shaped design and encouraged me to write this article. It is something that I had in the back of my mind for a while but I needed motivation and a bit of encouragement to write it.