DESIGN
The ‘Modern Designer’ 2024 Edition
Introducing the updated version of our framework, featuring 10 key skills for every maker in the digital space, created to map your proficiency and assess your status
Hey there, it has been a while! At the time I’m writing this article, it has been 3 years and a half since we published the first edition of our framework. If you haven’t seen it yet, not a problem, keep reading. But if you’re curious and want to understand the genesis of this work just click on the article tile below, it also features a dedicated 15-minute podcast episode.
Why is this relevant to you?
Simply put, this overview of the most relevant skills for a designer stems from ~4,300 mins of mentoring with ~150 practitioners I had in the last few years. And countless hours discussing career progression with Raffaele, colleagues, and fellow designers. It was evident that:
- Self-awareness is key: especially when new to this space, it’s hard to understand which skills should be developed or learned since there’s no sense of breadth
- Specialization is a dilemma: should I refine my craft in the creative universe or should I start learning how to code? This probably the most common question of the last 10 years, because some job opportunities require you to demonstrate a certain depth
We tried to create a practical framework everyone can use and assess themselves against. It’s available for everyone to duplicate and use in the Figma Community.
Before you ask, of course it’s (and forever will be) FOR FREE!
The best way to give back to us is to let us know how you used it, and share it with your network if you found it helpful.
Once you plot your very own spider chart (no spider-sense there yet though, sorry), we believe you’ll have a better understanding of your value prop. This usually helps with:
- Writing your resume more efficiently
- Enhancing the way you answer to typical interview questions such as “why should we hire you?” or “tell me about yourself” (yeah, everyone hates these)
- Focusing on the right job opportunities where your expertise actually overlaps with the request, and doesn’t feel like a stretch or something you’re overqualified for
Ok, enough: what’s new?
First of all, there’s now 10 skills instead of 9. Dang! Being a designer is getting more difficult eh?
The work of a designer today is 50% creative, 30% business-connected and 20% tech-oriented
The core and focus is still on creative skills, but to be successful you need to be able to understand where the business (stakeholders, clients, it doesn’t matter how you call them) wants to go, and inform your design to address those needs / goals. At the same time, since the objective of your work is to ship something, it’s important that you understand what the implications are for the people who will implement your concepts, while using technology smartly to make our work better and faster (ever heard of a thing called AI? 😁).
Let’s dive into the specifics of each new / updated dimension:
Creative
- Content Strategy: now includes information architecture, that is actually more a deliverable of this dimension rather than a skill itself.
- Spatial Design: in the last 2 years, words like VR, MR, AR, Metaverse became part of our present and immediate future. Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro are available to buy, meaning applications are ready to be designed and coded. There’s a lot of curiosity about this space, especially since designing for 3 dimensions is a completely different beast.
Business
- Experience Strategy: it seemed to fit better under the business category, and you might want to change the word “experience” with “product” or “service”, but bottom like you still need to give a vision to to your work and make sure you stakeholders are aligned while prioritizing the right features.
- Business Impact: another tweak, since the former word “analysis” didn’t have a strong-enough bias toward action. Biz case, objectives and success metrics are the key words here.
Technology
- Supportive AI: not much needs to be said here, I actually wrote a dedicated article about this topic. We chose the word “supportive” as we are convinced that in the short-term designers will get from AI positive contributions, allowing us to provide even more value. And we’re not only talking about Prompt Engineering and its ramification into AI Art, but a number of additional use cases such as Horizon Scanning, Scenario Building and Speculative Design.
Resources
If the above is an area of interest for you, then we also recommend taking a look at the article below and the various resources we sprinkled through it.
