What the hell is a design technologist?

The phrase “design technologist” has been knocking around for some time now, even within digital. Amazon, for example, have always had people specifically in that role. A few people (me included) kinda knew we were design techs masquerading under different titles, whatever that other title was depends on our other skills.

What’s a design technologist?

A design technologist has a rampant desire to make something. They’re an interaction designer, a coder, a visual designer, an information architect all rolled together.

The reason? To try, test, fail, and repeat.

Another identifier of a design technologist is that they don’t quite sit with designers, they don’t quite sit with developers, but they’re not isolated from either. A design technologist can be a great way to bridge a design/development divide in a multi-skilled team.

The role of design technologist is becoming more and more common. As projects try placing design technologists on teams and see the benefits first hand, more and more companies are seeing the inclusion of creati-geeks as a good long term plan.

Leave you with this, Amazon’s description of their design technologists:

UX Design Technologists at Amazon combine UX Design and engineering expertise into a single discipline, and are able to develop, prototype, and test innovative UI solutions that push the envelope on front-end engineering and inspire development teams and leaders to invest in new ideas.

Oh, N.B. I’m going to do some talks on this, some time soon. Follow me on twitter, I’ll announce it there!