Foundational skills
Remember to exercise the core muscles that drive design progression
How to do it
- Think about some of the core skills that you learned as a designer, or even at school. If you’re stuck then reference some of the examples below.
- Rate how important they are for you in your work
- Then rate how strong you are in each of those areas, and where you might need to develop
- Then buy one of the many books on the subject and practice, practice, practice
The background
As part of my early musings as I ran shaping workshops, I realised how important foundational skills were.
I classify these as skills that you probably learned at school. Like reading, writing, and drawing. They are skills that most people can do to a degree. But like any competency or skill, they degrade over time. And many of these are skills that we assume we do well, but I would argue we don’t practice enough.
Here are some of the main ones that I often reference.
Sketching — the forgotten design muscle
I realised this first when we hosted the amazing Eva Lotta-Lamm at an IxDA London event. Eva Lotta is an incredible designer who I have had the pleasure of working with prior to her focus on sketching and drawing.
Whenever I attend one of her sessions — or any sketching session — I remember how valuable it is to sketch.
Writing — the muscle that transcends strategy and interface
As I have mentioned in previous posts, I have also realised the power of writing in strategic work, service design, information architecture and interaction design.
Listening— the designer, consultant and research power tool
I’ve also been re-remembering how important it is to actively listen. Probably one of the most powerful tools in your designer arsenal. Even successful designers and leaders I have met don’t do this enough. So much chat about ‘me’, what ‘I have done’ and less about what someone else thinks or feels.
These foundational skills are valuable in forms of modern-day business, but I think are worth a special focus in design. They underpin so many of design’s practices.
I loosely organised the foundational skills underneath understanding, communicating, thinking and planning categories. You’ll see some skills that may overlap some of them — a cardinal sin of a MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exclusive) logic. But that is because skills like sketching are both thinking skills and communicating.
Want to find out more, follow the series
If you want to learn more about the Shaping Workshops I run, and what I have learned over the years, follow me, or read some other articles in the Medium Publication.
Keep your eyes peeled for another post tomorrow.
