Primary vs Secondary practices
Coping with the ever increasing set of competencies within User Experience and Digital Design
As soon as i’d started to distil key competency areas for organisations I had an annoying concern. I felt that there would never be a set that is universal across the industry. And yet, it was my personal goal to create one. I think I have failed. Or at least pivoted.
I have come to the conclusion that everyone should be suspicious of any model of design competencies that tries for a universal truth. It’s why I’ve shared so many different tools and frameworks in the workshops I run. And in these medium posts.
The only truth I can believe is that there will never be one single universal truth in this space. I have some similar concerns about career ladders but I might avoid that fight for now.
But I had a bit of a revelation in September 2018 that has helped me feel like I made some progress. It was after a workshop with two of my clients — both heads of design in their org for different teams. We’d set out a series of roles and prioritised different competencies for each of them. They prioritised slightly differently.
What was interesting was that we debated the relevancy of some areas. Like systems thinking, sound design, and service design. They had different backgrounds and different team needs.
We worked on a collaborative spreadsheet with other Heads of Design across the teams and started to map out a primary tier of practices. And then a secondary tier. It just emerged. They would prioritise within each still, but there were often 4–8 in the primary tier. And 2–8 on the secondary.
I thought about my own experiences and realised I could put many more in the second tier. Based on my experiences of people I’d worked with and different orgs I’d worked within and for, I knew there was a great deal of diverse skills being missed. But we couldn’t cover everyone.
From the spreadsheet I started developing an initial competency model for my client. I started mapping out some primary practices for specific job titles and then I created a chart to capture Secondary practices.
The primary practices were practices that people with that job title would be expected to be competent in within that org.
The secondary practices were more specific to them individually. Their previous experiences. Their interest areas. The topics, fields or lines of learning that were important to them but not directly relevant to their work.
These secondary practices could be relevant to their primary practices or work over time. Like sound design. Or systems thinking. Or psychology. Or even Industrial Design.
I think that using this sort of approach can help celebrate and support the diversity within your team and yet have a core of expected competencies for a given role or title.
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Keep your eyes peeled for another post tomorrow.
