Designer specialists, generalists and job titles

The constant chase for fitting inside a box

I must admit, for a long time, specially at the beginning of my career I was kind of ashamed of liking to do so many things. I was learning so much and everything sounded so new and cool that I wanted to do it all. But soon enough, this became a burden to me. The main reason for that was that I kept seeing my friends becoming really good at specific things such as 3D, motion graphics, illustration, typography. I really admired the paths that they were trailing, getting to be the best at their fields. My work, on the other hand, looked pretty messy. I couldn’t put together a nice portfolio, mainly because when seen side-by-side, my projects just didn’t fit together. I was really frustrated most of times by being unable to just focus on one thing.

The years passed by and I started seeing the good aspects of having an unsettling mind. I was curious enough to never let things slow down. I learned so much and was part of so many different companies (and therefore teams) that I actually started getting proud of the path I’d took. Looking back now, being a generalist was the best thing I could ever done and one nice thing about it is that, since I tried so many things, I got to discover one of the most important skills I needed as a designer: empathy.

If you break down the job descriptions I could say that I do perform most tasks in all of those areas, but is there one that I fit as a whole? Honestly? No way. There're so many aspects (such as company size, teams structure, funding model, culture) that can impact the skills and posture that you'll need to have as a designer that I found it really hard to define what a perfect fit would be.

Most companies don't realize that when they open a design position what happens is that a lot of designers (potentially great ones) feel intimidated by super specific and over detailed job descriptions and simply do not apply. I've seeing that too many times. My ideal job description would be the one that asks for designers who do not focus on tools or specific methodologies, but instead on mind workers that are able to solve real problems using whatever tools and techniques needed. Designers that can communicate well and cross the entire company talking to different people and are able to connect things. Sensitive and thoughtful professionals that focus on other people instead of themselves, leaving their egos behind. Most of those qualities are not easily found unless you have a proper time to talk and to read between the lines. I'm not at all a HR expert and I know that there are some techniques to find that soft skills, but I don't see that happening very often. That's not to say that designers are a different breed, but they are surely the ones that you as a company want it to be empathetic and sensitive, more than anything else.

Digital design titles keeps growing to new branches and names, but the core aspects remains the same: Producing interaction assets with the purpose of helping people performing tasks and/or consuming content in an easy, painless and, hopefully, delightful way. Regardless of the title, that's the be the bottom line at the end of the day.

Being coding, drawing, making icons, talking to users or even managing people, design is how you think, connect and behave, not a job description template.

So my advice is:

For designers

Don't waste time finding out if you should add product designer, UX designer, interaction or anything to your Linkedin profile. Try focusing on showing how you are able to connect to people and to understand deeply the problems that needs to be solved. I'm sure that way you'll have an amazing journey.

For companies hiring designers

If you're hiring your first designer(s), get to know why you need a designer at first place and try to find someone who can help you validate those assumptions and, further more, delivering the problem solving you need. For companies that already have designers and are expanding teams, do not focus on stage designers (or what I call, rock star designers), but the ones who are great team members and are able to make people from inside and outside the company to help the product/service to grow, and ultimately, the ones that can fit and help evolving the company's culture ;)