Forget the T — you want to become a Pi-shaped designer
Behold the pi-shaped content designer: a master of both design and content. For the discipline to grow, we need to stop thinking of ourselves as T-shaped people and give equal attention to both depths of expertise.
Let’s take a step back, content design is the craft of creating content that is evidence based and simple for your customer or user. It requires content designers who need a deep understanding of this craft. The usual pathway to being a content designer is generally through being a copywriter, journalist or communications person. So it’s only natural we think of content design as a discipline that needs deep expertise in writing and content.
Not my cup of T… shape
Generally throughout the industry we think of content design as T-shaped. The vertical bar (in the T) represents the depth of related skills and expertise in a single field, in this case writing, editing and content. Whereas the horizontal bar represents broad but shallow skills, giving you the ability to collaborate across disciplines.
While I think this metaphor is useful for the idea of collaborative multidisciplinary teams. It’s limiting our understanding of the core skills required to be a top notch content designer.
It’s not just about creating content, it’s about creating it in a user-centred and evidenced-based way. To be a good content designer, you need to be able to acquire, understand, synthesis, analyse and convey from an evidence base — in other words, you need to design.
A content designer’s design skill can not be shallow or just broad. It requires the skills, knowledge, expertise and methodology in order to do this.
The pi life
Instead of T-shapes, we need to start defining our skills and people in terms of Pis.
Rather than one depth of expertise, a pi-shaped person possesses two. While it’s true you need to be a writer, I’d argue the stronger skill needs to be in design. Particularly in defining the right outcome based on evidence.
A good content designer, needs the additional rich expertise to:
- ask the right questions
- synthesis research findings
- identify information needs from research
- be able to analyse data
- be able to articulate the why
- understand the behaviour of a user online
- understand information seeking behaviour
- map customer journeys and processes
- test and iterate what they’ve created
Why is the pi so important
Thinking about content design in this way opens up the conversation. It means you can:
- hire the right people
- identify capability gaps
- drive good service and product delivery.
Instead of throwing writers at the problem with no training or design background, instead use the pi to think about the skill gaps you might have. We can’t expect our content problem to get better without empowering our people to think and approach things in a different way.
Let’s start training in rigorous synthesis and design thinking or upskill in data analysis and usability testing. This is the beginning, look at your content people differently and empower them with the depth of skill required to be world class. Build the additional leg on that T to become a pi.
From now on when we talk about content design, let’s talk about both of our skill sets with equal weighting — be a good writer but equally be a great designer.
