Four Essential Members of a Great Design Team
Have you ever wondered why you can successfully collaborate with another designer in your office? Maybe you share similar ideas, but there’s also a good chance you’re nothing alike. At Kaleidoscope, some of the designers (including me) are organized and analytical. Others think freely and contextually. How can we coexist? My analytical thinking pushed me to break down and understand how these differences can be complementary. What I ultimately realized is that a successfully diverse design team requires four key members.
The Evangelist
A design team without a visionary leader is like a church without a preacher. The Evangelist focuses on design at the highest level, developing strategies and processes that push the limits of design and business as a whole. Contextual thinking helps him understand how design fits into a larger business plan. As a former Dreamer, he loves to push the boundaries and question assumptions of the products and categories he leads. The Evangelist won’t ever be an operations specialist, and may even lead activities that feel counterproductive to more analytical thinkers. Although possibly his greatest challenge, he will come through in the end and prove that his dreaming offers real business value. With a great Evangelist leading the charge, firms can be proactive, trendsetting, and highly valued for their ideas.
The Conductor
To complement the Evangelist, every design team needs a leader who directs the finishing touches on each project. The Conductor’s analytical mind helps her to ensure that no detail goes unconsidered. Like directing an orchestra, she brings together all the little details into harmony, making sure everything has been figured out and nothing taken for granted. She probably has the highest standards of any designer in the office and ensures that every project is top quality. Often the team doing the first 95% of the work is exhausted or checked out by the end, and the Conductor plays a key role in making the final push to finish the project right. In more corporate roles, she shepherds projects through to production and defends key design details that might otherwise be lost. The Conductor may wish she was still a designer, struggling to find the appropriate level of feedback or adding unnecessary work for her team. At her best, the Conductor is the key to creating consistently solid work that will have clients or consumers coming back for more.
The Dreamer
When analytical minds struggle with paradoxical design constraints, the Dreamer cuts through it all to offer a surprisingly fresh attitude. He avoids the technical boundaries of a project in favor of contextual experimentation. A great design team deploys Dreamers to brainstorms where blue sky thinking is necessary, and keeps them involved when the end product must push category boundaries or create brand new ones. The Dreamer becomes easily frustrated when not allowed to exercise fantasies, so don’t expect him to handle detail-oriented work or anything that is heavily constrained by technical requirements. The wild ideas he contributes won’t always become part of the final product, but the Dreamer is essential in setting the stage for innovation as well as offering an entertainment value to novelty-seeking design managers.
The Surgeon
Whether it comes down to aesthetic or ergonomic excellence, so many great pieces of design rely on details. A great design team relies on the Surgeon – an analytical thinker who cuts up and dissects design problems to find the best solutions. By definition, she breaks down a product into its components, considering the pieces of design and then reuniting them into a cohesive whole. The Surgeon isn’t always the best decision maker, because she can end up thinking in circles or frustrated by a project’s lack of clarity. When it comes to making sense of complex design problems, a Surgeon is your best bet to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.
The Jack of All Trades (Master of None?)
Every team has designers with diverse skill sets, but the Jack of All Trades might be the most talented person in your office because he can truly do everything. He leads a range of projects, solves tricky problems, and dreams up big ideas. Recent graduates make great “Junior Jacks,” because they can contribute on a variety of levels while they gain experience and become more aware of their greatest strengths. Don’t confuse a real Jack with someone whose strengths are not prevalent or ambiguous. In reality, the rare Jack of All Trades might not be essential to have, but will feel essential to any team that has one.
I hope this helps you make better sense of how you and the people around you fit into a design organization. How well do the designers you know fit into these buckets? How could this concept be stronger? In coming posts, I’ll look at how different combinations of these five members help execute the different strategies that design businesses use.
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Mike,
this is a great analogy. I like it very much.
You should teach this to students whenever possible.
Sooshin
it’s helpful for design management. thanks michael.
[...] Four Essential Members of a Great Design Team | Michael Roller [...]
Nice. Similar to IDEO’s structure/team recommends. You should also look at Von Manstein’s Officer types for managing teams. He was a German general and, basically, he hypothesized that the smart and lazy people made the best commanders and innovators because they stay focused on the big picture, and are used to finding novel solutions to get around drab work.
[...] via: strategic aesthetics [...]
Thanks, Tim. I checked out a little on von Manstein’s officer types here and here.
[...] 2009/04/21 · No Comments I came across this analogy over how Michael Roller see the members within a successful design team. And I must say it pretty much comes down to a similar selection of people in a creative team fopr advertising. Read more about the different personalities at his blog Strategic Aestethics. [...]
I had some amazing minutes reading this, thank you!
What I could not understand is why you refered to the Contextual thinkers as men and the Analytical thinkers as women.
[...] Members of a Great Design Team The Evangelist , The Conductor, The Dreamer and The Surgeon. Via Michael Roller No [...]
[...] http://www.michaelroller.com/?p=613 [...]
Really great! I had to do a little blog post about it:) Looking forward to your follow up articles.
[...] me) are organized and analytical. Others think freely and contextually. How can we coexist? Michael Roller made an analysis of the four key members for a successful design [...]
[...] 一个优秀的设计团队可能同时需要以下四种类型的设计师，想想你是哪一种，或你身边的设计师是哪一种？ Michael Roller 绘制： [...]
[...] via Michael Roller. I think I’ll be visiting this site quite often from now on. Pretty interesting stuff [...]
[...] Four Essential Members of a Great Design Team I thought this breakdown was quite smart—and if a design team can fit those pieces they’re pretty lucky. Even better if a company can foster that type of environment that recognizes those roles not as official titles but as elements needed for success. [...]
[...] Four Essential Members of a Great Design Team [...]
thanks for this great article. I definitely find myself in the dreamer category. But sometimes I feel like I’m put in the role of “Jack of all trades” here at work. And I want to move away from that because I want to focus on what I love, and that is design.
You nailed it.
[...] Comment! http://www.michaelroller.com/?p=613 [...]
[...] A warm welcome to you dear reader! If you have not already, why not subscribe to my RSS feed, or get my latest thoughts on Industrial Design in your Email Inbox for free? Thanks for visiting and please keep in touch? ~ D.T. Image Source: Michael Roller. [...]
[...] I love working with a good design team – when they’re on a roll, the buzz spreads out to infect everyone around them. Their chosen field doesn’t seem to matter; information systems, electronics, automotive, office furniture, graphics – good designers all seem to have this ability to excite. But how do you assemble a great design team? US designer Michael Roller describes the essential personality traits needed. [...]
[...] Image Source: Michael Roller. [...]
Excellent post here Mike.
Hey Michael,
I really liked the way you defined kinds of designers.
It could also be considered that these clasifications are more roles rather then personalities….
sometimes designer has to change a particular role depending on the stage of design!
I will look forward to see more on this from you. Thanks.
Absolutely. For instance, our VP of Design needs to act as both Evangelist and Conductor, depending on the occasion. I’m sure everyone feels this pressure to perform multiple roles, which is normal and even ideal.
[...] a recent post, I wrote about the four essential members of a design team. Each designer is an analytical thinker, a contextual thinker, or (most likely) [...]
very impressive~
[...] Four Essential Members of a Design Team – While focused on a Design Team the idea could be adapted as another tool in reviewing your work team and their duties/roles. [...]
[...] Posted on | April 22, 2009 | From: Strategic Aesthetics [...]
Good summarize of how they collaborate to the success， thanks mike！
[...] *Extraido de http://www.michaelroller.com/?p=613 [...]
[...] This is a very interesting analogy by Michael Roller http://www.michaelroller.com [...]