Michael Roller

Design Skills: Which Matter Most?

We all know that being a great industrial designer isn’t as simple as being a good sketcher, having a creative personality, or observing objectively. Being a great industrial designer requires a nuanced balance of many important skills and personality traits, but which matter the most?

In an effort to better understand and organize a young designer’s skill set, I’ve initiated a survey to gain insights from industrial design managers around the world. The survey is a brief set of 7 questions that asks design managers to record their preferences when interviewing junior designers. With the insights from this project, I’ll distill the results into guidelines that will help young designers better develop themselves.

If you’re an industrial designer who is or has been responsible for hiring co-op, intern, or junior industrial designers, I hope you’ll participate. If you don’t fit the profile but are still interested in the project, please share it with your team to help me get a diverse set of responses.

Tags: design management, personality, survey

Results: What Personality Types Are Designers?

About a week ago, I challenged the idea that ISFJ was the ideal Myers-Briggs personality type for designers and asked designers to take the test and submit their results. 64 designers recorded their profiles, and here are the results of the poll:

While there wasn’t one personality that was most popular, results showed a strong level of Intuition and Judging among the group. I don’t believe that having strong Sensing and Perceiving traits necessarily rules out one’s ability to be a talented designer. However, someone with these traits should be aware of these as key differences when working with other designers around them.

About half of the designers surveyed were either INTJ, ENFJ, or ENFP. I’ll follow up with additional thoughts on what these profiles mean and what design careers best map to the most popular personality types. Visit the poll if you’d like to take the quiz and record your profile. If the results change significantly, I’ll update and report the changes. Finally, there are some great conversations both on this site and on the Core77 discussion boards.

Are you surprised that designers weren’t more biased towards Introversion or Feeling traits? Do we need more Perceiving in the design world? What do you make of these results?

Tags: design thinking, mbti, personality, survey

Which personality types make the best designer?

Do designers share personality traits that make them successful? Even more specifically, can personality types indicate a likelihood that one will be a better manager, researcher, or stylist?

If you’re not familiar with it, the Jung Myers-Briggs Type Indicator documents 16 personality types based on four categories: Extroversion vs. Introversion, Intuiting vs. Sensing, Thinking vs. Feeling, and Judging vs. Perceiving. The test asks a series of simple questions and then assigns a four letter type along with the strength of each of those preferences. For example, I’m an INTJ. That means I tend to work well alone, focus on the future, seek logical explanations, and structure the world around me. The test has it’s critics, but for the sake of exploring my initial questions it serves as a good starting point. In addition to providing a personality type and description, many profilers provide advice for the ideal careers that match each type’s strengths. Here’s where it gets interesting.The ISFJ is listed as an ideal personality type for a career “designer.” This means that the ideal designer is:

1. Introverted – likes to work alone, seeks to understand the world, prefers depth over breadth
2. Sensing – trusts facts and data, accepts the world as it is, prefers practicality
3. Feeling – seeks harmony, considers the feelings of others
4. Judging – gains control through planning, focuses on results

While many of those traits work well in the design world, I can just as easily see opportunities where the opposite personality traits might be preferred. The definition of “designer” on this site is ambiguous, so let’s see if their recommendations hold true or if we can create some better ones.

What is your personality type? How well do your personality traits fit your current position? Click here to take the test and leave a comment with your result. Will we discover that certain traits are define certain types of designers?

Tags: definitions, survey