Leveraging a T-shaped skill set in an ever-growing industry
Gianluca Caico · · 2 min read
From the archive. First published January 2023.
In this ever-growing landscape of the design industry, the gap between things like AI and product design is shortening.
Which is why a T-shaped skill set, one that influences team growth and culture, is becoming more and more prevalent in 2023. To meet the needs of broadening business objectives, there is more value in multiplying your knowledge by growing the skill set and ability of a teammate or stakeholder than in addressing the task yourself.
A product lens and a facilitation toolkit are vital to draw upon in this context. This powerful combination will support you in understanding themes such as the intrinsic why, assumptions, hypotheses, perceived value and success metrics for any business problem, from planning and service design to leveraging AI in product features.
Uncovering how to solve for these themes can be addressed with four key principles.
1. Be visionary
Designers should facilitate stakeholder workshops with the aim of uncovering customer and business objectives, results and outcomes. Address any lagging indicators that support leading indicators.
- Leading indicator
- Can influence future change.
- Lagging indicator
- Indicates past results or metrics.
2. Be strategic
Use intended outcomes as the basis for uncovering assumptions and finding a critical hypothesis to test through prototyping, monitoring and iterating. UX research and content methods should be leveraged in this phase.
3. Be a scientist
Gear your experiment for success. The experiment needs to be geared toward achieving a success metric, like an intended OKR for the business or an intended outcome for a user, that ties back to a leading indicator or outcome.
4. Instil culture
Ensure a psychologically safe space. The purpose of a workshop is to encourage active listening, alignment, questions and suggestions that surface business or user needs. Setting this expectation with a fun ice breaker can do the trick, and sets up a sequence of successful sessions.
As the spectrum of our industry continues to broaden, draw on your creativity to keep adding breadth and depth to the roles of others, so you share success together. Channel product and facilitation methods that align your team, assess lagging indicators and produce actionable leading indicators that encourage testable hypotheses. Share, promote and showcase results that circle back to the objective and its congruency with business value.
Gianluca Caico is a Lead Experience Designer at Bound, part of The Omnia Collective, leading CX strategy and transformation work across financial services, health, energy and sport.