7 Personalities You Need on Your Design Team

There is so much that goes into pushing great design out into the world. A good place to start is getting the right personalities on your team. Now, no personality is without it’s downsides, but here are a few that I think can be pretty helpful. Keep in mind that these may not be individual people. Depending on the size of the team, they might be all rolled up into one.

1. The Perfectionist

No detail is too fine, no nuance too miniscule. The Perfectionist is the purveyor of consistency. The pusher of precision. They can spot a 2px spacing issue from three desks away, and lie in bed at night sweating about line lengths and font sizing.

Why you need them: Things can get crazy over the course of a project. As the number of files, layouts and versions grow the details can get sloppy. The Perfectionist is there to keep it all on the rails. If they aren’t doing the work themselves, include them in as many reviews as you can. I guarantee they’ll catch things no one else will.

2. The Visionary

The visionary is convinced you should be designing an Oculus Rift experience to control a 3D printed drone. They live on the bleeding edge and watch the latest trends. You may have trouble pulling them away from the latest Chrome experiment in order to get some actual work done.

Why you need them: A team’s energy ebbs and flows. The more you can keep people excited and energized the better their creative output. While a lot of ideas may not be feasible, the Visionary brings a steady dose of creative energy, inspiration and excitement to the table that can push the team to think outside the box and encourage people to go out on a limb.

3. The Closer

Designing is only half the battle. The rubber meets the road when it’s time to get a design from prototype (or comp) to actual living, breathing creature in the wild. That’s where the Closer comes in. The Closer is all about the nitty gritty. They have a deep, unending love for specs and annotations, and the technical know how to wade into detailed conversation with engineers. They are tough and persistent, with enough passion and dedication to push until the very end.