Is Personality Important In Design?
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Looking beyond the practical skills, we identify three important personality traits that are fundamental to your design team.
Personality is a fundamental building block of design.
Every organisation has a tone of voice guide.
Every publisher has audience personas they create for.
Every brand has visual elements – from a swoosh to three stripes – that represent their essence.
But these are examples of personality being projected into the world. It’s a matter of ideating, optimising and iterating for a specific community.
In contrast, we very rarely consider the role personality plays within the teams that bring all of the above to life.
Aarron Walter, Director of User Experience at Mailchimp, believes that personalities “foster friendships and serve as the platform for emotional connections.”
By considering how we interact in teams will not only foster good team culture, it also allows us to be better designers for those we serve.
Why does personality matter?
Research shows though that there is consensus around the influence of personality on our behaviour and cognitive processes.
For instance, a study by Sarv Devaraj, Robert F. Easley, J. Michael Crant found that “personality is linked to actual behavior through cognitive processes that determine one’s motivation to engage in a particular act.”
Similarly, innovation scholar Eric von Hippel found in his research that personality traits were significantly associated with free innovation; innovations developed by “consumers who are self-rewarded… by such factors as personal utility, learning, and fun.”
An inherently simple grassroots innovation process, he found that different personality traits such as openness to experience, introversion and conscientiousness influenced free innovation significantly from stage to stage.
Though research around the role of personality in design teams remains relatively novel, Local Peoples, with experience in developing augmented teams, has identified three key personality traits that can set a design team apart from the rest.
Good communication
A team that communicates well will be able to overcome any hurdles that come up. It could be argued that good communication is critical to the team’s success.
With any design project, not only will there be the need to interact and engage with external stakeholders, internal communication is vital to getting projects done on time and on budget.
Ryan Cobourn, Experience Design Manager at Adobe, outlines that the multifaceted nature of design demands it.
“Everything we do is complex enough and it touches so many different people that without talking to others, you can go down a path that might never arrive at the best solution.”
Promoting a culture of open and honest communication is foundational to achieving a collective organizational vision.
Always listening
A good team member knows when to contribute to broader discussions. But a good team member also knows the importance of listening when it is required.
Listening in this case, refers to both verbal and non-verbal communication. This can take the form of eye contact, not interrupting or not engaging with anything that may be distracting during team ideation or work.
Michael McWatters, UX Architect at TED believes that listening will ultimately transform a team and its work “from decorative to purposeful.”
Eager to learn
From User Interface (UI) Designers to Graphic Design, the world of design spans all facets of creativity, and takes various shapes and forms. Local Peoples Lead UX designer, Iain Brown, is no stranger to the broad scope of UX.
“Design can sometimes be open ended, and that’s a real challenge.”
The open ended nature of design means that a design team never stops learning. From new software to varying techniques, a team must be comfortable knowing that there is always more to know.
A team eager to learn with diverse experiences can create an ecosystem of focused growth.
This is reflected in several studies that have shown a relationship between an individual’s personality and their openness to sharing knowledge.
A study by Rui Mao, Yuichi Washia and Nanami Furue for the International Conference on Design Creativity 2020 found that the more individuals who tend to be energetic and talkative on a team, “the higher the possibility they can stimulate idea creation in other members, enabling the generation of a variety of useful ideas.”
This highlights the importance of constructive dialogue and feedback. Allison Chefec, web designer at BuzzFeed, believes a growth mindset is a necessary personality trait for success within design.
“If you keep an open mind, you might find that others have valuable points to make.”
Do you want to be part of the conversation about how to design high-performing product teams?
We are conducting research on the future of team design and collaboration. Share your thoughts on what makes for successful digital and product teams via a short survey and you could win a fancy dinner worth $400!
