Designing Together: The collaboration and conflict management handbook for creative professionals

10. Traits: Evaluating Yourself and Your Colleagues

This chapter describes 15+ different traits you might run into when working with designers. A “trait” is a characteristic of a designer. The traits that help designers understand the dynamic of a team rarely have to do with talent, but instead affect how they react to circumstances, how they interact with others, and how they perceive the world.

If my team knows, for example, that I work best at a high level of abstraction, they may grant me more time during the detailed design phase to deal with the tangible aspects of the design. If I’m aware that someone on my team provides a quick knee-jerk reaction, I may set up a separate review session to give them some time to digest my work before soliciting ...