Is it possible to have a life without that “I”? Maybe, but it would be hard to contribute to anything with only surface skill in the arsenal.

Can designers learn additional skills? Definitely. With today’s availability of online courses and all kinds of learning materials, it’s not that hard to pick up HTML & CSS or learn to prototype in Xcode.

Additional skills will serve as glimpses into a wide range of areas and will allow connection with people from these areas on a much closer scale.

It’s easier to get skills in similar areas than in an entirely different. If you do product development — it’s easier to learn any related skills than let’s say accounting.

Congratulations. Now we have a complete T-Shaped multidisciplinary designer.

In reality, there are 20x more of these additional skills, and there is a potential to count soft skills in as well.

Working as a team

What is the primary benefit of being the T-Shaped person in a team? Very simple. Let’s see one of the most common cases in product development:

Designers and engineers often have a wall between them. Each is in his own discipline and is drilling down without having an empathy to see what’s going on in other fields. Creative vs. technical mentality. The main issue — it’s hard for them to get mutual understanding, there is no shared vocabulary.

With an addition of new skills for both and if these skills overlap — there is a much higher chance to connect on different of levels. T-branches become bridges of understanding.

One of the examples I’ve heard recently is designer & engineer pair work done on iWatch while being at Apple. Pairs like this are one of the most amazing and versatile duos you can get.

How a small T-Shaped team can look like in a “connected state”. There are enough of an experience and shared vocabulary to communicate openly and share ideas and truly innovate.