In a recent article, Fabricio Teixeira (Designer at Work & Co, Founder of UX Collective — http://twitter.com/fabriciot) discussed the benefits of introducing yourself on projects to others without saying your title. I was never a person that put a huge amount of stock in titles. Don’t get me wrong I don’t think they are worthless but I do think we as people put way too much importance into them that they lose focus.
He goes on to explain when you don’t focus on our title’s we “Keep things simple” and “Reminds me of why”. Our titles don’t always state why it is you are doing the role on the project or in some cases when someone hears “Designer” they only associate it with aesthetics. Consider the below examples.
“I’m part of the design team at [company name]”
“I’m one of the designers working on [project name]”
“I’m a designer working on the [feature name] for [product name]”
“I’m responsible for the design side of things in this project we’re discussing today”
But never particularly mentioning my job title or level of seniority.
Fabricio Teixeira
Designer at Work & Co, UX CollectiveI plan on adopting this approach for work that I contribute to going forward. While I wasn’t a huge fan of titles before reading this I did make it a point to call out my level of seniority when introducing myself to a new project instead of how I will be contributing. What do you think of this approach? Will you adopt this method in your team and workplace?
