“It’s not uncommon, when talking about designers and what to hire for, you hear about ‘T-shaped people.’ IDEO is most commonly identified with this, wherein you hire people with with a strong “vertical leg†in a specific skill, and an empathy that allows them to branch out and engage other disciplines.

Yesterday at Adaptive Path’s UX Week 2007, I sat on a panel on ‘Skills for Current and Future User Experience Practitioners’. As the conversation evolved, we started talking about design teams. Through the discussion, I had a lightning storm in my brain, where I realized that “T-shaped†is insufficient.”