Industrial designer Michael Roller asked designers to take the MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) to see whether designers fall into certain personality types. He compiled the results here. http://www.michaelroller.com/?p=996
Apparently “designers are less akin to the stereotypical touchy-feely artist, and more like engineers who always keep the big picture in mind.”
The test results show that designers: “‘intuit’ rather than ‘sense’ … focus on context and future developments, rather than simply the data at hand …[and] … ‘judge’ rather than ‘perceive’ … see the world in terms of discrete problems that can be structured and cracked, rather than as a series of casual, open-ended possibilities.
Read the Fast Company article.
Regardless of what type you are, you can practice Intuition and Sensing the next time to are faced with a problem to solve. This may give you additional perspectives and possibilities. I have made up some useful questions below against each of the MBTI traits.
Intuit:
What is the context around the problem?
What was the situation in the past?
What could be the situation in the future?
What is the "feel" of the situation at hand?
Sense:
What are the facts of the story?
What are the causes and effects at play?
What are the actions (that have been taken / that could be taken) and the possible reactions to them?
Judge:
How can you describe the problem as a step by step narrative? Where each step is something you can take action to address.
For each step, what practical actions can you take to improve the situation?
Perceive:
Taking the entire situation as a whole, what could improve things down the track (without getting caught up in the minute implementation details. )
It may be useful to think about it in terms of vague "If only...." wishes.
Image: Personality test via Shutterstock.
