Inspiration and references
Propietary / private in-house frameworks sent to us are not listed here.
Agile skill matrix
ResearchWhat is it?
Skill matrix—a way to visualize the diverse skillset of a team. Rates skills on a 5-point scale: No Skill, Basic Knowledge, Perform Basic Tasks, Perform All Tasks, Teach All Tasks.
Who made it?
Seibert // Media
Intended audience?
Agile teams using Kanban
What is its purpose?
Planning necessary team skills for taking on an agile project
What does it include?
A simple skill-rating and a matrix for visualization of team competency in those skills.
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An organization’s design research maturity model
ResearchWhat is it?
A matrix to assess the maturity of your organization's research practice Laggard / Early / Progressing / Mature
Who made it?
Chris Avore
Intended audience?
People leading research teams within bigger organizations - Execs who want to invest in their org's research capabilities
What is its purpose?
Help organizations figure out how to develop research practice by what their current and future status could looks like
What does it include?
Four levels of org maturity
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Buzzfeed Design Leveling doc
ResearchWhat is it?
A leveling guide for designers—two major groups of IC Designers and Manager Designers. Within each group are levels with corresponding competency descriptions, and a flipped perspective, competencies with corresponding role level descriptions.
Who made it?
Buzzfeed design
Intended audience?
Buzzfeed designers, managers, and leadership. Not external.
What is its purpose?
Focused on leveling: likely to assign role titles and payscale. Does not tell a coherent story of progression or, on its own, help one understand how to assess/grow.
What does it include?
For each role, the various competencies one should have and the corresponding performance/proficiency of competency at that level.
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Clearleft Professional Development Framework
ResearchWhat is it?
Designer skillsets on a five point proficiency scale, on Trello
Who made it?
Clearleft
Intended audience?
Professionals in the design industry
What is its purpose?
Understand and measure how you are progressing in you role and what's expected in order to advance your career
What does it include?
20 individuals skillsets over five pillars: Core, Strategy, Design, Leadership and Operations
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Creating Career Paths for UX Professionals
ResearchWhat is it?
A look at how to design career paths and role descriptions, for both in-house companies and agencies.
Who made it?
Kristen Johansen
Intended audience?
Design managers or corporate leaders
What is its purpose?
Focus is on how to create & define job levels and role depictions, showing the path of Corporate vs. Agency designer. It's more about thinking about how to frame the role itself than it helps one in the role progress. Also some general management best practices.
What does it include?
Slide deck from 2008 talk. High level and wide-ranging in what it covers—a lot related to role trajectories, role levels, role descriptions, salary benchmarking, and more.
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Designing a Better Career Path for Designers
ResearchWhat is it?
A visual map, shows the path for a designer split into 3 major buckets: IC, Hybrid, Manager
Who made it?
Siva Sabaretnam
Intended audience?
Designers & design managers
What is its purpose?
Help chart out more clear and useful career paths for designers. Articulate the important divide between IC, Manager, Hybrid.
What does it include?
An interesting visual depiction of the path. Lots of interesting little unexplained bits on the map 'Prioritization Peak' and the 'Cairn of Creditibility.'
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Dreyfus model of skill acquisition
ResearchWhat is it?
A fairly general model used to (a) to provide a means of assessing and supporting progress in the development of skills or competencies, and (b) to provide a definition of acceptable level for the assessment of competence or capability.
Who made it?
Skill matrix—a way to visualize the diverse skillset of a team. Rates skills on a 5-point scale: No Skill, Basic Knowledge, Perform Basic Tasks, Perform All Tasks, Teach All Tasks.
Intended audience?
Initially, psychologists and likely cognitive scientists or people working on AI. Relevant for educational instructors / trainers.
What is its purpose?
It attempts to show the levels of skill acquisition from novice to expert, showing how novices first must learn the rules and then eventually intuit those rules to work with them unconsciously and move to higher-order issues as they become experts.
What does it include?
5 stages (Novice > Advanced Beginner > Competent > Proficient > Expert) and two scales that matrix with the stages. Scale 1: (How knowledge etc is treated, Recognition of relevance, How context is assessed, Decision making). Scale 2: (Knowledge, Standard of work, Autonomy, Coping with complexity, Perception of context)
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GDS Researcher Capability Framework
ResearchWhat is it?
A capability framework for different levels of government employees, also includes the civil servant requirements.
Who made it?
UK GDS
Intended audience?
UK Government employees working in user research
What is its purpose?
For those hiring in user researchers at various levels, getting an understanding of what's required.
What does it include?
Very detailed description of essential skills at each level of user researcher and the skill level (although these are a bit vague) as well as UK civil servant competencies.
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Levels framework
ResearchWhat is it?
Levels framework from Merholz/Skinner book Org Design for Design Orgs
Who made it?
Peter Merholz and Kristin Skinner
Intended audience?
Designers & design managers
What is its purpose?
Draw out levels for design team members, use as scaffolding to help them identify where they are and how to push forward
What does it include?
5 levels, and across each, a POV on where that level falls on things like achievement, scope, process, people, # of core skills, etc.
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Levels framework for Snagajob Design
ResearchWhat is it?
The full-on levels developed by Peter Merholz originally for Snagajob design.
Who made it?
Peter Merholtz
Intended audience?
Snagajob designers
What is its purpose?
What does it include?
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Meld Studio Skills Matrix
ResearchWhat is it?
A matrix that describes the skills and behaviours expected for four levels of a Meld designer.
Who made it?
Meld Studio (service design studio in Australia)
Intended audience?
Designers at Meld
What is its purpose?
For self-assessment, colleague assessment, and reflection on goals/gaps.
What does it include?
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Product Manager Skills by Seniority Level
ResearchWhat is it?
Deep breakdown of skills by seniority level. Not research-specific, but a well-received framework format for PM development.
Who made it?
SVP Product at InVisionapp
Intended audience?
Product managers and product manager-managers
What is its purpose?
Help chart out the career path of a PM: both for IC and manager.
What does it include?
Clear career path showing a split between IC/Manager. Groups of competencies broken into individual skills areas, showing how that corresponds to varying levels of pm seniority.
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SFIA 7 User Experience Research
ResearchWhat is it?
A semi-clinical framework for 4 levels of research seniority (3, 4, 5, 6) out of 7.
Who made it?
Skills For the Information Age Foundation (SFIA)
Intended audience?
Organizational leaders or potentially managers. A little unclear.
What is its purpose?
Purports to describe the responsibilities and skills required of a user researcher, at the middle and upper levels.
What does it include?
Levels 3, 4, 5, 6 each with a 1-paragraph description of the scope of responsibilities.
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Shapes of UX Designer
ResearchWhat is it?
A wide-ranging set of frameworks and models of the UX practitioner.
Who made it?
Jason Mesut
Intended audience?
Designers and design-folk
What is its purpose?
Helping designers reflect on their "shape," the competencies they have rated according to various strengths.
What does it include?
Many, many shapes!
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Skill-based Role Development Draft
ResearchWhat is it?
A breakdown of role progression purely through specific methods / skills, aligned to a large picture of the research process.
Who made it?
Dave Hora
Intended audience?
Research practitioners and the people who manage/mentor them
What is its purpose?
Showing researchers a career progression based on skills / awarenesses; showing a continuous flow of growth.
What does it include?
A collection of skills & methods & awarenesses, implicited ranked & arranged by seniority/skill level.
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Spotify Technology Career Steps
ResearchWhat is it?
(It’s not in a research context but I think the thinking behind it and formulation is really interesting!) A within-company career progression guide—generic for anyone in their Technology division (folks who define / design / validate / ship product to end-users.)
Who made it?
Spotify Engineering Team
Intended audience?
Anyone within the spotify technology organization.
What is its purpose?
To help users understand how they might progress in their career and, what the path toward advancement looks like. Tries to fit a logical progression to org advancement so team has clear expectations about where they can go and what it will take to get there.
What does it include?
A framework of Disciplines, Roles, and Steps. Provides a flexible way forward with ""no one path""—but rather a negotiation between the framework use and their manager. And a foundation on behaviors that exemplify the company values. There are four step-levels. Individual > Squad/Chapter > Tribe/Guild > Technology/Company.
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UX Specialist Description — MIT
ResearchWhat is it?
A fairly general model used to (a) to provide a means of assessing and supporting progress in the development of skills or competencies, and (b) to provide a definition of acceptable level for the assessment of competence or capability.
Who made it?
MIT's Information Systems & Technology group.
Intended audience?
MIT UX Specialists and the managers who may be trying to assess them.
What is its purpose?
To identify requisite competency levels fo reach skill dimension of the three levels of UX Specialist.
What does it include?
It's a mega-matrix. For each role level, it defines the competency levels of all of the applicable skill dimensions. To support this, it lays out career levels, competency definitions, responsibilities at each role level, and skills dimensions competencies.
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Special mentions
To learn more about
- Wardley maps: Watch Simon Wardley's keynote "Crossing the River by Feeling the Stones" and read his book (available on Medium).
- Pattern languages: Read Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction" and watch Takashi Iba's keynote on Pattern Languages 3.0, "Creating Pattern Languages for a Future where We Can Live Well"
- Wardley maps: Watch Simon Wardley's keynote "Crossing the River by Feeling the Stones" and read his book (available on Medium).
- Pattern languages: Read Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction" and watch Takashi Iba's keynote on Pattern Languages 3.0, "Creating Pattern Languages for a Future where We Can Live Well"
Compiled by
Dave Hora
Dave is a researcher and strategist consulting as Dave's Research Company – http://davesresearch.com/
Tomomi Sasaki
Tomomi is a designer and partner at the Tokyo/Paris based design studio AQ. She is co-founder of Design Research Tokyo and on the board of the ResearchOps Community. Twitter @tomomiq.
Yan Huang
Yan is a design researcher who now focuses on problem-space research. Searching for her next challenge, she works on a remote or freelance basis. Outside of UX, her passion for women’s fitness and health also led her to online coaching busy women. She loves board/card games and creative functional movement.
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