Mission 🙏
To help Cantilever clients fulfill their missions by designing digital technology to meet the needs of their users.
Definition of Success 📈
- Successfully solve client problems based on the client’s own metrics/definitions of success
- Deliver complete work within self-agreed due dates at least 90% of the time
- Consistently deliver high-quality work within self-provided estimates at least 90% of the time
Key Responsibilities 💪
- Takes clarified design tasks and creates high-quality, user-centric design solutions that solve the client’s needs
- Helps clarify upcoming work and helps strategists shape solutions
- Conducts research and analysis to understand the real-world factors that should influence design work
- Coordinates with developers to ensure that our final sites are top quality
Key Skills 🤹🏽
| Skill | Level 1 | Level 2 | Level 3 | Level 4 | Level 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Design Systems | Can implement styles from an existing design system to make a new page. | Can contribute basic new components and styles to a design system. | Can create a simple design system by themselves, and can contribute complex, multi-variable components to existing systems | Can independently create and maintain a design system of moderate complexity which is easily scalable and has a 1 to 1 relationship with a code base. | Can independently create and maintain a large design system, document it, and publish it publicly. Is known in the industry as an expert on design systems. |
Figma Skills | Knows how to implement simple components, shared colors, and typographic styles. Keeps layers neat and contained. | Can create nuanced components with a variety of states. Finished design is fully optimized, with no one-off unaffiliated styles. | Can implement deeply nested components to create flexible, powerful systems with a document. Can teach Figma to new users. | Deep understanding of all the built-in features of Figma (components, styling, prototyping, external plugins). | Writes Figma plugins to create bespoke functionality. Publishes Figma work to the public and is known as an expert on Figma techniques. |
Visual Design | Understands the basic rules of visual design: hierarchy, balance, alignment, order, etc. Can differentiate different typeface styles and what they are best for. | Has a mental library of design principles informed by successful designs from history. Understands the progression of typography through the years and how web and print typography differ. | Knows when to "break the rules" to create dynamic style. Is up to date with the latest design thinking across multiple disciplines. | Has their own trademark style based on a strong understanding of historical design principles and current trends. Publishes work publicly, promoting the company. | Has a style that influences other designers. Their work is cited as inspiration in the design community. Speaks and writes about design thinking and trends for the Cantilever audience. |
UX | Can create a set of wireframes for a simple website in both mobile and desktop. Can read and understand user research to tailor solutions to specific audiences. | Can present wireframes effectively to a client. Can build a clean, consistent set of wireframes for a complex website. Can analyze business needs to understand user journeys and create psychographics. Comfortable running user testing and analyzing sites in relation to competitors. | Can create powerful, flexible wireframes to show both website structure and nuanced UI patterns (such as scroll-triggered effects and animations). Is imaginative in the UX process to think of new UI paradigms that are uncommon and differentiate our work. | Performs user research and discovery projects as the background for design work. Can create a content model for a medium-sized site and match it to wireframes. | Can handle the most intensive, research-driven UX projects independently. Inspires others to create more advanced, innovative UX work. Creates and publicizes new UX methodologies (ex. UX Kits). |
UI | Can visually show different states of a component through multiple artboards / storyboarding. | Is comfortable creating a finished site design from approved wireframes, resolving the nuances of the UI in a consistent and on-brand way. | Creates best-practices UI that is intuitive for users. Can create a common style across all UI in an interface. Knows the basics of how UI will translate into code and pitfalls to avoid. | Creates imaginative, on-brand ways to address common UI challenges. Publishes work on behalf of the company. Can create animated prototypes and interactive demos. | Can handle the most complex UI challenges elegantly with on-brand design, for any product or website. Is known as a top UI designer worldwide. |
Branding | Can create logo concepts that are unique, balanced and clearly convey the brand. Can provide strong feedback on visual identity work. | Can work with a client to design an on-brand, production-ready logo for them. | Can create a larger visual identity for a client including ancillary materials alongside the core brand. Branding work is imaginative and thorough. | Can creative direct a large branding project, integrating user analysis, client input, competitive research, and strategic thinking. | Can handle a massive branding project with global scale, successfully integrating input from many complicated stakeholder relationships. |
Presentation | Reliably communicates with team leads around project status and deliverables. | Comfortable speaking directly to clients to learn about their vision and desired direction, and to demo completed work. | Can participate in client discovery or sales meetings and clearly communicate vision and intent when presenting to clients. | Can lead important client meetings as our point person. Can create presentations to inspire and direct our clients/prospects. | Can present the work of themselves and others successfully. Can write exceptional brand guides. Speaks and writes publicly about design on behalf of the company. |
Coding Understanding | Understands the basics of how web technologies work to render design to the screen | Has a basic understanding of HTML/CSS and knows how tags and styling work. | Has experience writing HTML and CSS and can articulate to developers how a component might be built. | Has written production-grade HTML/CSS/JS and can help developers plan and execute their work | Literally is a developer also 😆 |
Webflow Development | Can work with a template or existing site to customize colors, typography and site content | Can create a medium-sized Webflow site from scratch, matching provided or own designs. | Can translate a visual design into a custom built Webflow site using components and shared styles | Can create more advanced Webflow sites using collections and e-commerce features. | Able to create new custom components that are accessible and re-usable between Webflow projects. Is known as a Webflow expert. |