General/Design Knights

Do you want to make money with this?

If making money was our goal, we should have chosen a different activity. Actually this is supposed to be a kind of community project. We think it's a cool idea, we want to explore these ideas and hope that the content we produce is also helpful to others. We do this because of the same reasons other people contribute to open source projects. It's fun, it's creative, and maybe it's even helpful.

Will the content stay free?

Absolutely, yes. We might, sometime in the future, also produce content which is not free (although there are no concrete plans for that). But everything that's free now, will be free forever. After all providing something for free typically means that we reach more people. And we'd like to be helpful to as many people as possible.

So is design-types.net an open source project?

Not exactly. Among others there are licensing issues which prevent us from really open-sourcing the content. So it's free as in free beer but not free as in free speech.

How can I contribute?

The simplest way to contribute is to contribute feedback. If you have an idea, if you've found a mistake or if you want to share your experience or thoughts just write an email or a comment here on the website. We like getting feedback.

If you want to conduct some scientific research by analyzing our statistical data or by exploring similar or related ideas, please get in touch with us.

How can I support?

design-types.net and everything around it requires a significant portion of our spare time. But that's OK. It's fun, and we have a regular job for earning money. Nevertheless, we are grateful for every support.

The easiest way to support, is to tell others about the website and the ideas. Talk to your friends and colleagues, write blog posts, and share links to the website. We are more interested in reach than money. If you want to support us financially, you can buy Design Cards sets and make donations via PayPal.

Design Types

What's the benefit of taking the test?

You get to know yourself better. This self-reflection is often a starting point for personal development. Moreover, knowing your Design Types as well as the types of your colleagues helps you avoid and resolve conflicts in discussions. But foremost: It's fun.

It's difficult to decide which statements to pick. Why do I have to pick exactly five?

The Design Types are supposed to be a simple model for capturing how people make design decisions. Even for exactly five statements in each dimension, there are 1296 possible combinations. But 1296 different types with different names and descriptions would simply be unmanageable. The model would be too complex to be helpful. So for each dimension we try to force you to decide on a tendency to one or the other side. Either you are (rather) simple or you are (rather) powerful. Only by doing so, we are able to reduce the number of types to 16. In fact, every odd number (1, 3, 5, 7, ...) of statements would be possible to reach that goal. But we felt that five is a suitable compromise between simplicity and significance.

I think I'm simple and powerful. Why doesn't the model capture this?

It's pretty common that you are somewhat undecided with respect to a certain dimension. Maybe you strive for the perfect compromise between both sides. Or maybe you tend towards simple in some situations and towards powerful in others. That's normal. Design Types is a simple model that cannot capture every aspect of the way you make design decisions.

On your result page you will find two little graphs that try to capture those uncertainties. They show you where in each dimension the test sees you and which other types may also fit.

Why yet another typology?

There are plenty of other typologies, that's true. But these other typologies are typically general ones. The Design Types capture specifically how you make design decisions in software development.

Is the typology based on other typologies?

Yes and no. In psychology the standard taxonomy for describing personality traits is called the Big Five. This model consists of five dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Openness roughly corresponds to robust-vs-technologic. And there is also a certain similarity between conscientiousness and pragmatic-vs-idealistic.

In consulting and human resource management the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Team Roles by Meredith Belbin are widely used. MBTI, similar to the Design Types, has four dimensions and type abbreviations. And Belbin's model is similar to ours because it also specializes on a specific aspect rather than providing a general model of personality.

Design Matrix

What are use cases for the Design Matrix?

Use the Design Matrix when you want to ensure that for a certain decision every perspective is taken into account. Depending on your Design Type and the types of your colleagues, there may be aspects which are over-represented and others which are normally underrepresented. Using the Design Matrix you can make sure that these aspects are not neglected. Furthermore, you can use the Design Matrix to compare possible solutions and to document the reasons for certain decisions.

When shall I use the Design Matrix?

Currently the Design Matrix is just a tool and not a complete method. Up until now we can only give hints what we think might be valid uses. The Design Matrix may be helpful when you are about to make an important design decision, when you prepare a decision to be presented to the team, the architect, or management or when you want to assess past design decisions.

It MAY be helpful in these and similar situations, but currently we don't have enough evidence to construct a proven method for its use. Please share your experiences with the Design Matrix.

Design Cards

When shall I use the Design Cards?

Similar to the Design Matrix, the Design Cards are merely a tool, you could call them a technique but there is no complete method, i.e. we don't prescribe a kind of process when the Design Cards are to be used. To a certain extent this is on purpose as we believe that processes have to be flexible and you shouldn't be dogmatic when applying software design techniques. On the other hand we still don't know enough, we still don't have enough experience in using the cards to create a sound method. So when you use the Design cards, please share your experiences.

How many card sets do I need?

For using the Design Cards alone, for learning the arguments, and also for using the cards as a learning game in your team, you just need one set. If you want to use the Design Cards as a discussion tool, every participant in the discussion needs an own set of cards.

Do I really need all the cards in a discussion?

No. Discussions slow down too much if you consider all the cards. Moreover, depending on your team, project, situation, or use case, some cards might be more relevant than others. So it's a good idea to build a deck of 10–20 cards before going into a discussion.

Why isn't there a card for principle X?

There is a limited amount of cards. Only 54 of them will fit into the box. So we simply had to make a choice. These 54 cards are the ones we believe are the most helpful while still being broadly applicable. There is the tendency that the more helpful a principle is, the more specific it will be. The same holds true for software components by the way: Either a component is very helpful, then it's typically a very specific component implementing some business logic. Or a component is very reusable (like a library function) but then it's quite useless on its own.

So we tried to have some very abstract and general principles as well as some concrete and specific ones. The Design Cards are supposed to be helpful in a wide variety of cases so there are some more general than specific cards.

We might provide a second volume of the Design Cards in the future. So stay turned if 54 cards are not enough for you.

Why didn't you include all the SOLID principles?

The SOLID principles may be well-known but in our opinion they are not the most helpful principles. SRP is part of the Design Cards. Instead of OCP we included ECV which captures roughly the same idea but is easier to understand. LSP is very specific and mostly helpful to library authors or if you have very complex domain models. ISP and DIP are good but in many cases LC suffices.

In total the SOLID principles are good but simply made a different choice.

Why is there Low Coupling (LC) but not High Cohesion (HC)?

SRP is essentially a slightly more specific version of HC. There is no point in including them both but SRP is slightly easier to apply.

Is there any difference between the download version and the printed cards?

No. The content is exactly the same.

Can I contribute or create custom cards?

In the future we will provide a way to do so. Up until then, you can write us an email or post your idea as a comment here on the website.

May I print the Design Cards myself and use them at work?

Sure. Go ahead!

May I print the Design Cards and sell them myself?

No. For obvious reasons we don't like that. Have a look at the usage permission section on our imprint page for more information.