Are you a hunter or a farmer?

One of the questions I often ask during interviews for design roles is:

“How would you describe yourself: as a problem-solver who thrives on tackling complex challenges, or as a craftsperson who focuses on perfecting the finer details of design?”

This question aims to identify the designer archetype. It’s something I learned some time ago when I stumbled upon a theory that categorises designers into two groups: hunters and farmers.

The hunter enjoys going out and seeking new ideas, whereas the farmer prefers perfecting the design. Both are essential, and there is a place for each within a design team. It is the design manager’s role to identify the archetype of a designer, ensuring that when you assign a task, you are asking the right person to do the right job.

Once, I asked the designer to come up with a new experience concept. After weeks, he returned with a slightly updated version of something we already knew well — a classic case of assigning a farmer to a hunter’s task.

This experience led me to explore designer types more deeply, resulting in five archetypes I want to share today: Hunter, Farmer, Weaver, Alchemist, and Scout.

Designers archetypes

Five different archetypes, and five specifics, although some of them would cross over in certain places. I based those five archetypes on designers in my team. I watched them and tried to identify certain criteria.

Hunter

Hunter is the designer who thrives out and about. They love the vague idea, blank canvases, rough concepts, and early stages. It’s a dynamic designer driven by curiosity, creativity, and a desire to solve complex problems. Their strengths make them perfect for projects that require exploration, innovation, and creating something from scratch. They love to pursue the best solution.

Key traits:

• Hunter loves a fresh start, vague briefs, and challenges,

• A generalist, idealist, and researcher.

Strengths:

• Enjoys user research, facilitating workshops, and coming up with new, unconventional ideas,

• Naturally curious, self-motivated and proactive,

• Adaptable and enthusiastic.

Challenges:

• Hunter struggles with the fine details of the design, or boundaries applied by the business or regulations,

• They focus on finding the right answer to the problem, so their design file will be messy and full of various versions and ideas, making it difficult for others to follow.

Ideal task:

• Creating a brand new experience, new feature exploration, product discovery, and new concept ideation,

• It’s the perfect designer for the startup in the early days.

Farmer

Farmers focus on improving existing designs, perfecting screens, and ensuring they are polished and refined. It’s a meticulous designer who thrives in an environment requiring optimisation and consistency. Their focus on details and quality of craft makes them perfect to polish and elevate the design.

Key traits:

• Detail-oriented,

• Loves structure,

• Enjoys pixel-perfect design and can catch every small inconsistency.

Strengths:

• Exceptional at iteration,

• Maintaining high quality and consistency,

• Contributing to a higher-quality end product,

• Following frameworks and patient.

Challenges:

• Can struggle with open-ended questions, ambiguity and lack of clear direction,

• The blank canvas stresses them, and they struggle with user research and vague briefs.

• They may be slow in delivering design as they value perfection more than anything.

Ideal task:

• Redesigning the experience,

• Maintaining the components library,

• Optimising existing workflows,

• Building a design system,

• Prepping design files for handover.

Weaver

The Weaver is a versatile and collaborative designer who shines at connecting ideas, people, and processes to create cohesive and impactful outcomes. Their ability to balance creativity and structure makes them key players in bridging gaps and ensuring seamless integration across all aspects of a project.

Key traits:

• Can handle both ideation and execution without being tied to one mode of operation,

• They can bring order to the chaos.

Strengths:

• Able to see the bigger picture,

• Skilled in both exploration and refinement tasks,

• Adaptable and comfortable to pivot, changing direction and the task,

• Great collaborators and skilled at keeping the balance between exploration and execution.

Challenges:

• May struggle when put under pressure or when tasked with complex challenges,

• May feel overwhelmed and would find it difficult to say no, inviting pressure and burnout,

• They need a clear scope and defined boundaries.

Ideal task:

• A project that requires synthesis, integration and creating a structure (style guides, documentation),

• Often acting as a bridge between design and development.

Alchemist

The Alchemist is a visionary designer who thrives on challenging conventions, exploring unknown territories, and bringing creativity and innovation to projects. Their ability to think beyond traditional boundaries and propose transformative ideas makes them leaders and innovators striking for groundbreaking change.

Key traits:

• A thinker proposing radical ideas,

• Storyteller, disruptive innovator,

• Motivator and influencer,

• Brave, direct and non-conformist.

Strengths:

• Thinking outside the box,

• Reframing ideas and being able to convince others of their vision,

• Know how to use storytelling to influence direction, solution or strategy,

• Able to draw inspiration from diverse fields including psychology, philosophy, art, science and tech.

Challenges:

• May struggle to turn their visionary concepts into actionable, practical steps,

• Often may need to deal with pushback, as their strong personality can be challenging for others.

Ideal task:

• Ideating new concepts and creating visions,

• Reframing business objectives,

• Defining a new strategy, framework or way of working.

Scout

The Scout is more of a junior designer, researcher, or designer new to the field (e.g. a graphic designer moving into a UX role), eager to learn, explore, and contribute, even if they require guidance and support. Despite their junior status, they bring a fresh perspective, enthusiasm, and adaptability to the team.

Key traits:

• Curious learner,

• Thrives under mentorship,

• Needs clear direction,

• Actively seeking opportunities,

• Flexible and easy to adapt to changes.

Strengths:

• Great at gathering information,

• Often unbiased and offering a fresh perspective,

• Able to pivot quickly,

• Supportive team player and enthusiastic collaborator willing to take on every challenge as long they can learn from it.

Challenges:

• Fear of “not good enough” can paralyse them,

• Struggle without clear guidance,

• Often dealing with imposter syndrome.

Ideal task:

• Assisting with user interviews,

• Documenting insights and observations,

• Supporting more experienced colleagues,

• Owning small tasks.

Why it matters

Understanding your team members’ core attributes and assigning them a particular role may improve team dynamics. Farmers will naturally struggle with ‘blank canvas’ tasks, whereas hunters will thrive.

Scout would struggle with a bigger, more serious challenge, and support from Weaver would be necessary.

How I learned that the hard way

I have made a mistake once and assigned a task to the wrong archetype. We were tasked to add a new feature to the banking app.

The designer responsible for that was a typical farmer, obsessed with pixel-perfect design, rocking auto layout in every single frame, able to push pixels for hours and correcting everyone around if they missed component positioning by 1 px.

However, he was not able to think outside the box. Abstract ideation, exploration, and searching for inspiration were unknown to him.

He reused solutions found in other apps. He decided on the approach, designed it and handed it over to devs to build it.

As a result, we ended up with a difficult-to-use concept and with an increased number of phone calls to support.

I take full responsibility for that fiasco as I trusted him and gave him a grant of freedom, rather than challenging him strongly.

I also learned that correctly assigning tasks based on archetype leads to significantly better outcomes. By matching a “Hunter” with a new product exploration project, we generated innovative concepts that resonated strongly with users. This positive experience reinforced the value of understanding these archetypes.

Do you see the archetype in yourself?

Which archetype fits your style of work? Are you a farmer, hunter or weaver? Or maybe consider yourself an alchemist?

No matter who you are, it is crucial to identify your strengths and attributes. Or maybe talk to your manager and analyse it together. That would help you to succeed at work.

As a design manager, I think the team should be diverse. In my opinion, you should aim to have at least one hunter and one farmer in your team. Weavers are always great helpers, and they will thrive in almost all situations, so aim to bring at least a couple of them. If you have a scout in the team, let them grow and learn and watch which path they would take.

However, if you see an alchemist in your team, protect them and bring a lot of support in the presence of a weaver or farmer. Alchemists need that connection to the real world.

Or maybe you consider yourself an alchemist?

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These five archetypes are based on team members of the design team at Tandem. But perhaps there are other types I haven’t identified yet. Do you think I have missed any type? Which one resonates the most with you?