DESIGNERS: Ever wondered what sets IC5 and IC6 Product Designers apart? - IC5 is typically a Senior level role - IC6 is usually considered Staff level Both are senior roles. But IC6 isn’t just “a more experienced IC5.” IC5 designers own product spaces, lead projects, and mentor juniors. They’re trusted to deliver big. IC6 designers? They shift into systems-level problems. They shape team goals. They drive org-wide initiatives. The jump isn’t about better design skills. It’s about scaling your impact beyond your own work. Those are some differences between senior and staff designers. Do you think IC6 should still be considered “hands-on,” or more strategy? #design #designer #startups #productdesign #designtips #hiringtips #foundingdesigner #seniordesigner #staffdesigner #superic #productdesigner
Principal Product Designer | Passionate about Platform & Service Design
10hI'm wondering if the notion of "strategy vs hands-on" is a false dichotomy? In my experience, IC6 work is still totally hands-on—just the artifacts you're making change. Rather than just screens, you're building framework artifacts—system maps, service blueprints, alignment frameworks, and others. These are still tangible deliverables that need deep craft, they just operate at different altitudes. The whole "strategy" term is pretty nebulous though—reminds me of John Heskett's take: "Design is to design a design to produce a design." So combining strategy and design makes it even harder. My working definition from Porter is that strategy is choosing what to do and what not to do, but that applies at nearly all altitude levels. Your "impact" framing feels more useful—IC6 designers use these framework artifacts to navigate organizational complexity, making abstract challenges discussable by giving stakeholders something tangible to point to, debate, and ultimately, decide what to do and what not to do. So yeah, I'd say IC6 is still deeply hands-on, just with an expanded toolkit. The craft evolution goes from "enabling user-scale decisions" to "enabling organization-scale decisions."