In an essay titled The Lost Designer, I wrote:
Somewhere in our education was the silent assumption design appreciation is everywhere. That we can just show up to a new job, sprinkle ideas around and watch them grow. Design schools are centered on design. So are design books, design conferences and design friends. But this is a subculture. The vast majority of important design work is not done in subcultures or in design magazines. Instead, it happens in the thousands of businesses and organizations in the world whose goals and values aren’t centered on design. This becomes obvious if you look at who starts organizations and why they start them or the (low) design quality of things made by many successful companies.
Yet somehow we’re surprised, or even offended, when we face design ignorance. The truth is the more important the work you are doing, the more ignorance of design you will face. We should see it as an opportunity for progress, rather than an annoyance to avoid. All designers should be good at explaining the basics, but we’re not.
The profound sense of feeling lost, or misunderstood, that many designers feel may be rooted in well-established but misguided expectations for what design work has always been like. Most stories about design heroes promote the misguided idea that organizations understand good design and that everyone will go out of their way to make designers successful and happy above and beyond their own self-interests, even working against the goals and reward systems organizations have had for a long time. The recent layoffs in tech have hit UX and designers hard, but it can’t be a complete surprise if we’ve felt undervalued and underappreciated. These choices and feelings are not unrelated.
However many designers don’t feel lost at all. In interviewing people for this book, it’s clear those who are self-taught or who learned through on-the-job experiences often have a more practical origin story than those who go to major design schools. They have fewer assumptions about how it should be, and focus more easily on what can actually be done. They don’t feel lost in the same way. Their lack of pretense makes it easier to build the healthy relationships with engineers and marketers required for good design work to happen. This presents a kind of paradox: by letting go it’s easier to get what you need.
This suggests the way to save designers who feel lost might be as simple as providing a more honest and mature story about what design is and what designers are. But the myth of the designer as hero is so well known and deeply rooted in design culture that it’s hard for many to grow past it, even if it’s painful to hold on to. This is why designers have had the same complaints about workplaces and the (mis)perceptions of designers for so long.
To stop feeling lost we have to first be honest about where we are. Few organizations are going to shift to our language, unless we learn theirs first. We have to stop waiting for someone to “save design” in our organizations. We have to open our eyes to human nature and how organizations work (or don’t work). We may have to admit it’s influence that limits us, and that it’s probably not that our design talents aren’t good enough. What good is more design skill if it’s ignored? Maybe there are other skills we need to improve first? Ones that chip away at the real roadblocks we face? Accepting all this isn’t easy, but it’s healthier than choosing to stay lost, and bitter, waiting for the fantasy of a design-centric company or a design-literate world to magically appear in front of us.
Well put. I also think designers in leadership positions have failed the discipline by NOT advocating about the value of design strongly enough at a budgetary level. I’ve witnessed this first hand (having members of my teams cut without consulting me) and I think it’s a dereliction of duty for those in positions of power. It's disappointing to see it continue at its current level and the impact it's had on so many designers.
Sharing one option in response to *What good is more design skill if it’s ignored? Maybe there are other skills we need to improve first? Ones that chip away at the real roadblocks we face?*
May be an option to explore the benefits of having those in the Chief of Staff role learn more about design to then be real advocates of good design, lend support and collaborate in the buy-in process to reduce and/or eliminate roadblocks. RACI charts and risk registers openly discussed with the Chief of Staff (as they exist).