Where have all the designers gone?

I’ve been having discussions with friends and colleagues lately about the lack of credibility of design.

Having ‘design’ or ‘designer’ in your role title does not give you actual design chops.

My colleagues and I are seeing a lot of organisations problematically propelling this problem by hiring inexperienced practitioners into design positions which set the individual and the company up for failure.

I have also heard of some consultancies placing people into their client’s organisations with the title of designer when they’ve never done a day’s design work in their lives.

With novice design practitioners on both sides, it’s no wonder design practice is losing its identity.

Why do designers matter?

I wonder why and how inexperienced design practitioners are successful in their appointments and their ongoing tenures.

One view is that they’re just following a one size fits all design process, and talk a good game. Whereas the nitty gritty of design happens in the customised, contextual, and evolving approaches organisations need.

I believe all projects suffer without the right expertise, particularly on projects that have design methods and strategy at their core.

Friends of mine recently worked for an organisation with designers from a consultancy without the transformation or service design experience they were brought in to deliver. They told me it was one of the most stressful workplace situations they have been in.

Upskilling clients in design approaches is usually part of what designers do on the consultancy side, but this was the opposite situation: working inside an organisation upskilling the consultants in service design approaches when they were brought in to introduce the new program of work.

Simply knowing design terminologies or reading a book on it does not make you a designer.

In the rush towards organisational change and transformation, the demand for design has never been greater. This demand is causing a deep skills gap between those who can actually do the job and those who just carry the title of designer.

This is most deeply exemplified in the nascent fields of service and strategic design.

What a service designer looks like

Service design is an evolving field made up of many different design practices, and in my opinion, you need experience in at least 2–3 of these in order to understand its abstract and highly conceptual nature.

For example, if you don’t know what it takes to apply a brand identity, design an interface, sketch a process flow or create a physical space, you're not going to be able to design a holistic service experience.

Therefore, I do not believe you can begin your career as a service designer; you need to understand what service design produces before you go up a level into mapping and conceiving of abstract, intangible systems and processes. Service design is not blueprinting and personas; it is implementation and organisational change.

In my opinion, a great designer knows that to build understanding and knowledge about what variables or possibilities exist takes time and practice.

So, when myself and my colleagues look around the industry, why do we see so few of these designers? With so many ‘design’ and ‘designer’ titles floating around, we were left wondering, where have all the designers gone?

We don’t know what’s happening.

Over a few wines, we asked ourselves if these designers have just become lost in the crowd, or are they are leaving design altogether because they’re over some of the bullshit that surrounds design. That, or perhaps they are going back to the tangible craft of making.

What do you think?