Designer vs. Design

Recently, a peculiar thought crossed my mind. I was reflecting back on all the job descriptions & design requirements I have come through till now - be it through LinkedIn, academic placements, or common referrals. Naturally, there are some companies and opportunities that each designer is attracted to on a personal level.

You may wish to work at design agencies that have a reputation of producing credible design work to quench their thirst of "true design experience" or look for contractual roles which offer flexibility & intellectual growth, or you aim to grab a spot at a multi-national corporate in hopes of a great pay & employment stability.

Each of these opportunities offer their own unique value propositions to the designer. These value propositions are also a great way of filtering out designers to identify the ones whose goals align with the recruiter. But even amongst all these different types of opportunities, I have noticed 2 distinct categories that broadly differentiate them.

But before leaning into them, let's look at how we look at design first.

Design for me

Each individual & institution has their own version of "what design means" - and that's good for everybody. Diversity is very much a requirement for the design discourse to grow, & in turn for the growth of industries as well. Often times, this divergence from a common definition of design may cause design to have an identity crisis as well. But as history tells us, time takes care of everything.

The masses decide which designs work for them or not. However, this interpretation of the masses is re-interpreted by recruiters to visualize what design looks like for their organization specifically. Some may choose to jump on existing bandwagons hoping to capitalise on what's popular, while others strive to radicalize ongoing conceptions about products & services.

"We're looking for a Designer ... "

For companies who wish to be part of the general wave of design at present, the goals of the design team are well defined. There is software, frameworks, & products that they wish to create & need designers for their development. They want to employ design thinking to create innovation, but only as long as they create products that the management already has a vision for.

Designers are provided with an outline of what they are expected to create & are asked to fill in the blanks. How that will be achieved, is left for the designer to figure out. Chances are that recruiters want to skip the design thinking process altogether to create a product that stands shoulder to shoulder with the competition. Value propositions are pre-defined, just that their inner workings need to be articulated.

In short, they need designers to design a pre-thought idea. Here, chances of hitting targets are more, work is delegated with a top-down approach, & success metrics are specified to the T.

This approach works well when orgs have large teams, have to maintain copious amounts of paperwork for compliance & regulation, & just need to get the product out on time. If this approach didn't exist, we probably wouldn't have a lot of products that we use on a daily basis.

This also helps to release a product which is relevant for the times. There are countless instances when companies have released products so late that the social culture just can't care about it - because they're irrelevant now.

"We're looking for someone who can Design ... "

On the other hand, there are organizations who have knowledge about the design thinking process based on historic examples. They have gone through the classic IDEO case studies, have an understanding of which processes have worked before or not, & are willing to take risks to create a damn good solution.

Designers know this - when following the design process, we have a fuzzy goal - an ill-defined problem that we don't know how to solve. There are some ideas as to what an imaginable future looks like & how people's lives will get better. There is never a clear picture of what the solution will actually look like, but we can "sort of" visualize how the world will look like once the solution is deployed.

Why don't we have an idea of what the solution will look like? Because we don't have the data. And the data already out there is already outdated (so it usually seems). But new relationships within the data is yet to be found.

Here, designers focus their energies on getting their hands dirty, harvesting raw data from user studies, doing unforgiving field work & analyses that may go on from hours to weeks. The timelines are still existent, and the pressure to deliver is ever so present. But they go against the grain anyway.

This process (for the lack of a better word) can actually be painful. The first few weeks are spent struggling to find clarity, almost similar to finding a coin in a flowing river. But through persistent rigour & vigour, they go through that process to find the actual problem to be solved.

The design thinking approach focuses on defining the problem clearly than straight up jumping to solutions. It may mess up timelines, it could be hard to explain to the management, but having faith in the design process propels everyone to take a deep breath and carry on. Why? Because

"We trust the process."

Designers know that well-crafted solutions are a result of well-defined solutions. In order to create a better future for everyone, it's important that we don't duct-tape our way out of problems & put our energies in understanding the depths of the social fabric to deliver something that could help & inspire generations to live better lives.

Designers are free to choose where they want to work. Not everyone will agree on the same processes & methodologies. But I do believe that each designer has a responsibility of carrying forward the tenets that lie at the foundation of design thinking - even if it means going against the grain, using persuasion techniques to get their point across, & putting in a little more effort.

After all, each designer I know personally chose this profession for one reason only:

"I love designing."