Read an introspective piece by famed ex-Frog Design leader Robert Fabricant about the state of the design industry and the unease that he says many of his peers are feeling. While I disagree with some of the concerns he lays out around AI / diversity being the drivers of this unease, he makes a strong case for how this is a natural pendulum swing after years of seeing “Chief Design Officers” and design innovation groups added to many corporate giants.
I’ve had the privilege of working with very strong designers. This has helped me appreciate the value of design thinking as something that goes far beyond “making things pretty” and believe, wholeheartedly, that it’s something that should be more broadly adopted.
At the same time, it’s also not a surprise to me that during a time of layoffs and cost cutting, a design function which has become a little “spoiled” in the past years and of which calculating financial returns is experiencing some painful transition especially for creative-minded designers who struggle with that ROI evolution.
If Phase 1 was getting companies to recognize that design thinking is needed, Phase 2 will be the space learning how to measure, communicate, and optimize what the value of a team of seasoned designers brings to the bottom line.
In recent years, there has also been a shift in the very nature of design leadership inside companies. Where the early corporate pioneers were in “building mode” to establish and integrate design capabilities, these functions are now focused on optimization. That is where the professionals at IBM and Accenture/Song come in, with creativity giving way to utilization as the primary metric of success, particularly in an economic downturn.
Magowan of Design Leaders is hearing this sentiment from his clients on the hiring side. “Companies are still adjusting,” he says. “Trying to understand how to embed design properly and not make the mistakes they made by hiring folks into design leadership roles who were not equipped.”
This transition is not well-suited to most creative leaders, even proven ones like Powell. “Scaling takes attention,” he says. “But once you get there, then you need to keep turning the dial so that this [design] machine runs more and more efficiently. For me that is where it got to be not as fun.” Perhaps 2024, then, is the right moment for the big handoff to the folks at McKinsey Design to lead the charge armed with their corporate reports and CDO roundtables on business value and design effectiveness?
The big design freak-out: A generation of design leaders grapple with their future
Robert Fabricant | Fast Company
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