I recently read an article on The Smashing Magazine with the title “How to Defend Your Design Process”, from Mr. Vitaly Friedman, which is as always, insightful and filled with pertinent recommendations. I’ve also recently read the article “Roles are not Rules” from Mr. Kris Rasmussen, another fantastic article, where the author pertinently addresses the roles engineering teams can play further upstream in the Design Process, and how they can be more effective collaborators by doing so. Both these articles, alongside a plethora of many others that get written on what seems like a never ending cycle, always present themselves as a stark reminder of how Designers should “pitch the value of Design”, or “advocate the value of Design”, or even “the ROI of Design”. This state of constant advocacy is also a reminder that while the world seems to keep evolving, some aspects in the Technology world seem stuck in a “Groundhog Day” type of limbo. Here’s a few things to keep in mind when thinking about advocacy of Design.
Unlike Engineering, Design is always a nice to have and not an essential to have. Yes indeed. That statement may send shivers down some Designers’ backs, but in 2024, it still seems to be the paradigm for many organizations who operate in the Tech world. It’s ironic that in 36 years (since 1988), when Professor Don Norman wrote “The Design of Everyday Things”, and aspects of the User Experience discipline were coined, and even past the iconic statements from Mr. Steve Jobs and his revitalization of Apple courtesy of a Design centric perspective, and even the success of organizations such as AirBNB and numerous others (Atlassian for instance), none of these cases have shifted much in terms of how certain organizations craft their product solutions, and even on how they maintain and support relationships with their user base (client base). The eternal paradigm that Design makes things “pretty” and engineering makes things work, is the one that sticks with many of the decision makers, who staunchly refuse to look at the world around them, until something dramatic happens (loss of sales volume, dissatisfaction from hordes of clients, migration towards other solutions). And while Design may not be the solution for everything, failing to capitalize on it, and including it as one of the main pillars of any organization, is a disservice to the company itself, the products that it labors upon, and the clients that it serves. The key takeaway from this statement is: even with the reinforcement of numerous successful organizations who have placed Design as one of its key differentiating factors, that means nothing when stakeholders and decision makers can’t make the logical jump of what that means to their own organization and how they work. Akin to what is stated in the Hovland-Yale Communication paradigm, when it comes to Internal Mediating Processes, Intention, Comprehension, and Acceptance, has to be a game of education, persistence, and always reinforcing what Design effectively delivers. Not just from a process perspective, but from a analytics and numbers perspective. Those speak volumes.
Evangelize the Value of Design, only then will everyone understand it and want to partake in it. The title of this article is “the arduous journey of constant advocacy”. Most of the Design professionals that I’m familiar with, have a distinct notion that they need to continue to evolve and learn new subjects as a means to be more accomplished professionals. Designers don’t necessarily have to equate themselves with Renaissance Individuals, however they should always try to refine their baseline knowledge, be it with new tools (which includes Artificial Intelligence), new ways of collaborating with others, or even by learning more about other cultures (multiculturalism is only going to become more pronounced), to name but a few domains. In the past I’ve explored and did multiple courses on Digital Design, Program Management, Computer Science, Photography, and the list goes on. My point being, the profession and field of Design, demands for professionals in it to have a thirst for knowledge and an ability to constantly learn. This ability to learn, also enables these professionals to comprehend other roles, other functions, and build bridges with other professionals they have to collaborate with or become aware of. I’ve started noticing from a few years back in particular, how Product Management professionals have started to embrace Design as a discipline they want to understand better, or at least what design thinking actually entails. This has also extended to Engineering teams as well. This enables all these professionals to best understand how to collaborate and integrate each others’ efforts in the Design process itself. This is something that should be promoted in organizations. Designers can and typically will Evangelize the value of what they do, in what seems a perpetual motion of activities, showcases, artifacts, all with the intent of revealing what lies behind interactions and the constructs that are devised, with the support of data, of testing and constant engagement with those they serve (both stakeholders and clients). However, and ultimately the point I’m getting at is: the evangelization of Design should be done by everyone on any organization, and not by Designers alone. While Designers are indeed able to craft materials, and be instrumental players in the problem solving journey, Design as a discipline, the value it brings in terms of better understanding users, their needs and how addressing them actually brings value to organizations is something everyone should be promoting and advocating for. 
If we’re all Designers, then what does it mean to be a Designer these days. This is a highly polarizing topic. For some professionals in the field, they staunchly defend the idea that Designers should be left to do what they do best (and that in itself is another can of worms). I’ve personally always defended that roles in the Design Process should compliment each other and organically make part of a well engineered tissue, one that is crafted to deliver pertinent solutions, but also one that quickly and rapidly evolves as it understands the needs of its users. Problem solving is not something that only Designers can do. And at its core, that is what good Design actually does. Some professionals fear that by saying everyone is a Designer, that diminishes the value of Designers, reducing those professionals to pixel pushers or prompt creators (with AI creating and automating the baseline of certain artifact creation more and more, where will this place professionals in the field who only do that). I personally do believe there is an element of Design in anyone that is involved in the Process, since the collaborators who embark on that process, do want to solve a problem. And Designers’ roles go beyond creating artifacts. However this notion of holding onto these borders of who should do what, doesn’t necessarily make the process easier, or for that matter, clarifies what Design can effectively bring to the discussion. Product Design encompasses so many disciplines, and none of these live insularly. These disciplines live as a result of understanding clients, of understanding users and their needs, which means there’s aspects of customer experience that permeate what designers do, the same going for psychology, and storytelling. Ultimately everyone is solving a problem but also weaving a narrative, one that everyone hopes will elicit a response from its users. Designers function a bit like a connective thread, a variable that truly brings distinctiveness and hopefully effectiveness in what is created, they’re the chemists who mix a variety of sources to eventually distill something that is sensical and aligned with what was the original problem statement. Without it, we invariably end up with myopic and tone-deaf solutions that while at first glance may seem adequate, eventually and like most unbalanced situations in life, fall apart (and some in more dramatic ways than others).
For Designers who have been in the field for a considerable amount of time, at times it seems as if certain organizations are in a “Groundhog Day” type of scenario, where no matter how much they advocate, illustrate and narrate, Design is always a distant relation no one wants to pay particular attention to. As the world continues to spin and more technological advances continue to occur, Design will only become more fundamental for the success of organizations. Not because of what can be done with AI, but because the problems we solve for and how we think about them, will require a better understanding of how people themselves are evolving and adjusting to the world itself. And that’s something fundamentally tied with how Designers work.
Don DeLillo has written:
“This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature.”
Brief Considerations on Design Topics: 24. The Arduous Journey of Constant Advocacy was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
