From “The Way to Design” by Steve Vassallo
Whatever happened to design? Not so long ago, design was ubiquitous in the Silicon Valley discourse. Tech giants were acquiring design agencies, design thinking was touted as critical for strategic planning, some companies installed a chief design officer, even venture firms were hiring design partners. These days … the fanfare seems to have faded. And I found myself asking what had been asked of me when I became an industry exponent for the practice: was design just a fad?
Back in 2017, I released a book called The Way to Design, because I believed then, as I believe now, that design is about more than aesthetics. Design is understanding why you are building something, how it will be used, what needs it fulfills — and it is critically important for solving our most pressing problems. At the time,The Way to Design was part of the vanguard of a movement championing the centrality of design in tech and beyond. For the book, I spoke with 50 design leaders, builders, and thinkers. The result was a guidebook for how to go from being a designer to an entrepreneur and how businesses can weave design into their company’s DNA.
Five years later, I wanted to check in on whether my fellow evangelists and I had made a dent, or if design was just a passing fashion. I went back to the folks I interviewed, as well as a few new friends, and asked them two questions: Do you think design has made significant advancement in the last five years (in what areas or aspects)? What’s been disappointing about design’s progress since 2017? The responses — from founders, like Joe Gebbia (Airbnb) and Evan Sharp (Pinterest); teachers, like David Kelley (Stanford University) and Barry Katz (California College of the Arts); and builders, like Gabrielle Gutherie (independent UX designer) and Fred Bould (Bould Design) — ran the gamut. They were surprising, thought-provoking, inspiring, sometimes uplifting, sometimes shame-inducing, and always strongly held. What happened to design? Here’s what the design community thinks….
Plus
As to whether design has made progress since 2017, the unanimous answer was resounding yes. In the positive column, a couple of themes emerged.
First, respondents were in overwhelming agreement that design is now integral to businesses. Entrepreneur and award-winning designer Daniel Scrivner said, “I think the biggest change I’ve seen is in the recognition of design’s importance and the universal belief now that if you’re going to build a great company you have to be great at design within your category.” In particular, according to Evan Sharp, cofounder of Pinterest, “new startups in established industries (e.g., in insurance, banking, automotive, and healthcare) have been effective vectors for design to come in and ‘raise the quality bar.’”
How design has raised the quality bar is by becoming foundational to how a company builds. “Good design, especially in consumer hardware and software product design, is now ‘table stakes.’” Dave Baggeroer, designer and entrepreneur, told me. “We take this for granted, but in 2017 and prior, this was definitely not the case.” As I argued in one section of The Way to Design, “[w]hat really matters for a modern company is building design processes—lightweight methods and processes for problem-solving, creativity, and iteration.” I’m gratified that that argument seems to have won the day. “[T]here has been more focus on user-centric design and good UI/UX for all products and services,” said Santhi Analytis, Gradient’s former VP of engineering, “Even seemingly mundane enterprise software needs to be a well-designed, visually appealing, seamless user experience.”
A second, more particularistic theme of progress that many respondents to my survey celebrated is the proliferation of better design tools: tools for individuals like AI and text to image; collaborative tools like Figma and Mural; and platform tools, such as Web3, blockchain, and NFTs. The collaborative design software Figma (which was just acquired by Adobe for $20 billion) was the most notably and frequently cited example. Author, journalist, and UX designer Cliff Kuang thinks we’ve only begun to understand its significance. He has an interesting theory about the tool that I’ll quote at length:
[Figma] has democratized design in ways that I believe will take a few more years to truly appreciate. Today, design has become a collaborative, inclusive process, and it’s been changed in ways not dissimilar to the way that Google docs changed the ways people worked together. That means more people collaborating on “design” even if they aren’t designers. And that means that the skill of being a “designer” has once again changed. Just as Photoshop democratized tools and pushed designers to hone their discipline to find new ways of differentiating and defining their skills, I think Figma is changing what it takes to be a designer. It’s not enough to create wire frames, because everyone can and does do that now.
Minus
So, the general state of design is strong. The field has insinuated itself into how companies operate. And a new generation of tools has empowered practitioners and the untrained. But it’s not all marigolds and chocolate-covered pretzels. On the disappointments side of the ledger, four broad areas of concern were cited.
First, as might be expected of early acolytes and true believers to any movement, many feel that design has become a victim of its own success. Several respondents told me that, as design thinking has gone mainstream, it’s become diluted. Bob Baxley, SVP of design and experience at ThoughtSpot, said: “As design has gotten more visibility and attention it has paradoxically become less creative or original, essentially sacrificing its unique perspective in the pursuit of greater acceptance..” Or as Barry Katz, author of Make It New: A History of Silicon Valley Design, put it, “‘Design Thinking’ … has become ritualized, formalized, and frankly a bit of a cult … feed a problem into the Design Thinking machine, turn the crank five times, and out pops an iPhone…”
The second major critique of what design has done, or rather failed to do, over the last five years, is that it hasn’t truly been applied to curing our most serious societal problems. Several called out the environment, specifically, as a crisis where designers have been MIA. Diego Rodriguez, a former partner at IDEO and Intuit’s former Chief Product & Design Officer, put it the most bluntly: “Designers need to speak truth to power and engage their creative abilities to materially change how and what is produced. Stop being the unquestioning executors of a marketing plan based on 20th-century logic and values.”
Third, some respondents challenged designers at social media companies for actively contributing to the harm their products have caused. Joe Gebbia, of AirBnB, said, “Design hasn’t improved our relationship to social media. If anything, it’s made it worse by serving the metrics of engagement and time spent on an app.” Aza Raskin, who cofounded the Center for Humane Technology, put it this way: “Design is now complicit in the breaking externalities of technology not fitting the ergonomics of our mental health, relationships, societies, and our planet.”
These first three criticisms dovetail with what I regret the field hasn’t seen much progress on. In The Way to Design, I advocated for giving design thinking an upgrade, to keep it relevant, by incorporating systems thinking. Systems thinking is a mindset and mode of analysis that understands the interconnectedness of things and emphasizes solving problems holistically. It’s a powerful interpretative tool for analyzing the problems of our increasingly complex world, everything from pandemics to climate change to social media’s effect on democracy. Unfortunately, perhaps because putting the theory into practice requires mastering an esoteric body of modeling and analysis, it wasn’t as widely adopted as I’d hoped.
The final reproof of design over the past decade — and, for a field of creatives, perhaps the one that will sting the most — is that some of my illustrious gallery have been sorely disappointed by the lack of imagination. “No new northstar has emerged,” Evan Sharp said flatly, “We have Apple. [But] what other company, or even figure, can we point to and say “This is what design can be?” Meanwhile, Cliff Kuang called for a more active response to societal problems: “The actual process of design hasn’t yet broadened to include better ways of planning for the future, and incorporating more sustainable and inclusive models of participation … We’ve heard enough critique. Now where are the counterpropsals?”
Evan’s and Cliff’s throwing-down-of-the-gauntlets really resonated with me. In the final lines of The Way to Design, I called for my peers to “Design better.” To use their design powers to “[b]uild a finer, kinder, wiser, more equitable, more beautiful, more joyful world.” Surveying the grounds of what the field has accomplished since 2017, I’m proud of what we as a collective have done to elevate the role of design and improve how we go about practicing it. It wasn’t just a fad. The movement is always towards more and better design — never away. Design keeps capturing ground that it never loses. “[T]here has never been a more important time for design,” says David Kelley, cofounder of IDEO and the Stanford d.school. “Design makes ideas tangible and paints a picture of possible futures.”
Still, the work continues. Number me with those who believe that we still have a long way to go to truly realize design’s promise. Perhaps over the next five years, we’ll get closer still. Hey, Siri, remind me to check back in 2027!
About Author
