A brief literature review on the structural remediation of design
Intermission is over. I emerged from deep rest, deleted all of my unread email, and now here we are. I hope you had a good few weeks.
First, I wrote some text about a gift I gave to myself, which was a long time coming.
When I wasn’t cooking on the aforeposted gift, I spent most of deep rest reading. Of the topics I circled around, the most Draft-pertinent regards the ongoing structural remediation of design.
The past two years have witnessed a significant collapse within contemporary design. A few hundred thousand of us were laid off by businesses who chose to abandon design. By abandoning design, businesses became more hostile towards customers. A few high-profile incidents occurred, and a term got coined, but we are really only witnessing the beginning of tech’s find-out phase.
While I suspect that new technological developments are at least the temporary culprit here, I firmly believe they will not permanently depress design’s headcount. In fact, it will only become more apparent that real people need to be in control of what design is and what it means for the real people who support businesses everywhere. In short, we alone are in control of the future of our profession.
When it comes to design, there is now a lot of what we do best, which is handwringing. But you don’t come to these letters for handwringing. You come here for something more actionable.
Our most pressing question is this: what will design do in order to structurally create a conscious future for itself? This will require changes in the ways we talk about ourselves, handle critique, and center aspects of our process. That is why the remediation must be structural: it is more about how we are than what we do. It is a profound existential need.
Most of the best conversations around design have focused on its one goal, which we’ve discussed since 2019: profit generation. Towards that end, I’ve enjoyed Scott Berkun’s recent work; Audrey Crane’s work on “shadow design” and teaching design to those who buy it; Blair Enns’ recent book on selling design; and Ryan Rumsey’s public-facing work on how designers can bridge the business gap. I’m sure this is an incomplete list, so if you know of anyone else who is working on the vitally important work of structural remediation, please hit reply and let me know.
The issues we’re currently facing have come about because, quite frankly, we didn’t learn why people buy design from us. We didn’t apply our own processes to our own customers. We whined when we ignored the profit imperative. And now many of us have paid the price.
At the end of this year, I hope this question will be answered definitively – and we’ll start to see some gains in headcount across the industry.