05 Routes out of Design's Doldrums

Sean Carney has a background in industrial design and has held various design leadership roles in a number of different corporations, including, 15 years as chief design officer at Philips. So he gives a highly authoritative. Corporate design view on the situation.

And finally, Warren Hutchinson, has moved from industrial design to UX, to what he would probably call digital transformation design, both in house and as a consultant, including His current consultancy, which he co founded, we cover how their careers have developed and how the design profession in general has evolved to where it is today. Then we move on to the symptoms and drivers of the current malaise in design.

And we end with how to elevate designers credibility and position within the organization, which includes an interesting section on whether designers have over specialized. What designers should call themselves and where in the organization they can most effectively operate. Okay. Let's get into it.

and he was, his, he was asking the fundamental question is business breaking up with design or starting to break up design was the provocative question there, and then I've had side conversations, with Sean and Warren, on the same topic. So why don't we just start by you all giving. Introduction and your kind of. So should we start with you, Robert?

I think that at different points in time I am capable of taking a bit of a fresh look at my own relationship to design and what I think is going on. And for me writing is definitely one way I do that. In terms of my own kind of personal journey I would say that the, all those breakups, the through line is just a real focus on the connection of design and systems change.

And that's something that I've been doing, in different ways in different places, whether it's places like Microsoft and frog, and now much more in the public sector, working on social impact work with my own global practice, part of a firm called Dahlberg. so that's what I do. And, I definitely appreciate the opportunity to bring design into new spaces and new conversations, as well as reflect.

peers, particularly, on the journey ahead in that I struggle to find the role models that I thought I might, be looking at this stage of my career, a lot of the venerable designers I worked for, I wouldn't put in that category. So what is the journey ahead for us on a personal level? And how do we think about leadership in relation to that journey is something that is very much top of mind.

So people reach out to me typically when they are having that sort of, and have for the last, 10 years when they're having that kind of crisis of purpose type of conversation. And what was happening to answer your question is a lot of people reaching out. it's, I thought that's what the conversation was about, and it's a nice conversation to have. at the same time, the journey that I've been on, the challenge of running a business like this is really not for everybody.

but I, it started to be a conversation that was so that was the first thing that was going on. The second thing that was going on that, and led me to think about writing is I approached my editor's fast company. cause I know they're not really they don't really write about the psychology of the design business and what's happening. that's not what they cover. They cover, tech and business and stuff.

So I actually approached them because a lot of these new platforms and leadership networks were emerging. I was like, there's new, a little bit of news in there. something a little bit trendy. There's a shiny object. So I approached them about writing about that. And so that was the impetus was like, let's talk about what's coming out of this moment the kind of reinvention that's happening. But then I started to more deliberately.

Go back to a lot of folks in my network and folks that, that were, I was referred to, to have deeper interviews and this other story emerged and it felt like it needed to be told first. And so the editor was like, would love to write about the reinvention stuff. And that was the second piece, but let's first just catch people up. And it was meant to be a paragraph. Let's catch people up and talk about the reinvention piece. And then the catch up yeah, took off on its own. And people started to.

To share a lot of reflections, particularly over the last 10 years, where my journey has been running in parallel, I've been spending much more time figuring out how you get the government of India to care about design, not, how to, build the right team for a particular project. product portfolio at, Salesforce someplace. So anyway, that's how it, that's how it developed. and, I don't think I really knew it was going to strike the chord. It did.

but the conversations that I was having with people were just, there was obviously a lot of similarity and a lot of openness and honestly, a lot of vulnerability that people were willing to share. and I really respected that, but I also felt like maybe some of that out there would help this process in some way. So,

And now, I think it more, it's more important than ever that as designers, we go back to some of our core values. And as designers, we are inherently optimistic. So let's not forget that we always look at a brighter potential future. Whenever we're given the challenge, we figure out how to solve that challenge. And this is just one more of those kinds of challenges that we've got coming right now. I spoke earlier this week. I did a podcast with a graduate, designer, at Imperial College, London.

And he was saying, are we wasting our time spending all this money on being educated in design? only to find that when we come out, there's going to be no jobs for us. And I think I have a fundamental belief that there will be jobs. There will be new possibilities for design to create and deliver impact. But we do have to reflect, we do have to take a pause and think about what we would do differently going forwards. There's many new variables generative AI.

if you're a CEO today, You're talking a lot about data and, and AI, it's yet to be proven that it will deliver value. So there's a lot of possibilities for us as designers to go into those areas and start to look at how are we going to turn, these tools as they are. Into new value, but it does mean we have got to think about our role of positioning and how we set ourselves up for success going forwards. So it's a really good debate to have right now.

And hopefully during the course of this hour or so that we've got here, we can offer some. Potential ways forward, we've probably got to dig a hole for us and jump into it, talk about what went wrong and what we would do differently. But then I would like us to think about how are we going to help emerging designers and the designers are out there at the coalface today come out of this with a more optimistic view going forwards.

So I guess, I'm going to summarize Robert very quickly for him, but I guess UX stroke service design now social impact design, but you've got with, both corporates and third sector. but Sean, do you just want to lay out your, where you're making your observations from?

I've been fortunate to see how design is perceived in all these different countries and I've had I've been fortunate to work for some great organizations Leading Philips design as the chief design officer for 12 years leading experience design at HP for a period before that at Electrolux on brand design and strategy And, some time in between at Assa Abloy, another big Finnish, Swedish global brand.

I've led big change in big organizations like Philips as we pivoted from being a diversified conglomerate into being a focused health tech company. I've seen how that change happens from the highest level in the organization. And, understood the role design can and should be playing as you transform businesses as well. but at my roots, I'm still very passionate about design. I still get excited about, craftsmanship and quality and the, the craft of design.

get frustrated at times when we do too much navel gazing and talking about strategic design issues and want to get back to thinking about the product as such, but, I've grown over time to understand it's a necessary evil. and we can talk later about, different approaches that we've taken that I've seen and that I've adopted over time, in these different organizations.

and I'm also the chair of the design business association, which is the trade association for design in the UK that champions the economic value of design for both business and government. So I'm living with the topic in my agency life, but also seeing the topic pan sector in my, DBA role, career wise, I've worked All sides of the divide. Really? I've been in house teams that, yell, which was yellow pages and universal music. I've been at large agencies.

I started out 15 years ago, but I've also worked in a management consultancy at some point in my career. So, I've bought and sold design and I've, worked in house and external teams. And I guess I've seen quite a bit change over the last 12 to 18 months. we define the type of work we do, which is mostly change and transformation projects, say helping businesses identify opportunities brought about by emerging technologies or shifts in consumer behavior.

those projects have not vaporized as such, but there's far fewer of them as businesses have been focused more on what we'd call. incremental innovation or business as usual phrase. I can't stand, and have assembled large teams to focus on quite narrow tranches of their products and service provision.

So, just seen quite a lot changed in terms of risk, appetite, exploration and attitude and, Is it creates some dissonance for me because of what's happening with the emergence of technologies like AI and web three and various other things, there's so much to explore. There's so many legislative drivers on privacy and trust that we should be seeking opportunity in data portability. I'm a bit.

go for a run or sit on the bike a bit confounded as to why this isn't one of the busiest periods we've ever experienced, to be honest. So something's, deeply wrong. and while I'm optimistic, there's always a role for what we do, how we think, how we oxygenate conversations in our client organizations, using design as a practice to make things that are intangible, tangible, There's so many things that are broken.

public services, the high street, sustainability, inclusivity, privacy, trust, there has to be, there has to be a role for us. I just, I'm just hoping this is a very fallow period where there's a bit of. downbeat attitude on design efficacy that can be, quickly picked up again. that's my interest in it. seeing it across membership.

the symptoms, if you like, of what we mean here. and I'm just going to summarize there, Warren. So you basically, it seems to me that you're basically saying it's, is. primarily driven by the economic downturn. Is that what you're saying? Or is there more to it than that? But

one of our biggest clients for the last eight years is, is in financial services and they've had a hell of a time in the last couple of years, just sort of economic climate, and it gets to a point, 12, 18 months later where they stop investing in certain types of projects as they're restructuring and doubling down on different things. So economic drive is certainly one.

there's post COVID work adjustments, I think are important to consider because the nature of creative practice, how we work together, how productive we are, how connected we are on the value creation of our work. I think that's taken a bit of a hit.

there is no doubt an effect from, you know, the commoditization of what we do, design being design thinking has got fans and it's got detractors, but, I was all for the black boxing what we do, but when it's reductive to the point where people think a workshop with post its is a design exercise, that's really, damaging. there's a whole bunch of things really for me. short termism, I think design education's in trouble. We're not producing enough, designers from it, from education.

and so all of these things feel like a bit of a perfect storm.

I know a lot of people having a really rough time and then on our, for our clients, three of our largest clients in the last couple of years, we've all had significant restructurings, so there's pressures there as well, which means people are changing roles and, institutional knowledge is moving around and the value of things that have been built up dissipates. It's yeah, bit of a perfect storm. I think.

what do you observe in terms of both your, what you've seen yourself or what you've heard from your contacts about what are the symptoms beyond consultancies having, a rough time? what other, things are you picking up?

we had some industries really booming and Getting a lot of during that time But I think the majority really struggled and then coming out of the pandemic they found a lot of difficulties in their markets, consumer confidence is down, geopolitical issues getting in the way of their sales, cost of goods, fuel prices, energy crisis, all sorts of different things now weighing on their balance sheet. course the CEO in any of these large corporations, his first duty is to his shareholders.

like it or not, that is the way these businesses are run. And of course, what they've got to do is then. Manage within the constraints that they've got.

So if they've got a shrinking sales sheet, and sales funnel, they're going to have to proportionally reduce the cost in the business as well, which means layoffs, perhaps, reducing their innovation pipeline or even, getting rid of or making some hard choices around the innovation projects that they're funding, which ultimately will impact on the design budgets as well.

I'm seeing this, as I said, both, through the eyes of CEOs, and there, I'm trying to advocate for an alternative way of looking at this, problem, looking for opportunities for growth. In amongst all of these challenges, taking a human centered approach to it. applying a bit of social intelligence and empathy to the markets in order to try and find new growth possibilities, perhaps outside of their existing markets. but I'm also seeing it through work.

I do, for instance, with design for good, design for good. we have, 15 plus corporate design partners now. Everybody from PepsiCo to Airbus, Lidl, all sorts of different companies, Lixil, sorry. and every one of the design leaders in those organizations has come back and said, struggling to continue the funding at the level that we've committed to. How can we, defer payments or stretch payments? because their budgets are under pressure. now they they find ways these design leaders are creative.

They find ways of continuing the dialogue, but nevertheless, every single business, whether it's a regional bank in South America or South Africa, or some of the largest FMCG companies in the world, every one of them has budget reduction targets this year. It's universal. it's across industries. it's across every vertical you can think of from automotive to pharmaceutical to healthcare to, food stuffs. Every one of them is under pressure right now. yes, there is a fundamental reset going on.

At a business level at a corporate enterprise level. And naturally that will impact the amount of money available, and being attributed to spending on design projects as well.

Steve Jobs actually said to our CEO at the time, Mark Hurd, Hey, the whole experience of using a printer is archaic. Your products suck, your experience sucks, I'm going to take printing out of the operating system. And, of course this was worth billions and billions in revenue to HP at the time. So we got summoned to a come to Jesus meeting in Capitino to figure out what was wrong with the printing experience through Steve's job size. And what he said to us was, don't look at me.

It's the users that are giving this feedback and you need to go connect again with your users and develop a better experience for those users. that's normal. That's what we would just naturally do. Back then, the business didn't recognize that need. Thankfully, we were able to do it. We created something called AirPrint. Every printer was connected to the internet. This was the first round of the IoT devices.

that was the start of then understanding the need for a human centered design approach in technology. That allowed us to then scale, the business from there. And I think right now the difference is you've got a lot of product management, in powerful positions in digital companies, in software and application companies, and they are very good at focusing on the technical attributes of the products that they're developing.

And the designers in some way have become very subservient to these, technicians, to these product managers. where we've got to reinforce the need is that human perspective. What is it like to actually live with this device live with this software live with this application on a day to day basis? And connect the human interface into this as well And that's what we're good at but we've got to remind people again.

We've got to reinforce that this is a little bit the danger and I've been guilty of this as well at Philips, we moved a lot of designers into the business units so that they were closer to the businesses and not sitting centrally because we felt that was important. They need to be in the heat of the battle, understanding customers, understanding constraints, and being able to work in a more real time agile and lean manner.

But in doing that, what we've done in accidentally is, Move design down the value chain. So they were now responding real time to attributes, which product managers were filtering. And so you lose value in that equation. So we've got to really reinforce the role of design, also leading product defining product and identifying product opportunities based on human needs.

And I think if we can do that and show it brings value as we did back in the day in HP with Steve Jobs and Apple, then I think we can climb back up the value chain.

I think that one of the things that was going on throughout that journey was an anchoring on product as the vehicle and embedding design as a critical central part of that product endeavor. And so coming back to where we just left off, I actually think to move up the value chain, we're going to have to let go a little bit of that product based definition and think about design in terms of systems. about design in terms of culture and processes.

If we want to move up that value chain there, it's not to say that there isn't an opportunity as investment and product more out of this cycle and particularly changes. Based on newer paradigms for product development that are going to be a, an obvious outcome out of AI, they may not be the focus of what the ultimate impact of AI is across society, across business, but certainly they're going to transform the way products and already transform the way products are developed.

And I think that while that will create opportunity coming back to points that were made to ensure that the initial portfolios of products that come out of and build on these new paradigms. Have a real value proposition, have your customers, like there were big gaps to fill there. But I think if we truly want to move up the food chain, we're going to have to think about design and in a little bit of a post product landscape.

not that products won't continue to be generated, but the way they're generated, the craft around them, how they're matched and brought into the market, which needs they're serving, all of that is going to become a systems problem, not a product problem, in my opinion. And so for that reason, I feel like there are two conversations happening in the rooms that I'm in one conversation is, we've just got to articulate our value proposition better.

We just got to wait until these technologies start to run into which they are a lack of use and adoption. And then that product value proposition is going to be central again, and we'll ride that. We'll ride that, that, vehicle and be back in a central position. And I think there's an element of that, but I actually, yeah, I would push us to think about what it means to be a designer in a post product world, a world in which that's not the central paradigm for creating value with customers. Is

But I think that if we're framing our role into some degree of our natural inclination of us as a generation of leadership back to some comments, very personal comments that Sean made is to maintain that connection to craft and to product. I think those things can be a little bit intention because I think there's a letting go and I guess drawing on my own personal experience in the work that I do again, mostly in the 3rd sector. Very few of my clients have strong product capabilities.

few of the things we design come to market as a finished product in the way we might like, and I'm sure, Sean, you're learning this with Design for Good. what's on paper, what you model, what you even test is going to be a constant work in progress in the market. And for the designers, again, very personal, the diverse designers on our team, there's a letting go process that can be hard.

There aren't a lot of beautiful things in their portfolios now because these things are constantly evolving and changing. But at the same time in that, like that letting go, you're starting to recognize there are all these different touch points in the system where these products need to create a meaningful connection where people need to be able to engage and the products need to adapt and change. And that.

does create a little bit of attention from a perspective of control and definition, which I think is very core to not just how we've sold design as a value proposition, but also what designers pride and belief is driven from. so it comes back a bit to education as well. so I think there was a tension there. It's not an either or, but I do think there's a tension there. I think there's a backfilling of what it means to really think about your role.

As someone who is shaping systems, thinking about products really is just the manifestations of how a system works and to lean in and more fundamentally look at, what is going

And for instance, we tended to get pushed into pigeonholes in terms of what design can do and deliver. so UX user experience, that's what you guys are good at. That's what we're gonna ask you to do. Focus on Oh, but by the way, our customers, our experience is not good. okay, we broaden our horizons.

We start thinking about the customer experience, but you very quickly start to appreciate that good customer experience is not only down to a good user experience, it is also determined by our own employee experience. And this then as a head of design, as a chief design officer, broadens your horizon to stop only focusing on.

producing great products, but thinking about the people who are going to service those products, the people who are selling those products, the people who are using those products every day, how those systems stack up over time. thinking about that holistic experience, so end to end, is really the role that a head of design would think. Now, my concern, as you see more and more heads of design or chief design officer roles disappear is who's stitching that all together?

what you're going to end up with is very broken experiences, if we're not careful, where individual project managers are taking care of individual deliveries across the value chain, but who's shouting out and speaking up on behalf of the end user of the experience that's generated across the system. we do need system thinking, but I also think we need advocates inside companies who can think end to end and stitch these experiences together.

So working with a, a private bank launching a digital only investment platform, historically, this bank is high touch personal service and you create a wholly digital platform that warrants, new capabilities and structures and practices. And we quite often come up against these moments where. Organizational design is needed. Capabilities are needed to be identified.

and it leads me to be thinking about the sort of the role for design with a big D shall I say, because there's this, you say the word design and there's a whole load of identity crisis challenges there. And people think it's the beautification of things rather than, how we're discussing now.

we like to think about if there's an opportunity for a business to capitalize on a, a market change or an emerging technology, our role as designers is first to help bring some awareness to that person who might be a, the sort of figurative change agent in a particular client organization, they'll have an itch to scratch and we can help them work out whether that, Itch is a threat or an opportunity. We can go through consensus forming activities that bring some tangibility to that exploration.

so someone starts with an inkling that we should be doing something in a particular space. And design can corral that and it can help to build a bit of consensus and momentum. There's an opportunity here to explore. And once that's explored. You can assess your capabilities to deliver it. Have we got the kit that we need to deliver this products and service to maintain it, to deal with customers, to manage the data and so on.

and once you have a view of that, the organization can answer the question, do we have the appetite for this? So I'm just talking about, new products and service creation and the role design can play in stitching all those things together. and not existing, downstream at the point where, you know, satisfying, requirements and feature requests as part of a, an agile delivery, long held the belief that, I used the phrase earlier, I think, that design can oxygenate the conversation.

but those businesses or those practitioners that have the ability to navigate those stages of change, to. To facilitate things that are obscure and ambiguous and unknown, our natural playground. And let's be honest as well, this stuff's

exciting. However, there is a, there is an image problem or a naming problem. that, I don't want to get into the define the damn thing kind of conversation. You say design and people think certain things in certain organizations, and that's a limiting factor. So sometimes we've talked about, do we just drop the word? is it in the way for us sometimes? but I think the field of play is vast.

I think that there are great models out there for design leadership and the kind of systems focused design leadership and the kind of translational work and orchestration work that, Warren was talking about. does that mean that we need to, that, that people who are involved at in building and shaping, the day to day work of design, is their future being on a journey towards it?

Acquiring those leadership skills and are they meant to be doing a small little bit of it in everything they do and thinking about all the systems and all the layers and everything they do, or is there both a letting go at a leadership level, but also a refactoring happening in terms of what and how designers execute work and, collaborate is, maybe in a bit of, stage and a lot of the most impactful, for example, a lot of it sounds very abstract.

A lot of most impactful design leaders that I think are out there, they're orchestrating, influencing things that are happening all across an organization, not just a design team. People are now just joining design teams and they're both confused. And to some degree, I think the work they're doing is it doesn't feel very creative in a lot of cases.

The problems and the leadership challenges, the transformation challenges are, and I think, Kevin, this is very present in the way you talk about what you see ahead. It's very present at that level. Are we trying to just make them into mini versions of that so that they can traverse all that at a small level in their day to day?

Or is there something else that, the day to day challenges that designers need to solve and work on the day to day role they play is a little bit disconnected from that bigger idea? Yeah. and there are fields where that's always been true. Look at architecture. Architecture always function that way. There's a couple of big thinkers orchestrating a lot of resources thinking in a very systemic way. And then there are a lot of people executing.

they don't really, their job isn't a mini transformation innovation job, their job is helping to instrument a lot of things.

Okay.

And then I guess over the last sort of 10 years, there's been that those two things are still happening. there's been more of a focus on design or, certain parts of the design function starting to influence the organization, looking at transformation projects and, more systemic type of challenges. is that what you're?

Is that what you see more design leaders moving towards as I mean, your, your article was basically saying, you know, there's a lot less career opportunities for design leaders this year than there were. five years ago, are you seeing, design leaders switching to more interest in those sort of change transformation type work?

The second thing I heard, and I maybe heard is a better word than see, is that designers who never maybe got quite up to that CDO level, but, I've had a 10, 15 year run, have played senior roles inside companies, maybe in consultancies as well. Many of them that I talked to are.

Using this time, particularly if they're not in a role today to acquire more cross cutting skill sets, whether it's in scenario planning and strategy skill sets, whether it's in technology skill sets, and setting themselves up for what they think is the future.

better, more sustainable value proposition that might again come back to a little bit what you've written about, Kevin, in terms of the sort of innovation consultant, like how do you bring innovation and creative thinking across a lot of different, opportunity spaces inside of a company, whether they're internally focused or externally.

So I do see a bunch of people doing that, and in that sense, both diversifying their skillset, also trying to figure out the things that the doors that opened for them the last 10, 15 years, where they felt they had an impact. how do they better articulate that piece of impact? And again, for some, that's much more around, might be more around futuring and scenario planning. For others, it might be much more around talent and leadership.

there's some element, I think, of the portfolio of things that, that they touched on and maybe impacted that they're now leaning much more into. as part of that, while they still consider themselves creatives and designers, they're Yeah. They're setting themselves up with a, with a more differentiated and often quote unquote strategic kind of value proposition or skill set in terms of where they're going.

And some of that means that they can also pick up more easily this kind of fractional or, external work. So those are probably the two things I see from the senior kind of cohort.

The question I was just asking is is that a pull through for more, more Early stage designers, or are they going to end up on a different journey where the, by the time they get into leadership roles, the world's going to be different and not these big translation trans translational synthetic roles that we keep talking about, comfort and ambiguity translation, that's when I go to schools. That's what I hear them talking about. It's like trying to academically define what design can do.

But. Yeah, that's what I'm asking myself. Will their version of leadership as this cycle renews have a very different model?

I think a lot of them are where they find a solid ground, it's often not just within a design, a central design function or a even in a role that's, defined by design as the main capability, so they're in a digital transformation function or they're in digital product function and they've just elevated their skill set. They bring a lot of experience, a human centered gender approach to that impact.

Both internal employees and things that others have talked about as well as the success in the market. But yeah, that's what I'm seeing And I think that's a some people I think for some people that's super empowering and I think really opens things up So I do think that there's a fair amount of that going on For people who you know for whom in particular like this kind of corporate career track is Critical to how they see their future.

the value that, good design brings, we've touched a bit on it in this conversation, but for me, still too much conversation in, on LinkedIn and in the press about what things look like, as opposed to why they work, why they're effective, why they've shifted behavior positively. I know there's a lot of that, but for me, not enough.

Because just being more outcomes focused, I think is fundamental to proving the value of your work, whatever the organizational structure or pace of innovation, being able to point out, problem solved and the outcome delivered is really important. And I think for me, just anecdotally, too many people, too many businesses, practitioners aren't prepared. To make themselves accountable for that commercial performance. And some of these things aren't, hard sort of business outcomes.

We could be talking about soft things like alignment and consensus around probing an idea or the use of a technology or possible exploitation of a. emerging piece of legislation, you can good design. we'll save on OPEX and CAPEX and grow revenue and drive CSAT and all those kinds of things that they're easy to measure and point out, to prove and surely we're better at. Being able to track behavioral outcomes of the things, products and services we create as well.

So I think this is the good work that can start immediately while we're in the doldrums, and I even think retrospectively it's possible to look at projects that, we've been doing over the last 12, 18, 24 months and say, what was the commercial value of that? that's good work that just needs to happen and should happen continually going forward, I think.

nothing more than a human centered design thinking approach to unlocking the challenges and issues that existed on the ground in these healthcare systems, and then co creating solutions to that, obviously based on Philips services and products in order to sell more. And he recognized very clearly that design was having a huge impact on the sales funnel here.

what happened was he gave me the responsibility to create a new business unit called Healthcare Transformation Services with a P& L, with a target, with a budget. And that was a huge challenge. I didn't let go of my other role, Chief Design Officer, but I had to now have P& L responsibility, General Manager accountability to run. this transformation services unit. Again, very difficult to make money in selling services in that context.

But what he recognized very early on, and Harvard Business School have written case studies about this. And I'm worked with the, the Dean of Harvard to talk about this is We had an impact on the PNL of the whole corporation, through influence revenue by not only selling our hours as a consultant, but by selling equipment and services that Phillips would provide into these systems, which then came with an additional target.

So not only do you have to hit your own PNL, But you've also got to enable, influence revenue for the other business units who would also now come with targets. So very quickly you're managing a multi dimensional spreadsheet with your own P& L, costs and income, sales funnel, but also the influence revenue you're going to deliver to the respective business units who are also selling in. So a complex situation. Now, Nothing in my education equipped me to do that.

I had to very quickly assemble a team around me who knew what they were doing. and then guess what? It wasn't all designers. But along that journey, and this is why I still have hope, my designers, the design leaders, stepped up and really embraced this and understood the value they could create.

Now, unfortunately, in this latest downturn, many of them will let go, but what I'm really happy to see is they've all landed inside hospitals, inside hospital systems, and they're continuing the work they did, and they found one another again, and now they've formed consortiums to drive human centered design approaches to impact positive outcomes for patients and, uh, help improve access to health care and lower the cost of care. So they're doing that work.

They're free now of having to work for one corporate, paymaster, and they're able to leverage a complete portfolio of skills and, capabilities to bring that to bear. So created something it's continued. It's in a different format now, but I'm super excited to see that they're driving change across healthcare systems, based on the work that we started.

What angles is the work going to, happen from? And it's this sort of continual shape shifting definition I find, part of the problem that we have.

If you look at what is buying design from the, through the eyes of the purchaser and the various types, labels, the overlaps between product design agencies that do digital brand agencies that do digital specialist, innovation consultancies, management consultancies, large networks, ad networks, you know, it's a hell of a thing to try and navigate and, we just keep adding to the challenge as well, the problem with lots of different definitions, lots of different labels, and it's just a lot of

noise.

And I think that's an important thing to, to consider. when you and I graduated, we had to turn our hand to multiple disciplines and maybe we're good at some and less good at others, but we pulled it together. And I think there is a need again to have more generalists. can appreciate the craft of individual specialties, and really get good outcomes, drive better outcomes for people as well.

Press me on it. You know what?

And I'm thinking about this generalist idea because I'm probably similar vintage to you guys, and that worked for a while as an idea as a frame, the thing I think about when I hear the story you told, particularly someone who's worked a lot in health systems, is I think what matters now is that the, organizations, communities and populations you're working with want to look across the table and feel like you have some experience, is Being in their shoes, dealing with and understanding the

systems and structures that they must work within. And I think if you can look across the table and they see that recognition, there's a lot of space for trust and a lot of space as a designer to then grow and evolve into different roles, take on different things.

And I think this, particularly I know in a health system, if you've been in Philips and you've learned some hard skills, if you really try to apply those to solving problems for health system and really heard about what's hard about that. Not what's hard about coming up with a brilliant idea, but what's hard about making that implementation and work happen. If you're sitting across the table now as part of that team inside that health system, you have credibility.

And that credibility when paired with generalism is powerful. When you show up as a generalist, which I think we did 10, 15 years ago when a lot of young designers thought they could do a year or two at IDEO or someplace else and show up as a generalist without that credibility. It wasn't, a viable, proposition. the first thing that I think is interesting is where do you have that credibility? Where are you building that base of knowledge?

and that base of experience, and some of that just takes time, which is a conversation I have a lot with our team. so I think that's interesting. And the second thing is, what are you building? let's say, and I may put this back to you, Sean. say some of these folks are quite successful, and they might be successful in a large health system has a lot of resources, a big place, employs a lot of people, does a lot of things every day. But very few health systems.

Are now or maybe ever going to build a large dedicated design team. They're not going to call it that. They're not going to build it that way. They're going to build it differently. a lot of that is, and this is an area I'm passionate about, I've seen amazing things happen in health. I'll keep going.

Kind of mining that vein training nurses training doctors like there are practitioners in a health system that can learn and take on and grow and find more frankly job satisfaction with complimentary design skills than they do today. And so you might find yourself that you're having a scale of impact across a health system.

Doing the kind of systems change work that, that I think I was trying to articulate theoretically, you're doing that in practice, but the end of the day, you're not going to be a chief design officer. You're not going to build a team of 40 designers. that's not ultimately we're not recreating. In the next cycle, what, maybe what happened in this cycle? And I think that's actually a very, to me, a very positive and promising result, but it requires a bit more entrepreneurialism.

It requires specialization in a different sense, not in the skillset sense, but I think in the problem spaces you want to work on and the types of organizations you want to build credibility in. pairing those two things and thinking about how you do that today, I think is not always an easy journey for younger mid career designers, where I think for a while they thought just having. A certain scale and a certain title somewhere was going to open every door they needed.

I think maybe that was actually like a more unusual state for the design industry than where we are now.

And it was, is an illustration from an article on, on their website called the Turing Trap. And it had a, three rectangles, one rectangle represented The percentage of tasks that AI can do for humans or take from humans, depending on how you see it. So proportionally think like a playing card kind of format. And then behind that about five or six times larger was a square that represent the range of tasks that only humans could do.

And of course, all the discourse has been how much of the former overlaps the latter with a view to, being replaced and everything like that. But behind that, there was a, an incredibly large rectangle, 10, 15 times the size of the second one, which represented the potential of human and AI collaboration. I just really excited about design's role in kind of translating AI as a material, as a capability into a whole range of products and services.

We know the challenges with bias and some of the other unforeseen kind of, problems that, that exists with the technology, but it's It's always been our charge to help smooth that out and land it. So, I'm really excited by that. and in many ways, this feels to me, I left, university late nineties as a product designer, walking into the emergence of digital. And I could see the potential and felt really excited and I could see the role.

I played in that, it's a trained product designer walking into a technology space and bringing human centered design practice to it, and have made a career of it. So, I think that's really exciting. The potentials is fast. and along with, bioengineering and connectivity of literally everything. there's, a hell of a moment to be a designer, I think. so we might be going through a bit of a change in how we operate and the models that we have, we're needed more than ever. I think

But all too often, what we ended up creating was the equivalent of the little word which just annoyingly pops up just when you don't need it, just breaks into your thought pattern, and doesn't really track with your, with their processes. We fixed that in the end, we got there, but, Now I'm also trying to work with digital pathology and pathologists trying to integrate AI into their workflows. you look at it with a lot of skepticism. Say, why don't they get it?

why is it so hard to help them understand that this is going to make their lives easier? But then you think about AI in our context, in our profession, and we're just as resistive to it. we've got to find ways of integrating AI. Into the creative process in a way that enhances the human, creative process and doesn't disturb our thinking. So that's one thought.

The other point was, I just want to make the point that I think we're also suffering right now because the technology sector in particular bought in too heavily into design, we saw IBM and, AWS and Salesforce and Microsoft and everybody hiring literally designers in their thousands. And maybe it was because of this, specialist, demarcation of design disciplines. But I don't think adding volume of design to Robert's point about the hospitals, they're not going to build huge design organizations.

think probably what we're going to see emerging out of this is a little bit more than model I had at HP, to be honest, which was a hybrid. Great. core internal team who understood the way things get done and the way things can be delivered Who understand the brand and understand how the organization works?

And then using the very best agencies in the world to bring their specialist knowledge and unimpaired Creative freedom into the mix and that hybrid of internal external I think is where the future is going to be

and we've got to make a business, better business case where we've got to do some of the things that Sean was talking about. The pivot to me is thinking about the last 10 years as an aberration. things come around every 20, 30 years where design is able to bring together and galvanize resources and a vision for how we can drive change that kind of becomes very consolidated.

And to some degree limiting, it's a very, it was a more unified period of design than I think we normally see in terms of what was fundamentally driving growth, what was fundamentally shaping careers. And I hear it in both of you guys, like you found your way, like into UX, into software, things that I don't think probably were where you started in terms of the building blocks of your work. And if We look at it that way and we appreciate what we've learned from that journey.

Maybe the goal is not to recreate that. Maybe the steady state for design now is more pluralistic, more entrepreneurial, people will find and craft different ways of shaping and using the learnings the skills they've developed to drive change and impact in many different places, whether it's health systems or other places. And maybe that's great. And maybe that, doesn't stack hands.

some of the same visibility, it may not suck hands into some of the same roles, but it may also be just, uh, um, stimulating, rewarding state for our industry, for many people's practices. so I'm trying to sit with that and not think, how do I get out of this? But what do we enjoy about where we are?

The links to the articles mentioned are in the show notes, and I'm sure we'll return to some of these themes in future episodes.