In the beginning: the design tree takes root.

The practice of design has always been expanding. For the last, say, 45,000 years or so, many in, and more outside of the design industry equate design to matters of aesthetics, a strain of visual art, developed and propelled by human’s endowed need to communicate and express. The high watermarks of visual design throughout history are often, with the benefit of hindsight, synonymous with cultural milestones of civilization.

The Mesopotamians were pretty good at it, the illuminated manuscripts are a sight to behold, and lest we forget that a goldsmith’s contraption was a catalyst for the spread of typographic design and two-dimensional storytelling. Equally, each milestone nurtured with it a growing profession: craftspeople who became increasingly concerned with and adept at creating a story’s form.

The family tree of design continues to grow. It’s subset of disciplines branching ever outward and upward, each limb, branch and twig ever finer, more specialized, more nuanced, more delicate. Design’s capabilities evolved from matters of form alone, to include function. And now, contemporary design practices have expanded further: from matters of form, to function, and now fiscal.

To many in and outside of the design industry, when we gaze at that mighty tree, the continuum of design services can begin to look more like a thicket.

Substituting nuance for novelty is what experts do, and that is why they are never bored.

— Angela Duckworth

Design branches out: bending it’s bows towards business

This article briefly explores a particular branch of design that leans out towards, and over, the fence into what was traditionally reserved for the domain of capital B Business. This continuum of design services is a limb I am often swinging from. As the design profession matures, its responsibilities have expanded beyond the visual forms of communication, products and information. It is now concerned with the functions of those enterprises and studies the broad sets of processes, policies, props, and people — of both customers and employees who help make it happen. Now, designers turn their attention and skills to financial aspects that motivate the reasons and generate the revenues that underwrite many design investments in the first place.

As a result, designers are becoming clever business thinkers, human-centric operational coaches, and financially literate analysts.

Designers who find themselves on this branch of our family tree need to do what we do best: communicate a clearer and more simple story of the expanding capabilities of our craft.

The alternative to good design is always bad design. There is no such thing as no design.

— Adam Judge

Going out on a limb

When I entered the profession — or to belabor the metaphor — began climbing the tree myself, there were designers, and there was most everyone else. Everyone else was the ‘business people’. To keep the story short, at the start of this century, I got my start in print and package design. Doing our own pre-press and print buying, meant there wasn’t engineers and tech in the room as there as is today. We did our own production. Resumes included either MFAs and MBAs: pixel pushers and bean counters, slides or spreadsheets. If I was ever in doubt of which side one was on, I needed to only drop my pen. Picking it up allowed a view of everyone’s footwear under the conference table. It was usually only Chuck Taylors or leather loafers. I’d always make my way to the end with the sneakers. I was 20 years old. Nuance nor business fundamentals were skills I was taught in college and had not yet learned on my own.

A couple of decades on, I grew up (some), and developed empathy and awareness. Not just for ‘end users’, but for all people in the process. I’ve learned to better walk in those business shoes. Though not literally. My personal preference for footwear fashion has matured, but I still don’t own any loafers. But I have learned how to better explain design’s purpose and value to those at the other end of the proverbial table.

It is not my feet that have changed, but my head. And like many designers, we are quick learners, inherently curious and are always seeking out the ugly, the broken, inefficient, and the cumbersome, and are trained to improve it with respectfulness, usefulness, simplicity and expedience. For many designers today, this applies equally to the corner radius of buttons, to evaluating ROI on UX investments, to the form and function of Bézier curves and as well as balance sheets.

Designers possess more than simply an ability to style products; they are practitioners of an applied process of creative skills: identifying problems, researching, analysing, evaluating, synthesising and then conceptualising, testing and communicating solutions.
― Marc Stickdorn

Finding a perch on which to stand

The development of new design disciplines are emerging, and the aforementioned thicket is a natural outcome of rapid growth. There will be some confusion, some overlap, and some disorder. We are developing a new language, and are learning how to use it. On this particular branch of design I am writing about, the demarcation in the continuum between User Interface Design and User Experience Design are becoming widely accepted, others like the boundaries between Service Design and Business Design are less so. As designers, we must remember, we are ambassadors for our passions and professions. We need to be accessible and inclusive for those whose footwear choices do not match our own. They far outnumber us. With experience, we can learn it is less of a ‘them’ and ‘us’; the world is not black and white, nor is it Design vs. Business. Nuance is necessary. Understanding is required. Collaboration is mandatory.

When taken as a whole, the spectrum of design and business services expand, and cross each other’s fences. They inevitably meet, and grow together. The black and white worlds becomes a gradient. This continuum has both benefits and challenges. It is the dynamic, and sometimes tangled space many designer’s career paths are taking them.

Design adds value faster than it adds costs.

— Joel Spolsky

Explaining the design continuum

How we practice, define, and demonstrate design’s value to business-minded people is part of the job. Remember that in some ways, we are still painting in caves, trying to explain ourselves to those who may not understand our language. No matter what footwear you prefer to wear to work (if you wear any at all) we must understand our place in design — and business — and how to communicate it. Since my early sneaker days, I have learned some things. Often, my own failures in design have not been because of poor design, but of poor communication about design. I no longer get frustrated by the barriers between them. I try to think of it from the other person’s shoes, and explain my industry, my work, and myself accordingly.

There are experienced an impassioned voices from every point in today’s design continuum. Below are voices from four key categories that I operate within at my present juncture. There are no doubt many others. Inevitably, the boundaries are not clear, our ability to explain them sometimes less so. It’s up to us to continue growing or craft, defining our place in the marketplace, supporting our colleagues, and communicating effectively and honestly, to people of all footwear preferences.