I love grappling with silo problems. They plague design. It’s ironic because the process of design is tailor-made to bust silos and discover shared purpose. It is the perfect channel for discovering that ‘point of unity where contrasting perspectives overlap’ [3] because design doesn’t exist outside of it.

Lately, I have begun to think about silos, not by discipline, but by constraint groupings. Business, Tech, and User constraints define the actionable arena which we operate in. But true constraints are not obvious or easy to find. Design — which I see as 80% research, 20% outputs — is made to test and discover those boundaries. Within that space is where different perspectives catalyze in that process we call design.

Understanding constraints is key to design. As Julie Zhuo so succinctly put it (way back in 2013!), “Don’t go through the heartache of falling in love with a design that’s out of the question because you didn’t understand the technical or time constraints early enough.”[4]

In the spirit of understanding constraints, instead of the term “User Experience Design” I think of it as exploring user constraints. Instead of “Interface Design” it is more clarifying for me if I describe it as exploring tech constraints. And as much as I love the discipline and the term “Strategic Design” I understand the role better when I frame it as exploring business constraints.

Design emerges amid this trio as an unbounded force at the point of overlap for differing perspectives. Design is like water — a powerful force that can shape and carve, but yet has no boundaries or agenda of its own. Its boundaries are formed by external forces like market events, changing user preferences, new technologies, and budgets.

The need for this force of discovery has never been greater. Projects are complex, and unnecessary rework is both commonplace and expensive. As Ma et al. write “Increasing communication and collaboration among participants, which results from project complexity, is the main cause of rework.”[1] Amid this complexity, it turns out we are just terrible at picking winning ideas, as Spiegel et al. note:“It’s not uncommon for…