Can’t we just be designers?

Can’t we just be ~~UX CX service strategic~~ designers?

For the past few years, I’ve been thinking about design titles – Experience Design, Service Design, Strategic Design, Systems Design, Interaction Design, Visual Design, Graphic Design… the list goes on. There seems to be a requirement to select one of these design roles as our job title. But this requirement places boundaries on the work and scope that we do as designers.

Over the past 11 years I’ve held many of these job titles myself, but the most successful projects I’ve been involved with were when I had to cover multiple roles due to budget or scope limitations.

Being the only designer on a project meant I was understanding and redesigning the service, facilitating ideation and co-design sessions, developing a strategy, designing prototypes and showcasing the work has led to a deep sense of satisfaction. It has been challenging and overwhelming but ultimately led to rapid growth in knowledge and experience.

Now, instead of thinking within the boundaries of a discipline, I think from the underlying core principles of design and I recommend all designers do the same. One example might be creative problem solving, which could look like:

• facilitating a co-design workshop with users of the product or service
• running a brainstorming session with your team
• rapid sketching
• going for a walk outside with a notebook
• running a design sprint
• …and many more

Broadening our understanding of techniques and methods ot only allows us to not only be more creative, it also gives us a much wider variety of approaches to solving a problem. It can prevent holistic problem solving and creative thinking that ventures outside of the box of our discipline.

Venturing outside the box of our discipline allows for holistic problem-solving, more creative thinking, and bringing a much wider array of approaches into our practice.