| I led a team of 18 designers with several managers in between, supporting large web and mobile products. Chances are you or at least someone you know uses them regularly. I feel people in the UX profession have a chip on our shoulder and suffer from an inferiority complex. Mind you, to be a really effective UX, you have to be exceedingly intelligent and competent and I'm not questioning the value of what UX people bring to the table. However, we shot ourselves in the foot by not keeping in check of our ambition and overselling our value to the broader enterprise. To have better control over the product outcome, we asked to be engaged more upstream sooner and have a seat at the table with executives at the planning stage. And we got it. For better or worse, UX / Design has been very successful at inserting itself everywhere in the business process, from start to finish. The genericization of our job titles reflect this growing ambition and organizational footprint. Web Design -> UI Design -> UX Design -> Product Design. The empire building also continued through the invention of new subdisciplines: DesignOps, then more recently ResearchOps. It's all well and good, until an overreach happens and you're encroaching into territory that has already existed. For example, UX research asked to do work that traditionally fell on specialized experts, like industry / sector-specific market research or generative research. Another example is hugely-staffed design systems team with over-engineered systems & control processes that are difficult to use, contribute to and maintain. Mind you, some have their own UX engineers that sit outside the engineering org. As a result of all these, it has also become exceedingly difficult to hire a perfectly "T-shaped" person, because they just don't exist. (at $130-$150k/year). Lastly, there's no craftsmanship in the profession anymore, at least not in-house. Most good designs that you see are still done by outside agencies, who still operate their design shops tightly, hire for very specific skill sets, use project managers (gasp), and waterfall (gasp). I left my job partly because I realized I had turned into a person espousing very things that I hate in the profession. (I also needed a career break after working nonstop for almost 20 years.) |
I think we in design have over complicated things. What I've noticed is we don't speak in plain terms when selling design and to your point it's also down to empire building. And the dribbblisation of design - can't stand it.
I'm in a similar position right now - thinking about quitting this corporate design job and take a sabbatical to focus on refining and expanding my skillset and then join more meaningful projects, e.g. clean/climate-tech related projects.
Do you have a blog or newsletter? I'd love to read more about your design thoughts.