maxistentialist:

mills:

If design hadn’t triumphed by 2012, it had by 2013.

Three years after launching the iPad, Apple was the world’s most valuable company, and even second-order pundits knew why: design. Steve Jobs’ remark that design was “how it works” had achieved what seemed like widespread comprehension, and recruiting wars for top designers rivaled those for top engineers. Salaries escalated, but cachet escalated faster; entire funds emerged whose only purpose was to invest in designer founders, and with money and esteem came the fetishization of design, the reduction of designers into archetypes, the establishment of trade cliques and the ever-increasing popularity of trend-ecosystems.

There were valedictory encomia about the power of design to deliver better products and therefore better commercial outcomes for companies and better utilitarian outcomes for users. In his rather more sober but nevertheless remarkable talk at Build 2013, David Cole noted that thanks to Apple,

Taking a design-centric approach to product development is becoming the default, I’m sure it will be taught in business schools soon enough… This is a trend I’ve observed happening across our whole industry: design creeping into the tops of organizations, into the beginnings of processes. We’re almost to the point, or maybe we’re already there, that these are boring, obvious observations to be making. Designers, at last, have their seat at the table.

For those of us who believe in the power of design thinking to solve human problems, and to a lesser extent in the power of markets to reward solutions when the interests of consumers and businesses are correctly aligned, this was invigorating news. Parts of the technology industry spent much of the 1990s and even the 2000s misunderstanding what design was and how it could help improve products. There was a time, after all, when Apple was a laughingstock. Now, in part thanks to Jobs and Ive and the entire culture of the company, as well as its undeniable financial success, designers would be heard and could make bigger contributions to human progress.

It’s now 2014, and I doubt seriously whether I’m alone in feeling a sense of anxiety about how “design” is using its seat at the table. From the failure of “design-oriented” Path [1] to the recent news that Square is seeking a buyer [2] to the fact that Medium is paying people to use it [3], there’s evidence that the luminaries of our community have been unable to use design to achieve market success. More troubling, much of the work for which we express the most enthusiasm seems superficial, narrow in its conception of design, shallow in its ambitions, or just ineffective.

To take stock, let’s consider three apps which ought to concern anyone who hoped that the rising profile of design would produce better products, better businesses, better outcomes.

[…]

In order to avoid losing its place atop organizations, design must deliver results. Designers must also accept that if they don’t, they’re not actually designing well; in technology, at least, the subjective artistry of design is mirrored by the objective finality of use data. A “great” design which produces bad outcomes —low engagement, little utility, few downloads, indifference on the part of the target market— should be regarded as a failure.

And if our best designers, ensconced in their labs with world-class teams, cannot reliably produce successful products, we should admit to ourselves that perhaps so-called “design science” remains much less developed than computer science, and that we’d do well to stay humble despite our rising stature. Design’s new prominence means that design’s failures have ever-greater visibility. Having the integrity and introspective accuracy to distinguish what one likes from what is good, useful, meaningful is vital; we do not work for ourselves but for our users. What do they want? What do they need? From what will they benefit? While answering these questions, we should hew to data, be intuitive about our users and their needs, and subject our designs to significant criticism and use before validating them.

Combining epistemological humility, psychological perceptivity, and technological-systematic thinking remains the best defense against launching duds, but necessary too is some depth of character, some intelligence about purposes, some humane empathy for those we serve. Because if what we design is shown by the markets not to have been useful, it’s no one’s fault but ours. And we shouldn’t think that others in organizations won’t take notice.

This whole piece is worth a read, it speaks to my worst fears about the future of design in technology.