Increasingly, more and more companies are looking for great design leadership these days. They are being told that their company needs a bigger focus on design thinking and are keen to adopt more design centric principles. But over and over, when these companies talk to designers, they hear about craftsmanship—about brand consistency, and polished design, designers who can code, and style guides, and prototyping, and testing — the designer’s craft.
All of those things are good — mandatory even. But for us to truly understand the best way to help a business we have to start focusing on what makes the business successful. We must first understand business in general. Then we will better understand where craft is important (and where it is excessive).
Instead, designers are often seen as someone that needs to have the important business goals explained to them in the most basic of ways. I think our suggestions about design would carry a lot more weight if we were able to have insightful conversations, and offer valuable suggestions about core business principles.
