What’s behind design

As the design industry grows and changes, it’s no surprise that there are misconceptions about what it is designers really do and questions about who owns design and where it belongs in an organization. Asking these questions is a step in the right direction when it comes to getting everyone on the same page at your company. On Design Twitter this month, we saw a lot of great questions with thoughtful answers.

What does your Design team structure look like?

UX Designer at Gracenote, Lisa Tyler, asked for thoughts and advice on where design teams should sit within an organization. Most respondents said, it depends. The consensus is that it will vary from organization to organization, but a big factor to success is leadership and where design can drive the most influence.

We’d love to know how your design team structure is set up. Reach out to us on Twitter at @goabstract to share. Our team has been thinking about this question too, so look out for an upcoming blog post on this soon.

Design Twitter: Anyone have any good articles/advice on design team structures, specifically where Design should "sit" within an organization? For instance, I know Design reporting up through Engineering is a big no-no but can't find any good articles on the topic. TIA
— Maybe: Lisa Tyler (@ltylerdesign) September 1, 2020

What non-designers should know about Design

Former VP of Design at Facebook, Julie Zhuo, asked designers what they think non-designers get wrong about Design. Design Twitter responded with a range of answers: mastering design tools doesn’t make you a designer, design isn’t just a service for product, marketing, etc., design is more than visuals — it can also be prototypes and requirements docs, and more great answers. Julie followed up the original tweet with one about how the answers could be turned into a fantastic book. We recommend reading through the replies.

Designers, what do you think most of the non-designers you work with today still get wrong about design?
— Julie Zhuo (@joulee) September 13, 2020

Should designers split product and brand?

While reflecting on the current state of the design industry, Bryn Jackson, former Spectrum founder and CEO and current designer at GitHub, shared an opinion about the split between product and brand design. Designers at Abstract agreed, including Jordan Staniscia who said he wished he had more opportunities to fuse product and brand.

I’ve spent the last couple years thinking I don’t care about design.

But that’s not true: I just don’t like where the field is at right now which makes calling myself a designer unsatisfying.

Building a physical product clarified that dramatically.
— Bryn Jackson (@superbryntendo) August 28, 2020

The splitting of product design and brand design is 1000% a mistake that basically the whole industry bought into.
— Bryn Jackson (@superbryntendo) August 28, 2020

Perfection doesn’t exist

It’s important to recognize that we’re still in a pandemic and the West Coast is experiencing wildfires that are dramatically affecting air quality. Bushra Mahmood, lead designer at Unity, reminds us that designers put a lot of pressure on themselves but should recognize that not only are we part of a growing industry that has a lot of unknowns and challenges but we’re also living in a time of uncertainty as well. The best thing we can do is expect change and embrace growth.

The real risks you take are to your ego and self confidence which the sooner you can overcome and learn from, the more successful you will be.
— Bushra (@goatsandbacon) September 14, 2020

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A reminder that burnout is real, so take care of yourselves. If you’d like to discuss any of these hot topics or share ones we missed, reach out on Twitter at @goabstract.

Published on

September 23, 2020

Illustration by

Daina Lightfoot

Written by

Alison Harshbarger