designWTF
What? When? Who?
Have you ever asked yourself what is design? In general. What do designers do.
I'll go first:
The design is the solution to the problem.
Problem defines undesired state of things.
Solution is the desired state of things.
Task of the designer is finding and connecting those dots.
Line connecting the dots is design.
Let's take it apart.
I will consider design in two aspects:
One way: Reductive/specialized way.
Current system is said to award specialization. Each task contained within design discipline is of great resolution. This is inherent to specific quality of platform - Reality. Reality abstracted to set of systems, subsystems, tasks, any given amount of subtasks, data, etc. We are enhancing the resolution of reality at ever growing pace. Amount of data is beyond the capacity of our perception. One way to address that perceived limit is focusing toward a narrow subset of tasks. Hence you can call yourself a ux designer, motion designer, graphic designer, app designer, game designer… It boils to that you'd love to serve the society in the pursuit of (insert reason). You decide to dedicate your life to do it. Master the tools, get a respectable job, get a mortgage etc. retire and die. This is reductive way. Elevator pitch of the grift you will face afterwards.
Other Way: General way.
I like this quote: A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. - *Robert A. Heinlein. Time Enough for Love: The Lives of Lazarus Long
Author points bluntly that this dance of reality is way more tempting than limits of one domain. And I cannot agree more.
We all know the saying "Jack of all trades, master of none." But in fact this is only the first part. What follows is: "but oftentimes better than a master of one."
This is especially visible now in the time of ai - tents of knowledge guarded by eunuchs are now blown away by the winds of change. The arcana of code can seemingly be bypassed by amateurs with the help of the newest interfaces. The graphic design is on resuscitation. Every day someone posts that it is dead.
It is clear that the mastery of tools and domains is not design. I think about these changes from the framing of the quote from mr. Heinlein
In terms of industrial design - what is happening is the obvious step for the business. The line goes right and up. The idea of compressing responsibility of the worker, lowering the entry barriers while raising the throughput is all that matters (to provide for the shareholders)
If you went to a cs/design/art school without an idea for yourself, then you either adapt or die. It's business. Overlords see this as a great opportunity for you to create 100 leads in a day, code 5 feature requests, make a pitchdeck or two and n8n all the social media outlets with your custom mcp rag. If you ever thought about it differently, then you need to wake up - the revolution is here and you are missing out to be the next $1b one man wonder show. This is the game made up for a industrial designer. There is little to no love here anymore. Sure there was a time when design was grounded in analogue methods, crafty people doing cool stuff, but that is a different story (and one I cannot be nostalgic about as well). In the digital media landscape this is done, design is more ephemeric than ever. The designer is disposable commodity - everyone can be a designer. Aside from the high reputation markets it is no longer about access, tools and recently even ability to handle these.
I'm a designer myself. I do not want to discourage anyone. All that is not new. It is a project long in the making. And these are not in fact bad news.
What I would like you to gather is that whatever you choose to do as a professional should meet the criteria of your judgement. The way you will intertwine the points between problem and the solution is ought to be a proper way to meet the goals.
Does that means that you'd rather say no to generating infinite slopstream generator for kids for $1b? Or to design a new id and a clothing line for visionaries that are shaping the world today?
Judgement Day
There will come the day when you will be faced with a decision: Should I do that series of ads for KiddiePuffs?
If you are in a tight space (guess what - it was designed to be this way ;), then you likely won't think much about the message and the ulterior motives behind the contract.
If you dare to ask questions or deny the opportunity, then the industry will shrug you off. Someone else will do it. For less.
Poor house is real. It is behind the railroad tracks and folks there, they do everything for the buck. I understand them. I've came from there. And did my share of such projects. Just to make the ends meet. I know it, I made the call nevertheless. Life is as good as it ever was, it's just not all rock and roll.
What works for me of all the things is reduced mostly to the act of building. This schizophrenic relation with the work and outcome is what saves me on a bad day - these are just things to cut out I say to myself as I scroll through the endless folder of poorly photographed dildoes. It pays by the hour - more than I can get by doing same hours elsewhere in my situation. Rest is not of such importance, it could be a slaughterhouse, instead it is just the pentool and a favourite audiobook. When you zoom in enough you will not see anymore what dildo you cut out.
Salvation
But there is rock and roll. Of course there is. I just need to constantly remind myself that the fact that it is made with the same tools the sausage is made with is not a bad thing. This is so far the hardest part. I have a bucket list of things I would like to make. Only limiting factor aside from time is this numbness I get after doing my daily chore. The one that leaves me unwilling to see the tools.
It is called work fatigue, it leads to PTSD and it was designed as well. In many cultures The Work is of greatest importance. Yet it is rarely granted that it means a healthy relationship with the work. In various workplaces I've stumbled upon the same dynamics often play out - people are under tremendous pressure which could be by large avoided. Yet this is upheld in a strange violent dance of perceived "Importance" or "This is the way we do stuff" kind.
That's why I try to design my work relationship, so that there is a hygiene around it - Clear separation of concerns, task handling, communication across the team and clients, office chores, side projects, downtime - there are countless details in each of these areas that when broken make a hell of a time. Similar to this small pebble in the shoe (you cannot take it out, we are in a hurry!). This is not a self improvement course, there are countless books and materials out there about handling this and other parts of the daily grind. The fact is that You need to address these or at the very least be conscious when your actions are generating friction or stress. Failure is a particularly important feedback. Well understood it produces a blueprint for the change in the approach.
And after years of establishing (It is an endless process), I've got to a point where I can find the time and capacity to do more things outside the hours that pay the bills.
This is where the rock and roll comes in. Doing things for kicks (or change you believe in) with cool people and having a good time while doing it is as far as it can go from my end. The rest will follow eventually.