Article: Designers and labels!

Designers are constantly called to define themselves and segregate into different categories - design thinking, service design, customer experience, UX design, business design, human-centered design and so on.

To me, it is all a giant cloud.

A cloud of water droplets of different sizes comprising- the users, the system, the service or the product, the business and the ideas.

Now the comparative sizes of these droplets can vary with respect to each other in each of these methodologies or thinking methods, but nevertheless all these factors will always be a part of your design even when you’re not consciously considering it as a factor.

For instance, service design starts from the user but covers the business value and all players/ touch points in the entire ecosystem.

It doesn’t mean it’s not human-centered or user-centered.

Or if User experience design starts with design thinking, doesn’t mean that you don’t need to keep in mind the business goals of the organization, your design cannot exist as an independent entity when it’s dependent on a lot of internal (company) and external (ecosystem) factors.

So rather than trying to fit ourselves into different categories, maybe we should focus on what problem are we trying to solve and the best way to go about solving it.

These are all tools and methodologies that are available to make the life of a designer easier, not to restrict their thinking or create indifference or neglect towards other possibilities in any form!

Because the more you explore the problem from its 100 perspectives, the better your design will get.

#design #designers