Product Design wizardry is mundane magic again

In its heydays, the field of Product Design had an aura of mystic exclusivity. But luckily Product Design has transformed back to a fundamental skill for everyone.

When I first set foot into a design school in 2010 it felt like entering the sacred realms of an emerging profession teaching arcane wisdom. Product Design was a secret art everybody building products yearned for but did not yet know how to perform. Why was that the case?

During that time the iPhone was rising to legendary success, bound to pull a whole new category of consumer tech, called „smart“ devices, into existence. Many, including past me, attributed the success of the early iPhone to its product design: the unique combination of a WYSIWYG user interface with a handheld touch screen. Both idea and execution of this idea were not attributed to a whole demography of scientists and engineers at Apple and many other companies, but to the genius of a few individuals. There was a whole suite of technological and economic drivers that enabled smartphones, but people did not know, nor care about it. The design of the product, invented and executed by design wizards, made all the difference. „Chief Design Officer“ becoming the new ultimate career goal for creatives¹ signified that Design eventually claimed its seat at the tables of power.

The attribution of early digital consumer product successes to their design made Product Design a hotshot discipline. Design schools popping up everywhere pumped out specialists that would invent more „smart“ products which - by their design, not their technology or business model - should transform everyday life in a positive way. At least that was my idea of the thing when I started to study design.

A discipline during the ascend of its hype cycle is a good place to be. Companies are willing to go great lengths to get access to the new thing, generating a market for wildcard personalities. Methodology is created on-the-fly and by trial & error - a lot of fun. But as all fun things, it wasn’t a permanent state. Product Design wizzards became more humble, when the chaos required for their magic had to make room for more structured approaches. Design Thinking and Design Systems were designed to be used by anybody in a reasonable and reproducible manner - a sensible thing to do. Making design expertise more accessible was a natural next step in maturation of the discipline, but it also marked the downfall of the design wizards.

Alongside with increased in-housing of design expertise and engineers regularly being trained in Design fundamentals, big design agencies had to reduce their staff significantly² and student numbers on design universities are declining³. Also CDO-roles are being cut⁴ from the C-Suite layer of many big companies. At the same time, the barriers of entry for making things, getting in touch with likeminded creatives and bringing ideas to the world is lower then ever, for everyone on the globe. It seems to me the discipline of Product Design, briefly an overhyped wizardry, is becoming a basic core skill everybody can perform on a daily basis.

Is this a bad development? I don’t think so. Some design wizards needed to find new gigs that may well turn out to be more satisfying paths⁵ in the log run. I think it is good that design expertise has become ubiquitous to the grade of invisibility.

Designing things is one of the most fundamental things humans can do and always have done. Everybody should perform this little magic now and then.

1. “The CDO title marked a shift in the landscape, as it was a bold attempt (…) to announce design’s arrival into the upper tier of the executive class. It became the gold standard of success (…) in corporate America…”
Robert Fabricant: The big design freak-out: A generation of design leaders grapple with their future (fast company)

2. IDEO‘s revenue decrease and layoffs of roughly 50% of their staff since 2020 has been frequently attributed to in-housing of design expertise and a general diffusion of design skills to other disciplines: Fast Company: Design giant Ideo cuts a third of staff and closes offices as the era of design thinking ends

3. While enrollement in Arts & Humanities seems to be declining in general unfortunately, I know from a friend in academia this is particularly true for design schools.

4. ““Executive leadership and CDO roles are few and far between,” says Rob Magowan, who runs the recruiting firm, Design Leaders. “In sectors like consumer electronics, which I am particularly close to, they’ve paused hiring.”
Robert Fabricant: The big design freak-out: A generation of design leaders grapple with their future (fast company)

5. “But this class of leaders, for the most part, left [their creative] identity behind when they embarked on their corporate journeys. As Powell put it, “As we get into these roles, our tendency is to deprecate our designerly qualities rather than maintaining or elevating them. That is where the imposter syndrome comes through. [It is] uncanny how frequently that comes up with folks that I talk to.”
Robert Fabricant: The big design freak-out: A generation of design leaders grapple with their future (fast company)