designers: different types, different functions, one purpose

From time to time people ask me what I do, and with absolute confidence I say ... Design. I say it with confidence because I have been a Designer for over 17 years of my life. The single most puzzling part of it all to me however; is though design is all around us, many of us do not know the differences between a graphic designer and an experience designer, an industrial designer and a interior designer. When I say... "Designer", the instant idea, that comes to mind, is "graphic designer" or "interior designer" and this brings me to a set of ideas of my own...

1. Though design is all around us, innovation - through design; is crippled by our lack of understanding as it pertains to the different facets of the field

2. Many designers are mis-placed because many mid-level (even high-level) leaders lack the ability to identify the unique abilities of the different "types" of creatives they have at their disposal

3. The overall design thinking of an organization becomes stagnated because designers are looked at as solely "pretty thing makers" and NOT "process innovators", or "organization transformers" ...

These ideas are surface at best, and I want to keep this post simple for the sake of us gaining a different perspective of the designers within our organizations and among us in our everyday lives. Let's first find out what a designer is and NOT assume that we "know"...

Designer: A person who designs or CREATES something. OR as psychologist Herbert Simon would say... "Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones".

SO based on this lens, we can easily say that we are ALL designers at one level or another, and THIS is indeed good news. I am privileged to know all kinds of designers ... Interior designers, system designers, experience designers, graphic designers, user experience designers... I could go on and on, however; the idea here is that just about everything you see, touch, smell or even experience comes from the hand or mind of a designer.

With this revelation we can quickly conclude that designers are an very important part of our every day lives... We can also conclude that there are, in-fact different types of designers, AND designers have different functions however; if we look deeper we will find they all really have the same purpose, arguably - creating courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. We "prefer" to have elegantly designed cars versus "ugly" ones, we would "prefer" to have a "well oiled system" at the hospital versus a "cumbersome" one. Fact is however, the answer rest in design and design thinking.

Organizations can tap into new levels of innovation if they can somehow sift through all of the "stuff" and get down to the ethos of each of their employees BUT primarily the creatives - the ones with a proven record of design thinking capabilities, and re-leverage them for optimal results.

As for me... IF I had to be classified as any "type" of designer, I would have to be classed as a "experience designer", however primarily I am a "design thinker".  I look at the totality of the problem to be solved and I am able to intuitively and systematically devise or "design" solutions to accomplish a desired result. With 17 years of creative/design thinking under my belt - I am able to lead creative teams into the innovation of new products, services and brands. So when I say I am a designer, my view of what design is and what it does is broad and wide ranging. From the design of a website to the design of a customer experience - I leverage design thinking to get results. Creative - innovation driven results.

I am only one type of designer however; and within organizations there are generally many. The true power of innovation is tapped when organization leaders at every level have an understanding of the "types" of designers they are leading. They tap into greater levels of innovation when they know the "functions" that each of their designers serve, and the single goal, the common purpose of progressive/disruptive innovation becomes the driving force behind the organization.