Designers as facilitators, protectors, and collaborators
Every time I visit my mom, she asks me the same question: “WHAT exactly are you designing? I tried to explain it to a friend, but they didn’t quite understand.”
Many people (not just my mom) still see design as something tangible — something they can hold and touch. While that might have been true 20 years ago, the world of design has shifted. Today, much of design is digital, and it focuses on strategic thinking rather than just creating physical products.
This shift — from design as the creation of objects to design as a tool for enabling change — has reshaped the profession. Now, we must ask: What is the next necessary evolution of design? How do we adapt our work to address today’s interconnected crises of climate change, housing, justice, and meaning? What is the future role of designers that helps heal and regenerate our planet?
DesignShift: From designing things to designing real change
As I ponder these questions, I keep returning to this idea of less — not in the sense of sleek, Scandinavian inspired solutions (I actually think that can be quite harmful), but in terms of our role as designers. If we want to design for real change, the role of a designers must become less about designing new things, and more about facilitating, protecting, and enhancing what already exists.
Let’s explore these three areas.
1. Designers as a facilitator:
For decades, designers have pushed for a seat at the table in boardrooms where crucial decisions are made. Yet, as a 2020 Fast Company article explains, many CEOs still don’t understand the role of design leadership (it’s not just my mom). The survey revealed that “Only one-third of CEOs could detail what their CDO (Chief Design Officer) oversaw at the company. In other words, 66% of CEOs couldn’t say what their CDO actually did, or how that success should be measured.”
When you listen to these kinds of “seat-at-the-table” discussions, the obvious conclusion might be that designers just need to do more to prove that they deserve to be there. But what if we’re approaching this in the wrong way?
As important as our role in boardrooms and decision-making conversations may be, users or customers themselves are rarely “at these tables.” They are out and about, living their lives. Rather than speaking for users, how can we facilitate the conversation and create spaces where others can share their insights and solutions? The key shift is moving from designing for others to designing with them and one way we can do this is through co-design.
Co-Design: A key method for designers as facilitators
When I think about the role of designers evolving from creating things to facilitating change, my mind naturally turns to co-design. Kelly Ann McKercher, alongside many other practitioners, pioneered co-design. The method aims to shift the role of the designer away from the designing “at” or “for” to designing “with” and “by.” On their website, McKercher describes how “Co-design brings together lived experience, lived expertise and professional experience to learn from each other and make things better — by design.” Today, a lot of designers are designing “at” or “for” others. Our work centers clients’ wants over community needs. Co-design centers the lived experiences of the people, families, and communities themselves. The designer isn’t in charge of solving problems or making things, but rather responsible for enabling others to find their own solutions.
Levels of participation in design in four columns: design at, design for, design with and design by. Image from: https://www.beyondstickynotes.com/what-is-codesign
When we look at co-design we can see that the future (and in many places current) role of designers is not to impose our expert knowledge onto communities but rather about facilitating spaces where people can share their ideas and problems in an open and safe way.
4 core principles of co-design:
share powerprioritise relationshipsuse participatory meansbuild capability
When I think about this mindset and method shift, designers moving from expert to facilitators I often come back to the work of community organizers. In this interview, Ezra Klein speaks with labor organizer Jane McAlevey about what it takes to mobilize people within a labor movement. McAlevey, who has organized hundreds of thousands of workers on the front lines of America’s labor movement, explains: “When I’m looking for organizers, I’m looking for people who genuinely believe that ordinary people have high intelligence and who really deeply respect ordinary people. I start out every day genuinely believing that people can make radical changes in how they think about and see the world.
Designers have much to learn from this mindset. If we truly believe that people have the answers to the problems we’re trying to solve, then our role shifts. Our work becomes less about designing things or imposing expert knowledge onto people, about facilitating conversations and creating environments where the people closest to the problem are also closest to the power.
2. Designers as protectors
Designers shape the products we use and the content we consume. Design is a powerful tool, and if we want to make sure we’re designing for a better tomorrow, designers need to balance opportunities with responsibilities.
Over the years, the question “How might we?” has become a cornerstone of design thinking, encouraging optimism and creativity. I love this question. It opens up possibilities.
However, I’ve also realized that as designers, our responsibility isn’t just to spot problems — it’s to ensure we don’t create new ones.
This means not just asking “How might we?” but also “At what cost?”
“Don’t move fast and break things when it comes to my kids”
These were the words from the mom of a 14 year old boy who ended his life after a chatbot conversation. The story is heartbreaking on so many levels. As designers and developers of what’s new and what’s next, how do we really make sure our solutions do not have unintended consequences? How do we move from good intentions to taking responsibility for the potential harms before we go to market? How do we stop moving fast? How do we stop breaking things, people, and the planet?
The cost of poorly designed solutions is far-reaching. Products end up in landfills, software isolates us, and messaging manipulates us into excess consumption. Good intentions are not enough. Designers must be responsible for the impact of their work. We must ask ourselves: Are we considering all stakeholders? Are we accounting for invisible users? Could our solutions cause environmental harm? We need to take these questions seriously, not just during the design process, but throughout the entire lifecycle of a product or service. We must test for unintended consequences and build in safeguards to mitigate risks. We must become protectors of people and planet.
3. Designers as collaborators:
The 10th Design Justice Principle states: “Before seeking new design solutions, we look for what is already working at the community level. We honor and uplift traditional, indigenous, and local knowledge and practices.”
Design can sometimes feel like a club that few are invited to. We use fancy words and frameworks, and our offices, while beautiful and inspiring, can often feel exclusive and elitist. However, when we look at what design really is, the combination of sense making and form giving we can see that design happens in all professional fields AND in our day-to-day lives. A physical therapist designs when they diagnose a patient and create a treatment plan. A teacher designs when they adjust a curriculum based on past experiences. A policymaker designs when they shape laws based on societal needs. And in everyday life, people design when they plan vacations, build routines, or adjust their habits.
Designers don’t have a monopoly on creativity. People are designing solutions every day without formal titles. Our role should be to amplify and collaborate, rather than to reinvent the wheel.
Designers need to recognize this and look for ways to collaborate and uplift the people who are already doing the work rather than coming up with our own “new” inventions. This might mean that we are not actually designing a new “thing” but rather supporting the work of others.
Design by collaboration means recognizing that our world doesn’t always need another app, product, or service. Sometimes, it needs us to step back and ask: What’s already working? What systems need strengthening rather than replacing? What voices need amplification rather than interpretation?
Why now? Why us?
We are in a time of interconnected crises — climate change, energy depletion, food scarcity, and social inequality. Design as usual isn’t just inadequate — it’s harmful. If we want to contribute to a better future, we must use our design skills in different ways.
As Julia Watson states:
“With environmental and societal collapse imminent in the coming decades, design at the intersection of anthropology, ecology, and innovation is the most pressing discussion of our time.”
The designers’ role moving forward is crucial but the future is less about viewing success through the lens of creation and production, and more about measuring our impact through restoration, connection, and amplification. It means approaching our work with humility, curiosity, and care. By acting as facilitators, protectors, and collaborators, we can create a future where design doesn’t harm — and where it empowers others to thrive. The true magic of design lies not in what we create but in the change we help others achieve.
So the next time my mom asks, “What do you actually design?” — maybe the best answer won’t be about the things I make. Maybe it’s about what I help protect, who I collaborate with, and how I empower others to shape their own futures.. Maybe good design isn’t about what we create, but about what we choose to leave untouched, to nurture, or to amplify. And maybe that’s something worth explaining.
Resources:
Design Justice NetworkWhen the “Person” Abusing Your Child is a Chatbot: The Tragic Story of Sewell SetzerWhat is co-design? — Beyond Sticky NotesLabor organizer Jane McAlevey on The Ezra Klein Show | VoxKelly Ann McKercher — CoDesign and Power — Social Design Sydney Aug 2020The Politics of Design
From designing things to designing change was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
