The future of design isn’t about pixels. It’s about function. And the organisations that figure that out first will be the ones that win.
Every time I join any new organisation — whether it’s a product company scaling its fifth round of funding or an agency juggling thirty clients — I watch the same pattern unfold. Designers are busy. They’re shipping. They’re producing beautiful interfaces, running user tests, and obsessing over micro-interactions. And yet, something is broken.
The design team is active but not effective. They’re working in the business but not on the business. They’re producing outputs but not outcomes.
And then I do the one thing that changes everything.
I apply Design as a Function.
What is Design as a Function?
Most people think of design as a practice — a set of skills, processes, and activities. Sketching. Wireframing. Prototyping. User research. And yes, design is all of these things.
But to understand why design struggles to realise its potential within organisations, we need to see it differently. We need to see it as what it actually is: a function of the firm.