I would add to that studying history, economics and social sciences (…sorry, no one said this would be easy but you do end up with an awesome library — not to mention a pretty versatile and resilient career path ;-)

Seriously though, we’re entering an amazing (and occasionally terrifying) time where some products will become increasingly intangible (…for example a service with a variety of touch points including some that simply involve machines talking to machines) while others will become far more so (…where ‘design’ may mean thinking about the fun, productive or uncomfortable spots where hardware, software and people will intersect).

As products also become more complex, a critical aspect of design will be to anticipate a product’s social, cultural and systemic impacts — as it’s often these (rather than how it looks) that will cause it to thrive or fail.

[Don’t get me wrong, an attractive, highly learnable and productive UI, and great industrial and visual design continue to play a huge part…but a better understanding of societal fit is just as critical to understanding what ‘the best design’ actually means for that particular product].

Google’s self driving car was specifically designed to look friendly. This wasn’t a random design decision, but one born of the knowledge that autonomous things of all shapes and sizes are often met with fear and mistrust. And because a fully[1] autonomous car doesn’t implicitly need many of the bits and pieces related to human driving (steering wheel, stuff related to manual brake operation etc.) there was more flexibility to re-imagine the look of it as an aggregate of the physical things it needed to do and the socio-cultural markers that would better enable it to succeed[2].

You could argue that researching, envisioning and facilitating some of this is not the designer’s job (…maybe the product manager? or design ethnographer?)…but if you care about how often your product is used, what emotions using it will conjure up, and whether it will enrich people’s lives, taking a more holistic view is a critical, and increasingly necessary aspect of the job.

[1] To this one could cheekily add understanding a bit about the law. All around the world, there are liability and risk frameworks being discussed that clarify the potential roles and responsibilities of autonomous vs. semi-autonomous agents. Emerging products also increasingly bump up against evolving attitudes towards privacy, and ethics. The outcome of these will often influence product design far more that an initial or “best UX” business plan or product and engineering brief.

[2] Add to this the business goals that no doubt exist, even at this ‘moonshot’ prototype stage.

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