Design potential
A call to solve big problems
Design has the potential to solve the world’s biggest problems.
The world’s biggest problems are systemic, ambiguous, and complicated to understand. One session on Twitter will tell you where the pain is.
Designers at the highest levels can approach grand ambiguity with grace, empathy, and humanity. They can drill into a problem until they find the root causes, then strategize how to solve them with craft, communication, and connection with the problem’s community (think user research).
There’s a reason why our work is called human-centered — our profession requires us to dive into human stories. We are the advocates when the conversations get lost in the money and minutiae.
However, design is still young in how we educate, collaborate, and work within organizations. The gap is a side effect of what makes a designer’s job difficult to scale. Besides being emotionally taxing, the bulk of the work, the soft skills that make the Figma design useful, is learned on-the-job. Navigating challenging contexts, people, and products is what teaches designers to be leaders. This is what short-lived bootcamp classrooms inherently cannot provide.
What are the skills missing in our design education?
How do we teach these skills?
If we work on this gap, can we uplift the next generation of human-centered problem solvers, thus making progress on our world’s biggest problems?
This is what Systems at Play is about. This publication aims to pick up where design education ends with an emphasis on psychology and human progress.
As a bootcamp graduate (DesignLab baby!), I understand how appealing digital product design is — bootcamps are affordable compared to university education, and the barrier of entry is relatively low compared to other professions like software engineering. With a stellar prototype and portfolio, odds are, you can land a first gig, but the work doesn’t stop there.
To create an impact, designers must dig into what makes human-centered design tricky, nerve-wracking, yet most fulfilling.
As I moved from junior to senior, I drew from my past lives as a teacher, marketer, writer, startup veteran, psychology student, and service designer. I also self-studied outside of bootcamp curriculum, sought mentorship, and completed freelance projects. Turns out, all of those experiences (and long nights) were necessary to being where I am today.
My hope is to share as much as I can so you can use these lessons and push your potential. If you have a specific topic you’d like me to cover or share your experience, please email me at caroline@systemsatplay.co.
Otherwise, let’s get to work.
Thank you,
Caroline Luu
Product Designer
