It’s very tempting to frame design as solving business problems. I’ve done this myself plenty of times as a shorthand way of getting to understand why we are doing a piece of work, or to step back from someone having a cool idea and asking for design to come in and make it so. It is also a wildly inaccurrate way to think about design.
Problem solving limits ambition, implies there is a formula to follow, and too often gets treated as though problems exist independent of the broader systems in which they appear. Design isn’t a maths problem. Multiple paths exist within a solution space, and finding an answer to a problem doesn’t mean you have found the optimal solution. It also means you have removed the opportunity to innovate as it assumes someone else has already done the work.
Design is messy, playful, and requires a willingness to go to a vulnerable place. You may look a bit silly, and will get lost chasing up dead ends, but the path to good work isn’t ever as straightforward as it seems in hindsight.
