To design is to think in systems. Nothing is beneath the notice of a designer, because small details feed into larger processes.

Think big, tell good stories, paint in broad strokes where you must - but also take care.

This does sometimes feel like a contradiction. Is our role to work with thick markers, or thin pencils? Should we be fighting for a voice in strategy, or focusing on refining our craft and design systems?

Design as a practice is defined by the tensions between contradictions.

Working simultaneously at the high and low levels is very hard. I've struggled to do it well. It's why developer-driven product definition falls apart.

The only way to do it is to have a firm grasp of the system you're working on - and to make sure your colleagues do as well.

This is why design outputs are primarily memetic. The goal is not to draw a cool diagram or a pretty mockup for your portfolio, but to disseminate a narrative about what ought to be, and induce SMEs to build on that narrative rather than compete with it. https://mobile.twitter.com/PavelASamsonov/status/1171820124401283072

The fine details are anchors that make the story real. Anyone can spin a yarn about a big, ambiguous idea. Design is what turns that idea into a system, by providing a skeleton and sparking the imagination of those who will shape the flesh that goes around it.

It's common to get pushback when you are making the nebulous concrete. The more vague the idea, the less risk - everyone's mind fills in the details in the way that makes them happy.

Designers take that illusion away. This makes a lot of people upset.

When "the business" asks for the "ROI of design" they are lying to themselves. They know what it is.

They know that this is what design does - shatter illusions by demonstrating cause and effect. But wishful thinking is a hard habit to break.

And so, designers get relegated to drawing UIs that are totally divorced from any systems. When the UI implies any systemic consequences, the UI has to be changed, to preserve the fog of ambiguity.

Design must be either end-to-end, or not be at all.

But just because design has to take everything into account doesn't mean that the designer has to do everything. Your job is to ensure that everything *is done*.

I don't care if you code, but you should be able to get those who do code to code the right thing.

The best way to create pushback against your narrative is to allow rival narratives to form. When SMEs and PMs are excluded from the design process, they will form their own mental models. And theirs will win, because gut feel/"best practices" is faster than user research.

The only way design wins this fight is by inviting them into the process at the ground level (and fighting tooth and nail to get in yourself, if it comes to that), and facilitating the evolution of a sensible mental model around which everyone can structure their contributions.

This is why you can neither ignore your org and do Rockstar Design in the Design Cave, nor meekly take the direction of people who want you to wireframe up their ideas.

Good work only happens when you confront ambiguity, propagate one story, and build design literacy.