I’m really just a designer.

Many years ago, I got frustrated with the design assignments that landed on my desk because I knew that no matter how skillfully I designed a solution, it wasn’t going to solve the problem that needed solving. Design isn’t magic, but plenty of people still seem to expect it to be. Great design work can’t make up for a poorly defined problem or fulfill ridiculous expectations.

I realized that if I was going to succeed as a designer, I’d have to get involved in the larger process. So I did that and I got better assignments. Then I did that for other designers. And then more and more, I did that for designers that reported to me. And then I got involved in helping define my organization’s larger problems and figuring out how to solve them with more than just the work of my designers. And then I did that for other people’s organizations.

So now I’m a designer who almost never gets to design. Or really, I’m a designer who designs all the time, using my design skills to research, analyze and solve every single challenge I’m involved with … but others aren’t thinking of what I do as design.

They think I’m a customer experience director and a civic technologist and a consultant and a program manager and a team manager. And they think I’m a mentor. They ask me to share my human-centered design expertise and my service design expertise and my organizational and process design expertise. And I do all of that because I love it and I’m very good at it.

But I’m really just a designer.