A thought that’s come up a few times lately - I believe that the opportunity for design and user experience to increase our influence is not about finding better methods for working with users, but in better methods for working with business. Not that new methods for generating insight, prototyping, and defining solutions aren’t useful. But that’s not where the real barriers are in my practice. The real barriers are about building consensus, buy-in, bridging competing viewpoints, and actually executing. In that environment, we need to cultivate business fluency, and use our design toolkit to work with stakeholders, not just customers. That’s the fundamental belief that underlies my work in the community for the last few years (from value-centered design to design games to my upcoming Smoothing the Way talk at UX Week).

Update: Joe Lamantia has a thoughtful response. Thanks Joe! Next Frontiers For Design: New Economic and Cultural Models.