After starting my career in the Design field teaching Interaction Design and HCI, my first professional opportunities for delivering products to market came in the shape of working within the environment of Design Agencies. I worked in that environment for 4 years, before my journey shifted and I went into In-House experiences. It’s been over 10 years since I last worked in the Design Agency realm, but recently speaking to Design colleagues, and answering some questions on this topic, prompted me to expand my thoughts on this a bit further. This article doesn’t aim to paint or pitch one scenario versus another. Its goal is to highlight some of the aspects that make both universes compelling, and at times challenging as well. Each Designer and professional ultimately needs to find their own path and what best suits them.

Design Agencies, Consulting and Shifting Clients. The typical and somewhat dated notion that working in Design agencies is a bit like “Mad Men” is hopefully now gone. Product Design as a discipline has flourished and has brought attention to Lean Design techniques, not to mention of course, the importance and relevance that Human Centered Design and Design Thinking philosophies have also reached. One of the biggest challenges and also one of the main learning opportunities for me personally from working in Design Agencies, was the timeliness of each project. When clients come to Design Agencies, or Consulting Entities for that matter, they typically aim to get a problem solved, or increase a team’s response capacity (truth be told, Organizations hire contracting/service driven firms all the time, some to fulfill their development needs for instance, others for more episodical situations). Either way, the common denominator is typically: they need something rather quickly, therefore the Agency has to be fairly flexible to handle the requests and also the deadlines that are agreed upon. These engagements are typically costly, which is why of course clients prefer conservative timelines, since that means controlled costs, not to mention earlier results.

For Designers and their peers in the problem solving arena, this typically means having to be very limber in how they approach the Design Process, including the whole aspect of research, iterations, testing and of course, integration with the Client and assessing their own response to the proposed solutions. In my experience, the most successful outcomes were the ones where a strong relationship with the client had been edified. This typically translated into courses of action which included the Agency pro-actively showcasing pathways and options for the Client to respond to, always seeking to understand their clients, their needs, their problems, and crafting solutions which supported their effective needs. In many of these successful scenarios, Clients wanted a partner, someone to grasp the DNA of their offerings, of their premise on the market, and their relationships with their own clients. Therefore for the Agency, and for their Problem Solving teams (which included Designers/Developers/Product Management) this effectively translated into truly diving deep into what the client was all about, and produce outputs that were as closely aligned as to what they themselves were hoping they could deliver, had they in fact the resources to do so. This in itself is also a very powerful lesson to learn: researching the needs across different layers of engagement, including clients, including their users, and wrap all these around the constraints of tight turnaround times. The situations which were the least successful were the ones where the Agency was unable to truly understand or partner with the client in a meaningful way. And while not every relationship has to be an Earth shattering one, it has to be at the very least, rewarding for the client. There are many stories I’m sure of difficult clients, of unreasonable expectations, dramatic outbursts (very MadMen inspired), but that’s up to the Leadership within the Agencies to properly assess if that type of client and relationship is worth nourishing and can it be shaped into something else. Indulging in toxic behavior or passively agreeing to unreasonable requests trickles down and eventually produces discontent (and exits) from the teams who have to respond to them.

I witnessed some less than ideal situations where clients were exasperated, primarily due to a lack of engagement from leadership which translated into poor results and strained relationships. And that’s one of the main issues with Agencies and Consulting at times: in order to be successful you have to be professional, but also honest and transparent about your intentions and what is coming up next. Much like a relationship between two people, it always helps when everyone knows where they’re going and what is it that they will hopefully find at the end of that journey (or chapter). Overpromising, or not communicating in a timely manner typically yields frustration, resentment and more often than not leads to break ups. Another aspect of working in Design agencies is the ephemeral nature of the relationships that are established with clients (and again, there are exceptions of course, some relationships may well be lengthy ones). Everyone knows going into those engagements, that the relationship has an expiration date, therefore the whole aspect of timeliness becomes even more visible/pressing (not to mention that in times of economic hardship, many of these relationships are typically immediately severed by the client). All this to summarize: for professionals who appreciate moving from project to project, there are benefits on embarking on these types of engagements. They present interesting challenges, and if the relationships are finely shaped, they can produce powerful outcomes, while still adhering to Design processes. For professionals looking for more ownership of product lifecycles and increasing relationships with their users, this may not be the best marital of experiences from a professional perspective.

In-House and Adopting StartUp Mentalities. Once I started working with Product Organizations, the Design process application, its focus, timeliness and ownership definitely shifted. For the most part many of the challenges that are placed on Agencies and Designers working in that environment, are and have been consistent in this type of environment. However for Teams involved in the Design Process, they eventually solidify their ownership of the shaping process, and come to understand much more thoroughly their clients and users, how they evolve, their wants and needs, having a better grasp at the solutions being crafted. In all the engagements I’ve been fortunate enough to have been a part of, I’ve witnessed the focus on the sustainability and growth of product experiences with clients, of weaving stories that allow for the client to keep their engagement active and persistent with the Organization. For some Designers and some professionals working on a single product or product suite, that may be synonym with dullness and monotony. However in all the years I’ve personally spent working with In-House Product Design experiences I never once witnessed such a thing.

If product solutions are crafted with an eye on longevity, chances are those products have backlogs with an array of features and enhancements which typically are tremendous challenges for Designers and their teams to solve. Some organizations in order to jumpstart innovation within their structure bring Startup working methods, or create Innovation Labs, all with the intent to further potentiate their pertinence to the market and enhance their outreach to their clients (at times replicating some of the habits/processes from the Agency/consulting fields). There are of course challenges with working within In-House structures, which can range from inheriting monolithic platforms, to adoption of new work methods, integration of new tools and even structuring and scaling Design initiatives, however these are challenges that can yield results that are long lasting, and which can in turn potentiate the growth of Design professionals and the practice itself.

Reality Check. Everyone eventually finds the working style and environment that best suits them. The evolution of Product Design and the dissemination of Design Thinking methods has definitely shifted much of the attention of Design Professionals to Software and Product Led Organizations. 15 years ago, the allure of Interactive and Design Agencies was possibly more pronounced, since it was the age of Web Design, right at the precipice of the democratization of Smart Phones, of Application usage and deliverability. But times have changed, businesses have changed, and Design Professionals now have the opportunity to truly choose where they can find the challenges they long for in environments that are as diverse and challenging as they look for. It all boils down to what is it that you want to focus on, and what environment do you want to thrive in.

I’ll conclude with a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt on the topic of choices:

“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility”