I have interviewed a lot of #designers and #researchers this year. This is my round up of some of the issues I have seen in the industry in 2020:

1. Roughly 80% of the designers I speak to say something like “I haven’t had much opportunity to think about accessibility”...

Many organisations have cultural issues meaning they don’t prioritise accessibility. As a single designer, you can’t fix everything. But you always have the opportunity to make something more accessible than it otherwise would be if you don’t educate yourself or try at all.

2. About 40% of designers I speak to say “I don’t have a specific methodology I use”. In general, this is fine.

Except when it comes to research and problem framing. You don’t need a *single* approach or methodology, but you do need to be able to describe...

how you learn in a structured and reliable way.

You need to be able to describe how you frame a problem so the team can understand and get on board with it.

Design has to be a team sport when you’re working in multidisciplinary teams, and the problem needs to be shared.

NB: I include research here because lots of designers do it. But I rarely hear a researcher say “I don’t have a specific approach or methodology”.

Researchers work in a structured way to learn and communicate findings. There is a lot of good for designers to learn from here.