Page 88 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

76 Design Meets Business
Overall, here we showed that designers approach their work as a ‘labor of love’ (Amabile 1997). Just like craftsmen, they feel the urge to perfect their design skills and become better in the craft of design. Making arti- facts allowed the designers to reconnect with their work and the wider community of the craft.
2.4.4. Establishing a sense of control in ambiguous design processes
Further, a challenge that the designers encountered as their material practices changed, was that their design processes became more abstract and involved more and more heterogeneous actors. As the work processes of designers became more abstract, it was even more difficult for designers to contemplate the outcomes of design processes, let alone structure their work around it. While creative work like design is per definition open- ended and uncertainty ridden (Jones et al., 2015), the designers said in interviews that ambiguity in and around work processes increased over the past years: “now, more than ever, each project is like a blank slate. We never know what comes out of it.” Further, as the design firm was acquired and projects now targeted the strategy level of business firms, more diverse people were involved in the work processes of designers. About this, a designer said:
“Now we have so many voices in our projects. We have the voice of the client, the voice of the CAL [Accenture consultant], the voices of the cli- ent’s team, the CEO, the marketing director, the innovation director, and so on.”
As a result of both increasingly ambiguous design processes and more involvement of diverse people in their work, designers felt that they were losing sight over their own work processes.
We found that making and using artifacts helped the designers to win back a sense of control. Especially, the designers highlighted the impor- tance of making tangible objects as their work was becoming increasingly intangible. In an interview, a designer said:
“We are busy with digital and vague stuff all day long, but we also need the physical. So, the physical space of the studio is important to us, to keep our feet on the ground. We use artefacts like scissors, papers, Post-Its to make things tangible.”