"The Design Problem" Problem

Just wrapped some early user validation and paper prototyping session at ASUG in Orlando. Was a fruitful exercise even though the none of the concepts we had seemed to fly with the users.

Through weeks of intense user research and now this three day user testing we seem to have uncovered...err... let's say an enterprise design problem, for lack of a better term. My previous post questioned how we could better study enterprise culture. This I think is actually part 2 of a question. Part 1 is to actually question even what qualifies as a design problem when it comes to the enterprise. There seem to be levels to the enterprise problem which run way deeper than the usual social, cultural, economic, material and technical factors that we take into account.

I am sure I am not the first one to raise this point, but we really need to define the place of the designer in an enterprise. The problems are abstract and fuzzy alright, but when it comes to actually defining the boundaries for the design there are challenges that exist far beyond the users and their context.

So again ,when should the designer step in to solve an enterprise design problem? We have responsibilities that go far beyond creating interfaces but when we encounter certain very fundamental problems that lie beyond the realm of our influence, the designer's problem gets reduced to just that (creating interfaces).