Summary: Designers' top struggles aren't about design skills. They're about alignment, influence, and navigating org complexity — the work no one taught them to do.

Every time we teach our course Product and UX: Building Partnerships for Better Outcomes , we ask students the same question at the start of class: what's your number one problem right now? Last year we collected about 150 answers. After mapping them, the results were remarkably consistent across a few major themes.

Roughly half of the feedback pointed to the same category of challenge: alignment. Not design quality. Not research methods. Alignment — getting people on the same page and shaping what actually gets built.

Designers Are Doing the Connective-Tissue Work, and No One Taught Them How

Role Confusion and Invisible Value

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Designers Are Doing the Connective-Tissue Work, and No One Taught Them How

The single most common theme was about facilitating alignment between people .…