My Year in Design — 2025

I started writing my yearly design retrospectives 10 years ago. The first one I published dates back to 2016, and focuses on the year 2015 (you can read it here). Before that I mostly wrote summarizations in my note books, which I’ve been collecting since I’ve started my career in Design (let’s just say I have plenty of those). This year I’m going to offer a mix of what I hope are KPIs that I set out to achieve, and some reflections from what I learnt.

KPIs. I always set out a number of books to read every year. For some people that may sound irrelevant and completely beside the point, but it helps me to have a target in mind, and try to surpass it. In 2025 I didn’t reach the heights of 2024, but I got close. I read 31 books. Why does this matter? Much of what designers do is about storytelling, and story-reading. You have to understand what data, clients, peers, the world around you is telling you, in order to craft product solutions that are meaningful, astute, and sensical. Much of what we do with our solutions is understand User Journeys, and find a way to tell a story of how a product or feature can benefit a client or a user. Reading not only allows you to increase your vocabulary and exercise your imagination, but it also gets you to think about progressive disclosure, narrative nuances, and motivations. Another KPI I set for 2025 pertained to personal projects that I was able to commence but that weren’t finalized. That ties back into another point that I’m going to highlight in this article, which is patience and how to confront expectations. More of that below. Finally, I defined KPIs at work, focused on obtaining important tools for the team I work with, secondly uplifting the quality of our deliverables, and thirdly emphasizing the importance of solid data as a baseline for meaningful recommendations.

Patience. The past year was challenging for many individuals, myself included. When you establish KPIs either at work or for your personal life, you don’t do so in a secluded environment where you can control every possible influencing factor. Your KPIs (and yourself) have to weather an array of vicissitudes coming from your work environment, from your personal life, from a plethora of events that are taking place in the world. During 2025 I realized that patience is something Designers have to nurture, something they need to cultivate in their arsenal of good qualities. Design as a discipline has always played second fiddle to many other disciplines, particularly when it comes to the Technology field. Sadly even in 2025 for many organizations who operate in the Tech world, they still don’t know what Design actually means, what value it adds to their business, and how transformative it is (and yes, how much value it brings to their shareholders). It’s irrelevant at this point to discuss Apple’s evolution, or AirBNB, or any other successful enterprise where Design has played an important role in supporting their success story and market standing. At this point if professionals in the Tech world don’t understand what Design, User Experience, Customer Experience, and anything pertaining to client retention actually means, that is obviously a deliberate choice. It does not matter how fiercely Designers advocate for their point of view and that of the Discipline, nothing will change the mind of professionals who myopically think product success is driven solely by engineering (these individuals have typically made their stance, and don’t really move from it, even if they create a superficial impression of doing so). Patience is also realizing how the situations that stem from the prior statement I just wrote have an impact on Designers’ paths: many Designers during their career will be in environments that are openly hostile to their presence and contributions, where advocating for Design approaches/principles, doesn’t really deliver any fruits: it’s a barren land. And with patience these professionals have to make decisions if they want to stay/persist in these situations, or move on to others where they’re more valued and where their point of view is not only welcomed, but actually necessary. This past year taught me that my ability to nurture my patience allowed me to persevere in the procurement of tools for a Design team I was managing, something that took years to go through. Patience walks hand in hand with perseverance, and being able to withstand obstacles with professionalism, and keep advocating for what is right, for what is relevant, and ultimately, for what brings value for the business and those you’re supporting in your team. Patience and perseverance also allows you to tackle devastating events that occur in your personal life, that are unexpected, that bring us that much closer to our humanity, mortality, and fallibility. Be patient, with yourself, with others, and persevere. Always with awareness, always with mindfulness.

Inflating. This past year AI was the topic du jour. Every single day I read through Linkedin’s News, and I don’t think there was a single day where AI or something immediately adjacent to it wasn’t mentioned. AI has inserted itself in every conversation and everything that professionals do in the Tech world. Design included. I’m always reminded of the philosophy behind the Jobs to be Done approach, or even exercises about finding the value proposition for a new product or feature when I think about AI. One of my friends mentioned having brainstorming sessions with an AI engine. AI typically processes previously created data, analyzes it and provides an overview of what it parsed through. Therefore and on a brainstorming session it may elicit questions that are apparently relevant, but that ultimately begs the question: are we all just listening to what we want to be listening (is AI ultimately an echo chamber)? At this time I believe most people and most professionals are still figuring out how they want to use AI. Similar thing happened to Webdesign when templates, and even Wordpress themes started to show up everywhere. Professionals have to find a way to integrate this tool into how they work, in order to start carving a path to what value it actually brings, which of course includes agentic AI, chatbots (that perpetually create frustration), and prompts that create visual artifacts that cannibalize the work of other creatives (who in the process get paid nothing for their years of hard work). My point being: right now AI is a tool that is finding its own way into how we work. Software packages are still trying to figure out how to monetize it. I’ve personally created software in the past leveraging LLM (Large Language Models), and its usefulness was undisputed. I’ve also tested quite a few features with AI (Figma Make for instance), which I have found less than great. Overall I’d say the lesson on this topic, much like prior tech advancements, the lesson seems to be in my personal opinion, learning how to work with this tool, understanding its value, its shortcomings, and uncover the angle that will bring substance to what you produce.

Balance. In 2024 I was taken by surprise by how toxicity in the workplace was something still alive and well. However a year later I can attest to the following: the world changes very rapidly and there’s no such thing as the sure thing. What I can attest to is as always the following: be professional, be kind, don’t take anything too seriously (have a sense of humor and laugh at yourself), and always leave a situation better than how you found it. Design and Design Professionals have the ability to be a catalyst for change, to unite different points of view, to better understand users and peers, and finally to operate within the confines/constraints of a business, and while looking at all the available variables, know how to create the right connections to ultimately find a converging path to success.

After 10 consecutive years of writing articles and releasing a weekly newsletter on Design, Innovation, and Technology, I’m uncertain of what this year will bring. But whatever it is, my personal KPI is to make sure it is meaningful, authentic, and with a thoughtful point of view.

Hope you all continue to discuss and reflect on the importance of Design.

I’ll wrap this article with a quote from the unmissable Dolly Parton.

“We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.”