Design Isn’t Optional

A few weeks ago, I posted something on LinkedIn that went viral. It wasn’t a hot take. It wasn’t tied to a product launch or a trend. Just a straight, honest message I felt like saying out loud. It started with:

We need more designers. And I don’t mean slide decorators or pixel polishers. I mean people who can imagine something that doesn’t exist—and then make it real.

They take a hunch and sketch it into a world. They hold a dozen constraints in one hand and a sense of possibility in the other. They make weird, brave, beautiful things. And they invite the rest of us to respond.

I expected a few nods. Maybe a quiet note of appreciation from my design friends.

Instead, the post took off.

Hundreds of designers shared it. Product folks weighed in. Even a few execs messaged me privately, saying, “Yeah, we’ve treated design as an afterthought for too long.”

Clearly, this wasn’t just me. A lot of people had been carrying the same thought around, quietly.

And here’s what I’ve been thinking about since: If this many people feel that design is undervalued, why does it keep happening?

Why do we keep sidelining the very people who make ideas real?

It happens subtly. A roadmap gets built before a designer sees it. Research insights get turned into features without asking how they might feel. Strategy meetings happen in the absence of the creative team. And before you know it, design becomes decoration. A late-stage layer. Something to "tighten up" after the decisions are made.

But that’s not what good design does. That’s not what good designers do.

The best designers I know don’t just take direction—they ask better questions. They don’t wait for specs—they interpret ambiguity. They’re not just makers; they’re translators. Synthesizers. Sometimes provocateurs.

They hold a dozen constraints in one hand, and a sense of possibility in the other.

They see the edge cases before they break production. They notice what’s missing before users ever articulate it. They turn rough ideas into usable form—and then push it further.

And no AI prompt can do that.

Don’t get me wrong. I use generative tools. They’re fast, efficient, sometimes even helpful. But speed isn’t the same as insight. Output isn’t the same as originality. And prompting isn’t the same as designing.

AI doesn’t care if something should exist. Designers do.

That’s the part we overlook. Design isn’t just execution. It’s emotional labor. It’s principled. It’s uncomfortable. And it matters—not just to aesthetics, but to adoption, satisfaction, trust.

At CoinJar, when we help teams identify their Catalytic Customers—the ones who push thinking forward. We often find the internal version of that same role sitting quietly in a corner of the org chart, labeled “Design.” Not the loudest voice in the room. But often the most observant. The most insistent. The one who catches what everyone else glosses over.

And yet, they get invited in too late.

If your innovation work is failing to land. If the research looks sharp, the strategy makes sense, but the end result still feels a little hollow, check when you brought design into the process. And how much room you gave them to challenge it.

Because that might be the real gap.

We need designers early. We need their discomfort. Their weirdness. Their instincts. Not just to color inside the lines, but to redraw them entirely.

So if you're a designer reading this, know this: your work is not only wanted—it’s essential. Keep pushing. Keep questioning. Keep making the rest of us uncomfortable in the best possible way.

We need what you make. And we’re better when you’re in the room.