There’s a lot of discourse online and in practice regarding the inevitable change that we’re facing as designers. This can be attributed to things like rapidly evolving AI, organisational politics in companies, and focusing on creating engagement in products rather than meaning.

With all this discourse, we don’t seem to have a lot of clear answers as to how we evolve ourselves to stay relevant. Do we double down into the craft side of things, or do we pivot into a leadership role? The State of UX in 2025 article suggests that both are possible.

While I won’t pretend to have all or any answers, I do think that systems thinking provides a way for designers to navigate this uncertainty and have influence in wherever the future may end up taking us.

In this article I will discuss personal reflections inspired by Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers by Sheryl Cababa (Rosenfeld Media, 2023). You can check out the book here: