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Resistant and remediating design

John Knight

To cite this article: John Knight (2023) Resistant and remediating design, The Design Journal,
26:4, 604-623, DOI: 10.1080/14606925.2023.2215422
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2023.2215422

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THE DESIGN JOURNAL
2023, VOL. 26, NO. 4, 604–623
https://doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2023.2215422

Resistant and remediating design

John Knight
Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University, Tarporley, UK

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Little is known about designers’ experience in fast-paced Digital design, design
sprint work. This article draws on case work research within economy, agile, service
consulting and in-house design teams that sheds light on design, design methods,
occupation, agency
this important topic. The findings indicated differences in
digital designers’ practices and occupational experiences.
Designers reported stress in working in extreme agile deliv-
ery teams and struggles in maintaining design integrity in
scrum development. Resilience strategies that habituate
designers in work contexts were also identified from the
research. These stratagems combined remediating methods
together with principled practitioner resistance. In the final
inquiry, fifty-seven participants from in-house and consult-
ing design teams were surveyed. The results indicated sig-
nificant differences between the cohorts including higher
levels of job satisfaction for consultants. This group also
applied the remediating practices and positive resistance
strategies to a greater extent than their in-house peers.
These differences suggest that the occupational context of
design is a fundamental influence on real world practice.

Introduction
Studies of consulting and in-house design teams are rare. Bjo €rklund and van
der Marel (2019) concluded that, to understand the digital design sector,
‘research [needs] to take an organizationally situated perspective to design’
€rklund and van der Marel 2019, 754). Notable examples of an occupa-
(Bjo
tional stance include those presented by Mayer-Ahuja and Wolf (2007) and
by McKinlay and Smith (2010). These early explorations examined design
embedded in digital product and service production. In the past decade, this
domain has undergone exponential growth, driven by agile development.
Agile development (Beck et al. 2001), augmented by design operations, ena-
bles organizations to digitally transform their operations. Agile development

CONTACT John Knight John.knight@aalto.fi Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture,
Otaniementie 16, 02150 Espoo, Finland
ß 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the
Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
 THE DESIGN JOURNAL 605

applies sprint working to continuously deliver incremental software releases of

backlog requirements.
Agile development is mature, widely adopted and delivers many benefits
(Senapathi and Srinivasan 2012). Increased quality and efficiency, as well as
reduced production costs and code errors, are some credible gains reported
in the related literature (see Kahkonen 2004; McInerney and Maurer 2005;
Rodrıguez et al. 2012). Impressive increased team performance, productivity
and output have been reported (Federoff and Courage 2009).
The agile advantage comes at a cost. Methodological issues identified in
early research (e.g. Nerur, Mahapatra, and Mangalaraj 2005) have persisted
through to recent studies (Dingsøyr et al. 2023). Well-documented challenges
include accumulating technical debt (Lindskog and Magnusson 2021), sprint-
task sequencing difficulties (Persson et al. 2018) and ineffective decision-mak-
ing stalling team productivity (McAvoy and Butler 2009).
In good conditions, high-performing teams deliver at velocity. However, many
factors dissipate the positive potential of agile delivery. The reality can often be
chaotic (Rigby, Elk, and Berez 2020) rather than high-performance collaboration.
Problems proliferate with the scale needed to deliver transformational
projects (Gulliksen Stray, Moe, and Dingsøyr 2011) that require many (>10)
sprint teams. Decision-making in agile work is highly distributed, often
impeding strategic value realization (Moe et al. 2021) in critical areas such as
time to market and product differentiation.
Dependencies grow exponentially with each additional sprint team in
scaled agile. This pervasive problem is exacerbated as ‘there is no leader
who can deal with conflicts’ (Lindsjørn et al. 2016, 281). Lack of leadership
results in ambiguity that aggravates interpersonal conflicts (Sekitoleko et al.
2014) and detriments well-being (Conboy et al. 2011). Lastly, agile’s founda-
tional practice of autonomous working can similarly inflame cross-team ten-
sions, increasing individuals’ self-regulation efforts, causing fatigue and stress
(Mueller and Benlian 2022).
Designers’ role in agile production is varied, often challenging and highly
contingent on the host organization’s production methods (as can be seen
in participant verbatims below). Agile design ranges from working in small
teams using shared-task ticketing through to extreme, scaled agile involving
tens of sprint teams.
On the positive side, sprint-based working can give designers increased individ-
ual agency (Knight 2022). Seeing work ‘go live’ quickly, ‘just doing the work’1 and
the camaraderie of close collaboration teams are some of the positive aspects.
€rklund and van der Marel reported on designers’ positive job satisfac-
Bjo
tion (Bjo€rklund and van der Marel, 2019, 765), even in these often intense
working conditions. They also noted differences between consultants’ and
in-house practitioners’ experiences (Bjo €rklund and van der Marel 2019, 763
606 J. KNIGHT

and 759). Variations in designers’ occupational experiences are common,2

arguably due to factors that go beyond differences in modes of
employment.
Designers face many difficulties in agile. They are often assigned to mul-
tiple scrum teams (Jurca, Hellmann, and Maurer 2018, 28), and they can
experience marginalization (Cajander, Larusdottir, and Geiser 2022, 2), disem-
powerment (Schell and O’Brien 2015, 225 and xi) and identity issues
(Rosenberg 2014, 75).
Digital designers deal with endemic agile issues and other issues specific
to their practice. Many factors reduce designers’ ability to maintain profes-
sional integrity and derive personal meaningfulness in intense production
work. Time pressure is a critical factor that leads teams to cut down design
activities (Dayton and Barnum 2009) to meet sprint goals. Higher-value cre-
ative work is often deprioritized in favour of piecemeal (Ferreira 2012) quick
wins that ‘feed the agile beast’.3
Senior designers’ authority and ability to craft their practice can be
thwarted in these kinds of ‘dev-led’ cultures.4 Tasked with delivering ‘slice-of-
value’ increments, they are often diverted from positioning their practice at
a more strategic level.
These factors affect job satisfaction. The ratio of satisfying flow-type work
(Jonsson and Persson 2006) is low compared with mundane ‘small-change’
work (80%)5 that takes up the bulk of working time. Unlike other pod mem-
bers, designers commonly work in multiple sprint teams, carrying out many
small tasks; this causes constant context switching. Chaotic middling projects
often lack organizational alignment and structure, which contributes to
reworking taking up half of designers’ working time in these kinds of
projects.6
Potential methods for improving integration are well researched (see, e.g.
Jurca, Hellmann, and Maurer 2018). However, their effectiveness is less evi-
dent. Dybå and Dingsøyr (2008, 841) found that most (39%) were based on
single cases. Najafi and Toyoshiba (2008) and Kuusinen et al. (2016) are not-
able exceptions in basing recommendations on longitudinal, multiple case
studies. Similarly, Kollmann, Sharp, and Blandford (2009) combine interviews
with some ‘shadowing’ to substantiate their recommendation of improving
visioning and co-working. Hoda, Noble, and Marshall (2012) took these two
approaches further and used grounded theory in their analysis. Dingsøyr
et al. (2023) argued that there is an ‘urgent need for more studies involving
mature agile development teams’ (Hoda, Noble, and Marshall 2012, 1219).
Generally, methodological solutions are proposed to remedy these issues.
Many researchers (e.g. Peres et al. 2014) combine design and agile techni-
ques into a single methods-based framework. The potential of such solutions
is limited as they neglect practitioner agency in collaborative teamwork and
 THE DESIGN JOURNAL 607

effective method use. A methodological approach that helps structure agile

design work, augmented with the means to empower practitioners, ought to
provide a more holistic solution.
To address this, a mixed-methods approach was adopted in this research.
This included case work, diary studies, surveys and experiments that gener-
ated findings and habituating interventions including the Foundation prac-
tice framework.

Discovery research
A sizeable corpus was elicited through the research. This enabled thematic
analysis and hypotheses building from utterances taken from studies across
a variety of cohorts (as shown in Table 1).
An early-stage participant self-reported on her work:
The biggest stress in agile projects is [that] not everyone [is] marching to the same
drum: the process is a mess … expectations are not aligned. (Remediation issue)

I work on multiple projects at one time. The pace of sprints means that I am
unable to complete the research part of my job. I’m lucky to get design work done.
And the developers always want to move faster than the stories [are] planned.
(Remediation issue)
Since [there are] often changes to what will be worked on in the next sprint, it is
easy to get behind. (Remediation issue)

Table 1. The research framework.

Research
Phase question id Cohort Focus Method Case organization
First phase RQ1 Broad, large studies on agile issues Workshops A) Agency
from 2013 a 52 (indicated by B) Fjord
b 121 asterisk)
c 9 surveys and
Multiple small, focussed studies on: experiments
d 14 Designers’ conflicts
e 5
Mission types C) Camelot
Second RQ2 f 6
Client needs
phase g 24 Policy issues
from 2017 h 102 DT adoption D) Avanade
i 19
Mission types
j 40 Senior’s work
Third phase RQ3 Single study, focussed on design work Diary study
from 2019 k 42
Forth phase RQ3 Wide focus on exploring intervention Case study E) In-house
from 2021 l 13 Intervention Financial
Services
m 8 Intervention F) In-house
During 2022 RQ3 n 57 Remediation Online survey Telecoms

The asterisk signifies workshops.
608 J. KNIGHT

Designers fell behind development as they weren’t included in the cross-functional

scrum team but were brought in on demand. (Remediation issue)

Similarly, a designer noted that design can cause bottlenecks:

Yes, this [falling behind development work] happens sometimes when the
requirements change in the middle of the sprint, which in turn lengthens the
design time and [hinders] gets it signed off. (Remediation issue)

A senior designer reported on the dangers of an incremental focus

including:
There is a lack of emphasis on research and design. It’s all about shipping products.
Not products with great experiences. (Remediation issue)

Other comments allude to tensions and strategies to improve work, for

example:
The incessant planning and tracking … combined with the short-sightedness of
solving a problem now, not the right problem tomorrow. (Remediation issue)

Conversely, participants relished solving work problems and noted agile

developments positive aspects:
Getting things done quickly, focus, team alignment and energy, test and learn
culture.

Strong relationship with developers makes it easy to bring products to life.

Understanding challenges and wrestling with the complexity in order to get to a
decent solution. (Resistant behaviour)
Leading with methods, process, and ideas’ (Resistant behaviour)

Definition research
Working as a practitioner, the author was embedded in six design teams dur-
ing the research. This research approach was taken for several reasons.
Foremost was the need to dialogically identify and understand success fac-
tors in digital design first-hand. This approach is also advantageous as it fol-
lows the occupational principle of gaining understanding in order to make
valuable habilitation and rehabilitation interventions.
Firstly, an agency design team (Case A) was studied (Knight 2017) as they
moved from waterfall to agile. Consulting work (Case B) was then under-
taken in the enterprise sector. Case work at Camelot (Case C) enabled first-
hand observation of a team deeply embedded in dev-led production. This
allowed thorough exploration of different project types and design roles (see
Knight 2019). Returning to consultancy (Case D) service design work helped
with identifying and trialing remediation interventions (Knight, et al. 2020,
Knight et al. 2019, 2020). Lastly, two in-house teams (Cases E and F) with
 THE DESIGN JOURNAL 609

mature design operations capabilities but in different sectors were explored.

Insights gained from hands-on case work included identifying rework, the
role of design systems (Churchill 2019) and seniority differences in resistant
behaviour. Interventions included end-to-end project work, such as work in
planning, execution and supporting activities (such as training, daily practi-
tioner engagement and team surveys).
The insider stance of this research aligns with classic work studies. These
commonly involve observation (e.g. Trist and Bamforth 1951), narrative
description (e.g. Burawoy 1979) and inquiry (Lawlor 2000), participant obser-
vation (e.g. Tang 1991) and formal methods of data collection and analysis
(e.g. action research [Levin 1934, cited in Adelman 1993]).
This research was looser, more recursive, and dialogically improved work
through the work itself. Echoing agile principles (Beck et al. 2001), the work
was the product, rather than the research being an end in itself. The field-
work produced data (fieldnotes and internal ‘found’ artefacts). These ephem-
era marked moments of realization or epiphanies (Ellis, Adams, and Bochner
2011) for further formal validation and were not concrete data points in
themselves. While the somewhat unconventional research approach might
have been improved with more structure, it proved effective in grounding
the overall direction of insights within the field of inquiry being researched.

Occupational experience
The next stage of research involved recruiting 42 designers. Most were aged
between 25 and 44 (82%). The majority of respondents were female (62%),
and most were based in the UK (59%). Some limitations arise in regard to
the generalizability of the findings due to the self-selection approach of this
recruitment. As the recruitment was undertaken during COVID-19, this was a
pragmatic decision as many in-house and consulting designers had moved
from co-located to remote team working.
The participants kept a diary for four weeks. During this time, they were
prompted to record their design tasks and how they felt at specific times
during the working day. They added notes (used in transcription) and scored
their feelings against a set of descriptors (e.g. stressed to calm –see Table 2)
when prompted.
The findings helped define a framework mapping designers’ occupational
experience within eleven bi-polar facets (see Table 2). These results align and
extend the framework of Wilcock et al. (1997) and Bjo €rklund and van der
Marel’s (2019) top and bottom moments with varying levels of fit. For
example, autonomy, an innate need is allocated to authority in the frame-
work. Likewise, knowing (identified in this research) is mapped with
competency.
610 J. KNIGHT

Table 2. Designers occupational experience framework.

Occupational Experience facets Top moments Bottom moments Behavioural mapping
Authority Empowered Disempowered Resistant
Engagement Engaged Disengaged Resistant
Congruence Congruent Incongruent Resistant
Relatedness Attached Alienated Belonging
Flow Excited Bored Doing
Utilization Underused Overwhelmed Doing
Anxiety Stressed Calm Being
Competency Growing Stagnating Becoming
Autonomy Unconstrained Constrained Resistant
Ambiguity Ordered Disordered Remediate
Pace Rushed Leisurely Remediate

The respondents also kept a reflective diary and co-wrote a five-act narra-
tive. Using a shared digital workspace they developed characters, scripted
events, and wrote the dialog for an imaginary agile design project. This
‘Practitioners’ Tale’ describes the characters fluctuating fortunes in agile pro-
duction work. The text records points of consensus and conflict. Situations
when remediating methods were applied and where the designers resisted
prevailing power relations are also detailed. Remediation problems generally
arose from dealing with ambiguity, poor working practices, and a lack of
structure. Resistant issues commonly occurred out of needing to challenge
the direction of work:
The designer gets frustrated when business analysts and product managers ignore
his or her point of view on how to approach a problem because of his or her lack
of knowledge of the business process and technical constraints. (Resistant problem)
the client, referring back to what she or he signed off on and, at times, the design
having to be changed causes delays to the go-live date and cause friction in the
team due to pressure from senior staff. (Resistant and remediating problem)

The product owner and product manager haven’t really gauged an understanding
of why this is a problem to solve–they have just assembled the team and hope
that it will ‘figure it out’ with little direction. (Resistant and remediating problem)

[in the agile world, sometimes designers do not have enough time to come up
with great solutions. The team ends up delivering something good but not great.
(Remediation problem)

senior stakeholders and product owners have not [bought] into the research …
design process, or they think research ‘takes too long’. (Remediation problem)

The intuitive and improvised nature of resistant design echoes the crucial
role of practitioner agency that is noted in the related literature (e.g.
Buchanan 1992; Lawson 1979). Remediating design, on the other hand,
exemplifies the structured and methodical design strand found in the litera-
ture (e.g. Rittel [see Krippendorff 2008] and Jones 1992). However, this
research cautions against dualist theories of design.
 THE DESIGN JOURNAL 611

The occupational standpoint suggests a more constructivist approach to

designing. Resistance maps with Denis, Langley, and Rouleau’s pluralistic
framing construct of ‘spontaneity, creativity and imagination’ (2007; cited in
€rklund and van der Marel 2019, 756), while remediating overlaps with the
Bjo
collective aspects of civic legitimization at the level of practice. Combining
these strategies provides an outcome that is greater than the sum of its
parts: it improves job satisfaction and design integrity.
Designers are habituated through design work using structure and
agency. Together, these offer creative ways to tackle ‘wicked’ design chal-
lenges, and crucially, they also enable the designers to work their craft with
success and integrity in difficult real-world contexts. This in turn accords
with the occupational literature: work is contestable within the given power
relations in any production domain.
In this context every designer must find her or his way to thrive in chal-
lenging conditions through a combination of grit, technique, and cunning.
This can be difficult for new designers who are developing their own ways
of working. Overtime, these personal strategies become second nature, ena-
bling practitioners to shape their work to impose structure on ambiguity and
promulgate design integrity with composure.
Research findings in this study provide detail on designers’ thriving strat-
egies. These insights resonate with other knowledge-based work legitimiza-
tion (ibid.) and habituation (Rowles 2000) strategies.
The study data was recursively coded and calculated to show the percent-
age of data within four facets. The facet with lowest percentage of data (3%)
covered the physical and mental capabilities needed to do design work. The
next (7%) consisted of theoretical knowledge that connects day-to-day doing
to an esteemed body of knowledge. This facet maps to Denis, Langley, and
Rouleau’s construct of legitimization (ibid.) through tradition and hierarchy.
The two top ranking facets comprised resistant-oriented (67%) and remediat-
ing-oriented knowing (23%).
The first of these is highly personal and context dependent as it develops
through an individual’s occupational experience (as seen in Table 3). The lat-
ter is generalizable as it pertains to common routines, repertoires and meth-
ods taken from cases and applied to work. Together these strategies enable
practitioners to work with authority through codified practices and amplifies
their agency to apply them masterfully.
The findings suggest that two combined factors help practitioners thrive
in agile and in design toplay a more dominant role vis-a-vis management
and development. These comprise method-based structures and positive
resistant (McCabe, Ciuk, and Gilbert 2020) and productive resistant
(Courpasson, Dany, and Clegg 2012) behaviour, in accordance with the occu-
pational literature.
612 J. KNIGHT

Table 3. Remediation and resistant practice-based knowledge.

Theme Facet Node 1 Node 1 Node 3 Node 4 Node 5
Resistant Personality Curiosity Pragmatic Emotion Empirical Reflect
Drive Achieve Guts Risk Own Juggle
Strategy Control Defer Plan Change Plot
Influence Empathize Listen Steer Rapport Talk
Intellect Learn Diagnose Explain
Approach Discover Balance Scrutinize
Remediating Practices Patterns Principles Process Structure
Context Quality Optimize Value Estimation
Experience Cases Education Consult Contribute
Connect Collaborate Facilitate

Figure 1. Foundation practice framework.

Remediating methods help harmonize design with agile by imposing a

structure that enhances creative collaboration and fast-paced production.
Resistant behaviour ranges from individual ‘pushbacks’ against compromise,
promoting principled solutions, through to formal escalations that are pre-
sented to management. How these factors work together is, however,
beyond the scope of this research.
While there is no silver bullet for every situation, the research points to
generalizable ways of improving agile design. Specific remediating enhance-
ments arise from a combination of the four ‘D’ methods (see Figure 1) that
form the proposed and validated foundation practice framework. Firstly, a
lack of vision is addressed through collaborative service blueprinting
(method D1). Method D2 centres on design thinking to aid cross-team know-
ledge sharing and direction (Adikari, McDonald, and Campbell 2013).
Meanwhile, design operations (method D3) help designers integrate into
continuous delivery. Lastly, method D4 mitigates risk through design
research and legitimizes practice through aligning with human-centred
design standards and methodologies.
 THE DESIGN JOURNAL 613

Summative research design

In the final inquiry, research questions surveyed practitioner resilience and
success strategies in agile across internal and consulting contexts. The first
set of questions aimed to extend understanding of how design work oper-
ates in the two different kinds of organization as an indicator of remediating
and resistant design. The second set of questions centred on occupational
differences in the level of agency and tackled the practitioners’ level of
authority and autonomy. Questions about their future employment prospects
were also tackled as markers of job satisfaction and value. The last set of
questions focussed on levels of resistant and remediating design integration.
Precise questions included questions about stakeholder relationships,
requirements for quality, levels of ambiguity, method adoption, time utiliza-
tion and levels of rework.

Method
The participants were recruited through a popular professional social media
platform. Fifty-seven subjects were selected to complete an online question-
naire. The cohort included 37 agency workers and 20 in-house respondents.
The respondents had a majority of men in the in-house teams (74%) and a
majority of women in the agencies (57%). This recruitment approach intro-
duced some limitations in sampling.

Results
Most of the respondents were between 25 and 34 years old. The agency
cohort was relatively evenly spread age wise, forming a discernible pyramid
with a minority of elders. The salaried cohort formed a rough bell-curve dis-
tribution of age.
Tenure was less evenly spread. The consultancy cohort had more senior
practitioners with over 10 years’ experience in the role. The in-house group
was distinctive in having designers with under four years’ experience.
Seniority differed significantly at mid-weight level, with the in-house popula-
tion (82%) far exceeding the consultants(18%).
Overall, the findings show a positive (.99) correlation and significant differ-
ence between salaried designers and agency designers across all the survey
questions (as shown in the study population correlation data, displayed in
Table 4). This was calculated from the mean of all data points across
populations.
Design work is distinctly different in the two contexts. Overall, consultants
apply the foundation practices more fully and with greater strategic focus
than in-house designers (see Figure 2). Integrating design and research into
614 J. KNIGHT

Table 4. The study data Pearson correlation coefficients.

Pearson correlation 0.994019921
Hypothesized mean difference 0
df 30
t Stat 10.77445335
P(T< ¼t) one-tail 3.91529E  12
t Critical one-tail 1.697260887
P(T< ¼t) two-tail 7.83057E  12
t Critical two-tail 2.042272456

14

12

10

0
Design operaons Design Thinking HCD Service Design

In-house Consultants

Figure 2. Practitioners’ foundation practice utilization.

this cohesive framework helps align incremental, tactical and transform-

ational types of work and improve job satisfaction.
The two groups remediating practices were slightly different. Service
design was reported as more widely adopted by the consultants in the data.
This strategic marker suggests they do more rewarding and impactful work.
Unsurprisingly, design operations ranked higher for in-house respondents,
suggesting a strong production orientation to their work. Similarly, the
higher ranking of design thinking suggests that stakeholder collaboration is
more challenging in-house.
The consultants’ positive responses are reflected in significant differences
in improvised work shown in Figure 3. These findings also suggest in-house
designers have less control over the direction of projects and weaker author-
ity to mandate how they do the work compared to consultants. This in turn
diminishes their individual autonomy and may explain the differences in job
satisfaction between the two cohorts.
The two groups diverged on assimilation levels within their host organiza-
tions. Surprisingly, the data suggests consultants are more deeply integrated
 THE DESIGN JOURNAL 615

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
Self structuring Applying methods Controling direcon Improvising work

In-house Consultants
Figure 3. Practitioners’ working style comparisons.

than in-house designers. External designers reported nearly double (62%) the
level of integration compared to their in-house peers (26%).
Employee satisfaction (measured by standardized Employee Net Promoter
Score) data indicated a clear advantage for the consultants. These designers’
responses suggest they have stronger growth and career opportunities and
apply foundation practices more fully than the in-house group. Similarly, the
external group reported higher levels of relatedness and autonomy as well
as having greater clarity, better quality requirements and less stress com-
pared to their in-house peers (as seen in Figure 4).
Across the two populations, learning through doing was paramount.
Second was education through working with others, and someway distant,
came formal and self-directed learning (as seen in Figure 5). This suggests
that habituation is an outcome of occupation itself rather than being a pre-
requisite for it. Design is learnt through a complex interaction of using meth-
ods, delivering project work, collaborating with peers and developing
personal resistant strategies.
The data indicates consultants benefit from strong portfolios, suggesting
their work merits attention. Project variety and the proximity of senior practi-
tioners suggests strong, supportive and inclusive cultures for the consultants
as seen in Figure 6. This cohort also benefits from learning within a wider
variety of project types, across differing sectors, and from a more design-
dominant working culture.
616 J. KNIGHT

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

In-house Consultants
Figure 4. Practitioners’ occupational experience comparisons.

Though doing the work

Learning from others doing the work
Self directed learning
Informal coaching
Formal training
80

60

40

20

0
Figure 5. Practitioners’ learning approach comparisons.
 THE DESIGN JOURNAL 617

90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

In-house Consultants
Figure 6. Practitioners’ habituation comparisons.

Discussion
Consultant work typically centres on pre-production strategic discovery and
concept development. This kind of work is arguably more rewarding than
production activities and certainly less constrained and protracted.
Consultants benefit from positive client perceptions too. Status gained
through affiliation with a creative agency or renowned technology consult-
ancy can only enhance external designers’ status and sense of coherence.
There are some negatives to consulting design, however. Consulting
designers rarely see their work in production. Changing clients regularly
gives consultants variety but also means that they lack the strong relation-
ships and connection with the product or service that their in-house peers
enjoy. Conversely, internal teams face considerable challenges in gaining visi-
bility at a tactical level and in gaining traction at a strategic level. This posi-
tioning reduces their ability to influence the type of work they do and their
opportunities to do rewarding, meaningful work.
Similarities between the in-house workers and consultants centre on com-
mon practices and learning preferences. For both groups, learning through
doing is predominant. As methods are integral to doing, then it is plausible
that they aid learning as they structure ambiguity into doable tasks with
potential learning outcomes. Naturally, differences in projects (e.g. regarding
the technology stack, timelines etc.) are contributing factors too.
618 J. KNIGHT

The findings support the overarching finding of Bjo €rklund and van der
Marel (2019, 760) regarding innate needs mapping with designers’ top and
bottom moments in work. Foremost among these is competency. There is a
clear advantage for consulting designers in this regard, as well as opportuni-
ties for autonomy and relatedness within work.
Bjo€rklund and van der Marel (ibid.) also highlighted the primacy of mean-
ing in design work. From an occupational perspective, meaningful work
(Hammell 2004) gives individuals purpose, agency and knowledge.
Consultants’ chance of doing this kind of work is far greater than that of
their in-house peers. However, these findings indicate that in-house design-
ers’ work is distinctly different from consulting designers, possibly because
they are tightly integrated into a production-oriented servicing model.

Conclusion
The findings offer an important contribution to challenging dualist theories
of design. Designers are habituated to tackle ‘wicked’ design challenges and
crucially work their craft to model design integrity in multi-disciplinary teams
tasked in difficult real-world contexts. This conclusion, based on practice-
based research, indicates a strong divergence between the related literature
and the realities of design work. The implications of this key finding are
wide-ranging, spanning the theoretical foundations of design through to
practical questions about apposite educational curricula.
Contributions to practice emanating from this research include the foun-
dation practice framework to remediate extreme digital production. This
addresses the gap noted in the literature (Hinderks et al. 2022) regarding the
lack of an overarching framework with which to harmoniously integrate
design and agile. As a practical, non-proscriptive framework, this solution
aims to help habituate designers rather than constrain their individuality.
In contrast to other integrative approaches, this research points to the
importance of practitioner agency regarding, not only assuring design integ-
rity through methodology, but also at the behavioural level of doing.
Principled resistance against occupational imbalance and disciplinary degrad-
ation is proposed as an important counterbalance that transcends methods.
Methods correlate with knowledge; they evolve through practice, from rote
through to improvisation. Non-practitioners also develop knowledge about
design through methods as they codify legitimate practice.
The research methodology also contributes to practice. This includes spe-
cific novel methods of doing fieldwork, including collaborative writing and
the case-work approach itself. The latter provides rich insights into practice.
Similarly, practitioner diary studies proved to be effective in compensating
for the relatively ad hoc nature of the immersive fieldwork. Together these
 THE DESIGN JOURNAL 619

two research methods help achieve a holistic account of practice, connecting

emic and etic perspectives on the field of inquiry. A more structured
approach to might build on the wider potential of this mixed-methods
approach.
These various modes of inquiry and the insightful data they produced
were amplified by the overarching occupational perspective of this
research. From this standpoint, work is much more than salaried time for
designers. Design is the work as well as the resultant deliverable product
or service.
Occupational experience (Håkansson, Dahlin-Ivanoff, and Sonn 2006) gives
individuals meaning (Hammell 2004), agency and understanding of the world
(Filstad 2014). These insights suggest that individual purpose is actualized
through doing. In this research, positive resistant agency (McCabe, Ciuk, and
Gilbert 2020) and productive resistant agency (Courpasson, Dany, and Clegg
2012), combined with structuring methods, help make design work better.
Lastly, this occupational standpoint closes the gap between research and
intervention.
Gaining more insight into this topic is perhaps the most challenging out-
come to achieve. At the same time, it has potential to extend our under-
standing of work in general, as well as our understanding of the possibilities
for design to intervene in this critical field of human activity at an occupa-
tional level. More formal validation would substantiate the claims made
based on the final research inquiry results.

Notes
1. Knight (2023), Studies A, B, and C.
2. Knight (2019), Studies D to J.
3. Knight, ditto.
4. Knight (2019), Study D.
5. Knight (2019), Case F ‘Internal team survey’.
6. Knight, ditto.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
John Knight has worked in the creative industries for over 35 years. During this time, he
has worked with many global brands including BBC, Vodafone and Microsoft as well as
leading creative agencies including Fjord and Accenture Interactive. His responsibilities in
these organisations has spanned research and development, strategy and delivery and
service design and creative leadership. John studied Fine Art with telematic pioneer Roy
620 J. KNIGHT

Ascott at Newport College of Art and Design and more recently taken design qualifica-
tions at London Guildhall, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design and Aalto University at
PhD level.

ORCID
John Knight http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6784-3892

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