HEIDI ROUX

I made this piece recently ... the first personal work I’ve done just for myself in a long time.

There was no brief. No stakeholder. No roadmap.

Just the act of making.

It reminded me of something I’ve seen repeatedly throughout my career, especially inside larger design organizations:

We tend to narrow people to what they’re already known for.

Someone becomes the UX designer.

Someone else becomes the visual designer.

Another becomes the systems thinker.

Labels are useful — until they quietly turn into limits.

Design organizations don’t do this maliciously. In fact, it often starts for reasonable reasons: delivery pressure, efficiency, headcount constraints, and the need for clear ownership. Over time, though, those constraints calcify into assumptions about what people are “good at,” where they’re expected to contribute, and what kinds of exploration are quietly discouraged.

Most strong designers are not one-dimensional. They have a range of skills: some practiced daily, others used less often, and some that only emerge when the environment allows it. Just because someone excels in one area doesn’t mean they can’t be exceptional in another.

I’ve seen teams with incredibly capable designers produce work that felt flat... not because the talent wasn’t there, but because the same perspectives were applied in the same ways, sprint after sprint.

When designers are constrained to a single lane for too long, the work starts to suffer.

It becomes predictable.

It becomes safe.

It becomes less curious

and eventually, it becomes less inspiring.

Not because people stop caring, but because the system stops inviting new ways of thinking.

In contrast, some of the best work I’ve seen has happened when designers were given permission to step outside their assigned role ... to explore, stretch, and bring more of themselves into the work. The shift is often immediate. The work isn’t louder or trendier — it’s simply more alive.

When we limit designers, we limit outcomes.

As leaders, our responsibility isn’t just to hire for strengths. It’s to create environments where curiosity is protected and creative range is allowed to show up.

This piece was a small reminder of that for me.

#makeyourmark