A look into... the iF Design Trend Report 2025 with Tey Bannerman
We have seen design’s role evolve in recent years. What are the shifts that are reshaping the field today? And how does design leadership fit in here? Tey Bannerman, Partner & Head of McKinsey Design Europe (London) gives some major insights into the biggest shifts.
What are the shifts that are reshaping the field of design today?
Tey: Design finds itself at a fascinating inflection point. The tools, technologies and business contexts shaping our work have undergone massive transformation, yet the fundamental questions we’re wrestling with feel more human than ever. Four major shifts are defining this evolution:
1. Experiences over things: The migration from product-centricity to experience ecosystems. As McKinsey’s data shows, organizations where designers help reimagine internal processes,
ways of working and business models perform significantly better. The evidence is clear: When design moves beyond artifacts to ecosystems, both business outcomes and human experiences improve.
2. An internal reckoning: The reevaluation of design’s role in organizational ethics and culture. This reckoning manifests in stronger integration between design leadership and business leadership. The traditional model of design teams sitting separate from business decision-making is evolving toward a future where design leaders help shape not just what organizations make, but how they operate.
3. Patient excellence: The counterintuitive competitive advantage of slowing down. The “move fast and break things” ethos that dominated the last decade of product development is encountering diminishing returns. Instead, we are witnessing the emergence of “patient excellence” – strategic depth and quality achieved through deliberate, iterative approaches.
4. Ethical innovation: The emergence of responsibility as a design imperative rather than constraint. Rather than treating ethics as a constraint on innovation, forward-thinking organizations are discovering that ethical considerations actually drive more meaningful breakthroughs. The most compelling example: privacy-enhancing technologies that initially appeared to sacrifice business interests but ultimately created significant competitive differentiation.
How are these shifts changing what organizations need from design leaders?
Tey: While each shift represents a distinct evolution in design practice, they share a common foundation: the recognition that meaningful innovation emerges from human insight, not just technological capability. As AI and automated tools handle increasingly complex design tasks, the distinctly human elements of design – ethical judgment, cultural understanding, emotional intelligence and systemic thinking – become even more valuable.
Organizations succeeding across all four shifts are not just implementing new techniques; they are fundamentally rethinking the purpose of design. They are moving from design as a service function to design as a strategic capability that shapes not just what they create, but how they operate and why they exist. For design practitioners, the path forward requires developing these distinctly human capabilities while leveraging technological advancements to amplify rather than replace them.
What concrete steps can design leaders take to navigate these shifts?
Tey: Three strategic actions stand out as particularly critical for design leaders facing these transformative shifts: Evolve from outcome metrics to impact frameworks: This means developing measurement approaches that capture not just what design produces but what it enables – including longterm value creation, ethical outcomes and organizational capability building. The most successful organizations measure design’s contribution through comprehensive frameworks that reflect its expanded strategic role.
Shift from directing teams to catalyzing collaboration across organizational boundaries: The most successful design leaders don’t just lead designers – they help transform how entire organizations approach problem-solving by integrating design with other disciplines. This catalytic role requires new skills in facilitation, influence without authority, and systems thinking.
Foster environments that balance pace with depth: Create protected space for deep exploration and quality refinement even within rapid delivery cycles. The organizations showing the strongest performance implement structured “craft time” alongside agile methodologies, re-ognizing that patient excellence often yields greater long-term returns than relentless iteration. These actions represent a fundamental evolution in design leadership – from Manager, Planner, Director and Professional toward Visionary, Architect, Catalyst and Human.
The organizations that thrive in this shifting landscape will be led by those that embrace the tension between technological advancement and human wisdom, seeing it not as a contradiction to resolve but as a creative polarity to harness. The future of design belongs to those who understand that the most powerful innovations emerge not from technology alone, but from technology guided by human insight, ethical clarity and a commitment to creating lasting value.
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TEY BANNERMAN is Partner and Head of McKinsey Design Europe, London, UK: He is a design innovator who speaks the language of both creativity and business. He has spent
over two decades pushing the boundaries of what’s possible when human-centered design meets cutting-edge technology. His path from hands-on product designer to Partner at the global management consultancy McKinsey & Company exemplifies his ability to elevate design’s impact at scale. Through his distinctive approach of uniting behavioral science, ethical AI and data-informed design, he helps organizations harness design’s strategic power to drive breakthrough innovation and shape responsible human advancement.