I work in the space
between design and
the decisions
that determine it.
Most designers are trained to make things. I got obsessed with something different: the invisible moments before the making — where outcomes are actually shaped, without design having a voice. That obsession became Decision Design.
I've spent over a decade in design — as a practitioner, a lead, and eventually the person sitting across from clients trying to explain why the work matters. That last part is what changed everything.
The decisions that shaped outcomes were never made at the design review. They were made in conversations I wasn't in, over assumptions I didn't know existed, by people who had no framework for evaluating what good design actually does. And the designers I worked with — talented, rigorous people — had no training for that reality. Neither did I, for a long time.
Decision Design is what I built to close that gap. Not a methodology. A practice I use, and now share with the designers and design leaders who are ready to operate at that level.
Design fails at the table.
Not in the file.
The decisions that determine whether design lives or dies happen before the review. Before the presentation. In the invisible spaces where outcomes are shaped — without design having a voice.
I've been thinking about this for a long time.
Decision Design is where that thinking lives.
"The avalanche is already moving. The question is whether you designed the slope."
— Ádám DrágusDealing with something
like this yourself?
I'm exploring these ideas in practice — not just in theory. If something here resonates with your situation, I'd like to hear about it.