I asked a question in an interview recently.

It wasn't about salary.

It wasn't about the role.

It was about something I've always considered fundamental to industrial design.

I asked:

Do designers sit in the first meeting where a new product is conceptualised?

The answer was no.

The product direction is first decided based on business requirements.

Designers come in later.

I understood the logic.

Businesses have targets.

Markets have gaps.

There are costs, timelines, technology, manufacturing and competition to consider.

Of course these things need to come first.

But hearing that answer made me a little sad.

Because I've started to wonder if, in many companies, design is simply a second option.

Not the first thought.

Not the beginning of the conversation.

Something that comes in after the important decisions have already been made.

Make this easier to use.

Make this look better.

Make this feel premium.

Make this more desirable.

Design becomes the process of making something that already exists better.

But rarely:

Should we make this in the first place?

That question has been bothering me.

Because isn't that also design?

Before deciding what something should look like, shouldn't we ask what it should be?

Before deciding how something should work, shouldn't we ask whether it solves a problem worth solving?

Before designing the answer, shouldn't we spend some time designing the question?

Somehow, that part of the process is often not considered design.

Business decides what to make.

Engineering decides how to make it.

And then design is asked to make it better.

That distinction feels important to me.

I don't think designers should decide everything.

In fact, I think that would be a terrible way to build products.

Business understands things designers don't.

Engineers understand things designers don't.

Manufacturing brings constraints that can completely change an idea.

Sales understands customers in ways a designer might not.

Everyone brings a different kind of intelligence to the product.

That's exactly why I think they should be in the room together.

Especially when the questions are still open.

I think that's where design can be most valuable.

Not when the answer is already known.

But when nobody knows what the answer should be yet.

When you can still ask:

Why this?

Why now?

Why this user?

Why this form?

Why not something else entirely?

These don't feel like questions that should belong exclusively to business, engineering or product management.

They feel like design questions too.

Maybe that's why I've sometimes struggled with the way design is described inside companies.

Design is often treated as a service.

Someone has an idea.

Someone defines the requirements.

Someone decides the constraints.

And then the designer is asked to turn all of it into a product.

There is nothing wrong with designing within constraints.

In fact, that's a huge part of what makes industrial design interesting.

But if design always enters after the most consequential decisions have been made, we are only designing a small part of the product.

We are designing the answer.

Not the question.

And maybe this is why design can sometimes feel like a second option.

The business has already decided that something should exist.

Engineering has already figured out how it might exist.

And then design is brought in to make that existence better.

But I don't think design has to work that way.

Design can help decide what deserves to exist in the first place.

It can question assumptions.

It can find problems that weren't obvious in the business case.

It can imagine alternatives before the constraints become permanent.

It can ask:

What if we built something completely different?

I don't think designers need to own that question.

But I do think they deserve to be in the room when it is being asked.

Because once the question has already been answered, there is only so much design can change.

And perhaps that's the distinction I've been trying to understand.

Design shouldn't only make things better.

Sometimes, design should help decide what better even means.

And sometimes, it should be there before there is anything to design at all.