A critical look at “The vanishing designer”

The article says more about the state of the profession than it intended to do.

Kevin Richard
9 min readNov 14, 2023
Ripple effects and fractal patterns
Ripple effects and fractal patterns – Photo by Glitch Lab App on Unsplash

Hi, Kevin here.

To those of you who know me, it comes as no surprise to say that I like good critiques. And I like especially a critical look toward design, its various practices, philosophies and implementations.

I stumbled upon “The vanishing designer” by Chuánqí Sun, following a recent newsletter from UX Collective. The piece is published on DOC, presented as the more high-quality and edgy companion to the now famous Medium publisher.

“The vanishing designer” is a critique of the state of the design profession and its future and although the piece does an OK job of highlighting many of its themes and topics, it feels also a lot “réchauffé” (it says nothing new or in a different way) and present some issues.

Hasty foundations

Look around us. Every business is an app and every app feels the same, because every designer has the same resume…

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Kevin Richard
Kevin Richard

Written by Kevin Richard

Senior Designer & Strategist in the🇨🇭Banking industry. Critical / UX / Design / Systems / Complexity thinker, learner, practitioner.

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