Design - where does it belong - Aug 2025.pdf

Unlike its peers (Product Managers, Business Analysts, Developers etc.), it seems Design doesn't have a common home and reports to different business units and C-suites. Why is this? And should there be a clear business unit that Design reports to, given the role of a Chief Design Officer is not common or well adopted, in Australia anyway!

1. Design: where does
it belong?
Amir Ansari
Aug 2025
?

2. Background
●I reflected on my design leadership
career

●In my in-house roles sitting at the
top of the design hierarchy, I have
reported into different business
units

●And the agenda and flavour of my
responsibilities have been very
different
I reported into:
Innovation
IT
Product
IT
Research Labs
(Moldflow)

3. Where do Design’s
colleagues sit!
Business Analysts → CTO
Product Managers → CPO
Quality Analysts → CTO
Solution Architects → CTO
Product Owners → CTO
At Product Camp 2025, I tested
to see which business units (or
c-suite) the audience placed
common digital roles that work
alongside Design


The results across a sample of
23 were quite unanimous!!

4. Now…how
about design…
In parallel, I surveyed
31 design leaders in
my LinkedIn network
in August 2025, who
hold very senior
design leadership
roles. I asked where
Design sits in their
org!
Chief Digital Officer Chief Operations Officer
Chief Marketing Officer Chief Experience Officer
Chief Prod/Tech Officer Chief Product Officer
The randomness goes on and on!

5. Why do other roles
have such a clear
home, yet for design,
it’s as random as a
roulette game?!!

6. Caveats
●I understand every company is different

●I understand there are nuances between
in-house and agency

●I understand some organisation are so big
that they have design as a function across
multiple product line hierarchies

●I understand the sample size is not
statistically significant
But you have to admit, there is greater variability
across where Design sits compared to other digital
roles design works with.
So my objective from this research was to
understand:
●How the Design function’s role and agenda
changed depending on where it sat

●Where would be the ideal home for Design

●Any tips or guidance for future design leaders

My Objectives

7. Survey Results
Summary
August 2025
N = 31

8. Tensions & Frictions
●Speed over quality
●Execution-only role, no strategy
●Discovery/research deprioritised
●Siloed, lack of cross-functional integration
●Lack of understanding of design’s value
●Misaligned metrics
●Limited customer access
Design leaders consistently describe being
squeezed on speed, under-leveraged
strategically, and cut off from customer insight.

9. ●Delivery speed & throughput
●Strategic influence / maturity uplift
●Customer experience (CSAT/NPS/etc.)
●Commercial impact (conversion, revenue, cost-saving)
●Operational efficiency / enablement
How Success Is Measured
Measurement is still delivery-dominant, though
strategy, customer, and commercial outcomes
are starting to appear as additional measures
for design.

10. Tensions by Reporting Line *
●Product
○Strong pull toward delivery speed vs quality and limited time for discovery.
○Friction around alignment to product roadmaps → design seen as feature support.
●Technology / IT
○Heavily biased to velocity, engineering unblockers, and design as execution.
○Less emphasis on customer outcomes.
●Customer Experience / Marketing
○More tension around siloing and cross-functional integration.
○Pull toward brand, campaigns, UI/visual polish.
●Strategy / Innovation
○Less friction on speed, more on making strategic intent translate into delivery.
○Focus on research, customer needs, and market fit.
* Analysis with the help of Chat GPT

11. Most Empowering Business Area for Design (based on survey responses)
Strategy appeared on top.
Product appeared second in
the survey responses, but
was also consistent with
people I surveyed during the
Product Camp Conference.
Although you could argue
that given the Product Camp
delegates are mostly Product
folk, their answers were
skewed towards the Product
business function.

12. Product or
Strategy or
Innovation?
The previous slide
highlighted that
respondents felt either
Strategy or Innovation
or Product would be
the best home for
Design

13. My opinion (and personal experience)...
PRODUCT as a home
●I’ve had good success reporting into Product (i.e. CPOs).
●They understand design’s value.
●But Product itself is at its infancy (in Australia anyway) and Product folk are often influenced by commercial promises, and are asked to produce
roadmaps that are not achievable or realistic.
●So design becomes a feature factory.
STRATEGY as a home
●Sounds good on paper but how many organisations have a formal Strategic Function.
●And ask yourself - if you have such a business unit, do you know what they do?!! I’m guessing not really!
●So design would go into a black box and its true value would be hidden from the rest of the organisation.
INNOVATION as a home
●Although our design toolkit pretty much drives innovation, we know that Innovation has a short shelf life in any org.
●They are measured on the wrong metrics (new product shipped, new value created), where as sometimes Innovation includes killing ideas early,
saving companies money not pursuing initiatives, or making small improvements to existing products and services.
●So after 2 years, Innovation functions are often killed off due to lack of ROI, and with it the design function.

14. Advice
Survey respondents had
the following advice for
future (and even
current) design leaders
1.Understand the business deeply — don’t just focus on design craft.

2.Align with organisational goals and priorities.

3.Clarify what success looks like for your manager and team.

4.Help leadership achieve their goals while embedding design.

5.Communicate design’s value in business terms.

6.Balance strategy with delivery — show both short-term impact and
long-term vision.

7.Build strong relationships with cross-functional peers.

8.Stay close to customers and bring insights into decision-making.

9.Control or influence your budget/resources where possible.

10.Work proactively, not reactively — set the agenda instead of only
responding.

“Understand and develop the current
level of exec receptivity to design
maturity and strategy.”

15. My playbook … regardless of where design sits
The previous advice are
obvious, but we all need
a reminder.
In addition, I’m sharing
my common playbook of
what I try and do at every
organisation
religiously….
●Build relationships - with as many people across as many
levels

●Quick wins - always show value quickly to get attention

●Rinse and repeat messaging - be a design PR agent and
elevate and expose your function

●Educate - actively, passively, directly, and indirectly, ALL the
time

●Up, down and sideways - don’t just support and lead your
teams, but your executives, and also peers

16. What now?
●Design is going through an inflection point (you
could argue it has been for 5 years)

●We can’t influence where we sit, but we can try to
ensure we don’t lose sight of the key values and
principles that drive our craft

●I wasn’t looking for a silver bullet or an answer when I
conducted this research. I wanted us to all start
thinking and to start a dialog.

●Taking a glass-half-full mentality, maybe the reason
design has sooo many different homes might be
because every function values it and wants to utilise
it’s super powers?! (mic drop)

17. Thank U
Feel free to reach out, question my
methods, my opinions, the results. I look
forward to connecting!
…/mramiransari