“I've just seen over and over again that when passing context is the friction, it's okay to take a little bit of a hit in expertise. The biggest churn happens when someone has to make a decision and they don't have that context, and then they do something that takes more time or isn't the right thing. And that's really hard to undo.”
Rosenfeld Review Podcast · User Experience · November 2026
Context
Asked whether designers should push into territory that has belonged to engineers, David compares specialists who hand work along with generalists who carry context from start to finish, and makes the case for the generalist.
Transcript
…of all of these things. But at its base is really this idea that one of the best ways to make products that are great is to follow design thinking principles. And so there's, in that sense, it's truly steeped in design. But in terms of like actual execution, yeah, it touches, it touches all three.
…really want to get into enforcing your design system guidelines. If you can program that for me, designer, go for it. Are we talking about stuff like that or kind of more mission-critical product design that, I mean, are developers like, sure, do that help me with that too? Or get the hell away?
Yeah, I mean, I think I steer away from always answers and in all sense. And there's a range of companies and developers and different perspectives. But the way I think of it is that there's a few different ways people have set up companies and things. And sometimes you set up areas where you've got several people who are experts in something and they're really, really good at that area. And then you pass things on along the way. And then, of course, the friction is you have to pass all the context along with you. And the other way you can do things is you have someone who's maybe they're really good at one of those areas or maybe there's pretty good at a bunch of them. You know, they're maybe they're not as good necessarily at any one of those things as the experts, even though they meet sort of a minimum bar. But they have that ability to have that consistency and context all the way across so that when they run into new information as you move things forward, they can adapt. And so for me, I've just seen over and over again, it's when you don't have to pass context, when you, when you, when the passing context…
I'm hearing a bit of yes and which is I think a good thing some people don't like yes and but they're a little too binary in their thinking if you ask me but I'm hearing you say you know listen yes roles are blurring that's like you know everyone I think gets that now and it's there's still value…
well so I think for years companies large companies are trying to emulate startups right and why are startups so so successful it's partially you've got this small group of people and they're aligned and they're you know they're like they're really highly motivated but part of it is oftentimes…
So you used a word a moment ago that like I had just thought of it and then you just like said it out loud. So it made me feel for a moment kind of smart. That's what I'm here for, Lou. Thank you. It's seams. And you said the seams used to be very much along the between roles or functions, very…
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