I'm struck by the assuredness of the responses. People seem to really dislike their designers—their low in the hierarchy, often junior colleagues who typically aren't in the meetings with the execs, the leaders, or whoever else has chosen the priorities. There's a reason the designers don't know "what's really right." There's a reason they're grasping to find or do research to inform themselves. You know, besides the part, where they're being asked to do that user research, often by their PMs and leaders. There's a weird amount of scapegoating here.

It's been my experience that leaders have rarely had enough of a vision to share, but tell the team to get started anyway. Someone has to suss that out—if not the leaders, then the PM except that the PM can skirt with vague requirements. The designs are the first place where all the ideas (many contradicting, many poorly thought out) hit a little reality. When the ideas that looked good amorphously in the head don't look good on screen, it's the design and not the requirements.

There's an insinuation in some of the comments that the projects (the leaders) are starting with a clear vision and design is muddying it up. I mean there are plenty of bad designers, but most companies have a broken product development process (they mostly all use the same one, despite different products, different team makeups, different leader strengths/weaknesses, etc.). Why are companies still hiring designers? Why is design a step in the process at all? I agree confusing designs keep coming out—there are so many enshittified products. It's design theater, but for who? Design is downstream not upstream.