“Digital transformation” has become one of those buzzy, overused phrases that tends to mean everything and nothing all at once. To some, it signals a massive tech investment. To others, it’s a cultural overhaul or a rethinking of business models.

But if you’ve ever been inside one ... truly inside the work ... you know it rarely looks the way you imagined. There’s rarely this grand reveal or a nifty before-and-after. It’s messy, political, and slow. More often than not, the path forward is anything but linear.

This is the world where designers have a unique, and often underestimated role to play.

Because while transformation is typically led by operations or technology teams, its success hinges on people: the behaviors they adopt, the systems they navigate, and the tools they learn to trust. Designers are trained to understand those human dimensions. Experience designers can zoom out to see the whole system, zoom in to make the complex feel intuitive, and create the artifacts that help teams believe in a new future or business direction.

Start with the Business (Not the Wireframes)

One of the biggest mistakes designers make in transformation work is getting too tactical, too fast. When designers are brought into transformation work, especially in larger orgs or legacy industries, there’s often an urge to jump straight into solutions. Start sketching, or build a prototype, or get to the “fun” part as quickly as possible.

But transformation isn’t always a design/UI problem. It’s more often a business problem. And we can’t design our way out of it without deeply understanding what’s really at stake.

That means asking better questions:

• What is the business actually trying to become?
• Where is it losing money ... or users trust?
• What’s blocking customers from getting what they need?
• What are we trying to do differently?

Designers are at our most effective when we can connect user needs to business strategy. When we can align with the realities of budgets, workflows, and incentives ... not just idealized user flows.

In consulting, I learned to treat stakeholder interviews with the same level of rigor as user research. The insights were different, but just as critical. When I joined the startup, I leaned hard into operational shadowing, getting close to the frontline staff or spending time in logistics meetings. Because understanding what’s really going on inside the business ... not what’s written on a slide ... is where transformation begins.

Map Systems, Not Just Screens

Transformation work rarely lives on the surface. It’s underneath ... in legacy systems, internal processes. One of the biggest challenges in transformation work is that most of the friction lives between touchpoints. In the invisible systems that power a customer journey, or the internal silos that keep teams misaligned.

This is where service design, systems thinking, and cross-functional collaboration matter most.

When you take the time to map the ecosystem, not just the product interface, you start uncovering the root causes of the pain: redundant tools, contradictory KPIs, outdated legacy systems, misaligned incentives. It's like peeling back an onion, each layer something new and unique.

In one healthcare project, mapping the full end-to-end journey revealed over 50 handoffs across six departments before a patient never saw a doctor. No redesign could solve that until the system itself was rethought.

Designers who can visualize complexity — and communicate it clearly — become essential partners in change. Not because we simplify everything, but because we help teams finally see it.

Prototype the Future Culture

Design isn’t just about products ... it’s about creating possibility. In transformation work, your artifacts are cultural tools.

• A prototype isn’t just a clickable thing in Figma ... it’s a conversation starter, an idea generator, something that gets people excited and behind the new mission.
• Similarly, a vision deck isn’t just a presentation ... it’s a rallying cry.
• A design system isn’t just a set of components ... it’s a shared language, a guiding vision.

This is how designers accelerate transformation, by making the future visible, tangible, and frankly a little less scary. We can give people something to point to, to react to and to believe in.

Be Patient (and Political)

If there’s one thing I’ve learned through transformation work, it’s this: you will need more patience than you think and you will need to learn to play the game.

The pace is slower. The wins are quieter. The setbacks are inevitable.

You’ll need to navigate the politics. Build trust across silos. Learn how decisions actually get made. And sometimes, you’ll need to let go of being “right” in favor of being effective.

You have to:

• Read the room (even when remote)
• Build relationships (even when remote)
• Understand incentives
• Meet people where they are ... not everyone is in the same headspace you are.

In consulting, this often meant navigating competing priorities between business units. In the startup, it looked like championing design practices without alienating engineering partners.

Transformation isn’t a sprint. It’s a slow, difficult, often invisible shift — and you’ll have more impact if you embrace that from the beginning.

Measure What Matters

Finally ... don’t fall into the trap of only measuring surface-level metrics. Transformation success is often invisible at first, so keep a keen eye.

Sometimes the most important outcomes are:

• A shared vision across disciplines and business lines.
• A pilot program ... test it out.
• A new way of working, these don't have got be huge changes, they can be small.
• A shift in mindset, you can see this happen across individuals and teams.

Designers can help frame success in terms of progress, not perfection. Small wins across teams and the organization compound. When the culture shifts in a meaningful way, it sticks and has lasting impact. With that said it's important to be comfortable with the notion that systems evolve for better or worse.

Final Thoughts

Digital transformation doesn’t happen just because the tech gets better. It happens when people start to believe that something better is possible.

Design can help them see it, touch it, understand it, and ultimately ... adopt it.

When you commit to doing the slow, thoughtful, systems-level work, of peeling back that onion and leveraging the design thinking skills you have, the impact is real.

As designers, we don’t just build products. We build bridges between today’s chaos and tomorrow’s potential. That’s the kind of design work that matters.

What are your thoughts? How do you see Design playing a part in digital transformation and how have you navigated it in your career? I'd love to hear about your thoughts, connect with me on LinkedIn and let's chat.

Until the next volume, thanks for joining me. 
Andrew Preble