# The 4 Types of Designers Who Will Thrive in 2030 (And the One Most Schools Still Ignore)

DevFeed: [The 4 Types of Designers Who Will Thrive in 2030 (And the One Most Schools Still Ignore)](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-4-types-of-designers-who-will-thrive-in-2030-and-the-one-most-schools-still-ignore-9067.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://ixdf.org/literature/article/which-skills-does-a-21st-century-designer-need-to-possess>)

Author: Rikke Friis Dam

Published: 2026-08-13T14:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [UX Daily - User Experience Daily](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/ux-daily-user-experience-daily.md>)

Topics: [user experience design](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/user-experience-design.md>), [User Experience](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/user-experience.md>)

Tags: [design](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/design.md>), [education](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/education.md>), [experience-design](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/experience-design.md>), [user-experience](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/user-experience.md>)

## AI overview

Don Norman outlines four kinds of design challenges that designers may face in the 21st century and the skills needed to address them. The article presents design as a way of thinking that can help tackle complex societal issues, while also describing performance and systemic challenges.

## Source excerpt

What is the future of design? Which skills will you need in the 21st century? In this video, Don Norman gives four examples of the tasks that designers might be doing in the 21st century, and the four types of designers that will be needed."So there you are. Four different kinds of design problems, each of them requiring different skills and different change from the traditional design of designers of craft."-- Don Norman: Father of User Experience design, author of the legendary book The Design of Everyday Things, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, and former VP of the Advanced Technology Group at Apple.Don Norman is trying to mobilize the current and next generations of designers to us...