Well, we're not in Kansas anymore...

Steve Baty's post on Core 77, "The strategic arc of interaction design", joins the choir in singing that the role of the designer needs to broaden beyond designing components and products, and begin to think more holistically about designing interacting systems or communities. The future role of design is less about crafting objects and increasingly about designing tools and systems. This starts with thinking about the people for whom we design as participants in the design process — that we need to be able to synthesize diverse needs in order to produce workable and actionable solutions.