As someone who works as a service designer and design strategist, I agree, 100%. I’ve seen a general decline in rigor in the field. Many are back to making things “pretty” with poorly done research (if that) asking small-minded questions rather than thinking about context, ecosystem and systemic effects of their design decisions.
I recently took part in a panel discussion about design strategy. I kept on being dragged into discussions about project management and process. In the end, I just gave up trying to explain and they all triumphantly celebrated a "good design strategy" as being how you intend to build the thing. The question of why, or on what basis, just seemed irrelevant.
So, that kills a small part of me to hear - but also, I think it reflects this larger pattern of the UI/UX world’s seeming need to not just reinvent the wheel but large chunks of the history of the discipline of design rather than building off of thinking about systems and systems of systems by people like Jay Doblin and others.
