There's a certain kind of designer we tend to celebrate - the bold visionary who enters a room with a fully formed idea and the confidence to sell it. But according to Miriam van der Lubbe, creative head of Dutch Design Week, the most meaningful design work often starts with something far quieter: paying attention.
In a guest essay for Designboom, van der Lubbe lays out a compelling argument for what she calls shared attention in design - a process rooted in listening, stepping back, and genuinely making sense of what's happening in a room, a community, or a brief, before reaching for solutions.
An invitation, not a declaration
The shift van der Lubbe is describing isn't just about manners or soft skills. It's a fundamental rethinking of how design processes begin. Rather than arriving with answers, she advocates for openness as a starting point - treating the design process as an invitation for collective sense-making, where the designer isn't the sole authority but a kind of thoughtful facilitator.
This matters more than it might first appear. Design touches almost every part of daily life, from the apps we navigate to the public spaces we move through. When designers work in isolation, however talented they are, they risk producing work that solves the wrong problem entirely. Shared attention is the corrective - it keeps the process grounded in real human complexity rather than clever assumptions.
Softness as a design tool
What's refreshing about van der Lubbe's perspective is that she reframes qualities often dismissed as passive - listening, openness, restraint - as genuinely strategic. Softness, in her framing, isn't the absence of strength. It's a different kind of strength, one that creates space for meaning to emerge rather than imposing it from the outside.
For anyone who works in creative industries, this is worth sitting with. How often do we rush toward the concept, the pitch, the finished thing, when the more useful move would be to slow down and absorb what's actually in front of us?
A design philosophy for right now
Van der Lubbe's ideas feel particularly timely. As design increasingly intersects with complex social questions - sustainability, accessibility, community wellbeing - the lone genius model starts to look not just outdated but actively limiting. Collaboration and shared attention aren't just nice values to have. They're practical tools for doing better work.
It's a quiet manifesto, but a persuasive one. Sometimes the most radical thing a designer can do is simply make room for someone else to speak.
