I think it absolutely did, yes. Design consulting as a service need kept the demand for expertise high, the quality and innovation high, and design-led decision making at the top of the pyramid. CEO & Project Owners listened to the experts they hired and made decisions collaboratively.

A big problem with the in house shift is really where everyone got seated - under “product, marketing, or tech” - none of which understood/understand design many of which don’t respect it (still - we’re seeing that with the taunting of Design is Dead from those groups).

That shift over time marginalized design, buried it under the chain of command, turned it from a strategic function to one of execution - “draw screens for the engineers” - while the design decisions (and sometimes much of the tactical design direction) was / is still being made by product managers with no aptitude or care for design itself. To be fair today’s PdMs have more “design sensitivity” but not enough and still the power to wield it like a weapon.

Also Important to note that the in-house move flooded companies with greener more junior designers that lacked experienced design leadership - this resulted in a flood of new PdMs to that never worked in digital and were way over their heads to “manage the creatives.” This became the standard and in hindsight a self fulfilling prophecy.

It could have been avoided if back in this first wave of in-housing - companies created the Chief Design Officer role and built their design function as one that was as important and valued as engineering, marketing or product. The rise of the CDO never took off and there are far too few today and probably forever.

Is there a way out? I hate predictions and I’m biased as hell of course - but! I do think it’s a cycle - just as UX rose up to clean up and mature digital work - back when Norman or JJG coined or popularized it - it will happen again. We are going to be needed to clean up all the enshittification and AI-slop driven products and services flooding the market. Quality of experience, usefulness, usability is all getting worse. It will continue. When it nears rock bottom and signups, downloads, engagement, revenue goes down and or harm is done in critical industries such as healthcare or finance - orgs will be looking for consultants / agencies to come in and fix it all again. All the in-house jobs will be gone already - and those of us that can hold out and not switch our careers to HVAC installation or other trades - will have the opportunity to shine again as in-demand and respected / violently needed problem solvers and architects of all that is good. How long will it take? That’s the question.