Apart from the remit being just too broad, designers in any case are part of a complex team that deal with a multitude of functional, non-functional, regulatory and financial requirements.

Now, we have many different definitions of "designer", which I am very aware of, but I believe that, in some circles "designer" has become romanticised and extended to include a set of perceived "magical" powers to "deliver what a boss wants". That is a distortion of the role to something grotesque.

Speaking from a domain in which I have expertise; in sound design a great battle ensued between designers, users (audiences) and the 'bosses' (studios and publishers) as to how music and films should sound. You probably know this as the "Loudness Wars". I think it remains a textbook example of misalignment between technical, artistic and financial factors. It also remains an example of why I think "Markets are a myth" [2].

Despite listeners saying over and over that they "Don't want it", the producers, through a mess of internal motives (mainly financial), repeatedly foisted their values onto them, being obsessed with what they think users want in preference to flat-out contradiction that would be evident in even the most cursory market research.

The job of a designer is to balance factors, and in a sense act as an advocate (stand-in) for the user by mentalising their actual needs. It's a very demanding and complex skill. Doing "what your boss says" is absolutely not it and reduces a designer to a tool.

On the other hand, a job of the designer is also to listen to expert technical advice outside of their skill-set, and so must not get carried away with any grand "aesthetic vision", wanting to be Steve Jobs.

A hard line to tread, and one requiring strong will and ethics as well as judgement.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=32463541

Evidently not if the work they're producing is reportedly outperformed by old school physical controls from more than a decade ago and in most of the vehicles tested it wasn't even close.

Designers can do all those things, but often they're not given the space to.

The best products are typically produced in an environment where the people running the company care about the design. This is a rare environment.

UX usually focuses on the critical path for the top-5 tasks. So turning on the car radio makes sense, but changing the radio station didn’t make the cut, so some rando engineer guy stuffed it in a menu.

When it’s done well with a great team and time it’s magic. It’s easiest to see when Apple gets software right, like Keynote - the functions of making a presentation are immediately obvious to an elementary school student. But even then, once you leave the happy path, woe to you - modifying a template is a dark art to most people.