The H3 Map of the Five Domainspattern, plateau, and the political shadow

The five domains together describe what a design leader is accountable for, and the H3 map makes that accountability legible in the framework’s own terms.

• Vision (Head). Strategic direction, what the team is trying to become.
• Direction (Heart). The standard for daily output, what “great” looks like in practice.
• Function (Head + Hand). The delivery infrastructure, whether the team ships reliably at that standard.
• Organisation (Heart). The people, who is on the team and whether they are growing.
• Cooperation (Head + Heart). Design’s relationship with the wider business, whether design influences decisions made outside its walls.

The five are held at once, and no leader develops them evenly. In my experience, most leaders are strong in two of the five and unconsciously neglect the other three. This is a pattern observation, not a research finding. But it is specific enough to be useful as a diagnostic: most design leaders can name their two strongest domains quickly, and most struggle to pin down their three weakest, which is itself telling, because the gaps are not obvious. They accumulate slowly.

What neglect looks like in each domain gives the diagnostic its teeth. Vision neglect is a team that ships well project by project and cannot say what it is becoming: cross-functional peers ask where design is going over the next two years and the team has no answer it can defend. Direction neglect shows up as work that drifts toward inconsistency across practitioners, each designer’s standard sliding slightly until the team no longer ships to a shared one.