I think I agree with you, but how are you supposed to assess designers to choose the right person? The main difference I've found between bad/good designers is

I think I agree with you, but how are you supposed to assess designers to choose the right person? The main difference I've found between bad/good designers is flexibility and willingness to ask for help. There's typically a lot of organizational knowledge about where pain points are. If a designer addresses those, then people are generally happy. Maybe splitting the job is a good idea, but it seems like you shouldn't need a split if the designer is listening to the whole team. Also, sometimes the designer is fine, but they've been explicitly told by management what to do, so no designer would have been able to fill the position and do a good job. Even on my failed projects, I really couldn't tell you if it was the management or the designer that caused the resulting design issues.