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Some definitions

Every good dictionary (e.g. The Oxford Dictionary of English) defines design as both a noun and a verb. The noun refers to a plan or drawing intended to show the look and function or workings of an artefact, while the verb usually means ‘to do’, ‘to plan’ or ‘to decide’ on the look and functioning of this artefact (i.e. ‘the design’).

The ambiguous nature of the word is illustrated by a seemingly nonsensical sentence:

‘Design is to design a design to produce a design’ (Heskett, 2002, p.3)

Design is a ubiquitous word; we see it often and in many different contexts: schools of design, designer clothes, design prizes, design shops, and everywhere we look we see design and designs. Some theorist even claim that ‘[a]ll what we [humans] do, almost all the time, is design, for design is basic to all human activity. The planning and patterning of any act toward a desired, foreseeable end constitutes the design process’ (Papanek, 1985, p.3).

It seems fair to reckon that since everyone seems to be doing it, then everyone should know what design is, and therefore what designers do and how they do it – or at least have a vague idea – but this is hardly the case. The troublesome definition of design remains elusive. Lawson (2006, p.33) asks rhetorically:

Do we really need a simple definition of design or should we accept that design is too complex a matter to be summarised in less than a book? The answer is probably that we shall never really find a single satisfactory definition but that the searching is probably much more important than the finding.

Even in a canonical source such as the aforementioned one, the reader has to wait until page 31 for an attempt to a definition of what design is and is not. After citing and reflecting on definitions by other authors, Lawson (2006, p.33) finally refers to Jones (1970) in a phrase that Jones himself regarded as the ‘ultimate definition’ of design: ‘to initiate change in man-made things’. This definition is not instrumental at all, but every designer should probably agree, at least intuitively and to some extent, that it resembles to what we do.

Nigel Cross does not provide a definitive definition of design in Designerly Ways of Knowing (Cross, 2007a) – his compilation of canonical papers – either, but instead he offers a fragmented description of characteristics that can be put together as follows: ‘design is rhetorical’ (p.51), ‘design is exploratory’ (p.52), ‘design is emergent’ (p.52), ‘design is abductive’ (p.53), ‘design is reflective’ (p.53), ‘design is ambiguous’ (p.54), and ‘design is risky’ (p.54).

A definition always focuses on certain aspects of the object the author wishes to explain. Often this focus lies in the process or planning of change such as in the aforementioned definitions by Papanek or Jones. The British Design Council also puts forward a definition by Sir George Cox that involves a final goal: ‘Design […] shapes ideas to become practical and attractive propositions for users or customers. Design may be described as creativity deployed to a specific end’ (Design Council, year n/a).

Simon (1996, p.111) poses a very famous and short definition that combines the view of design as a common human activity with a goal orientation: ‘every one designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones’. Simon (1996, p.114) takes his teleological view further and adds the artefact as a means to achieving goals: ‘[d]esign […] is concerned with how things ought to be, with devising artifacts to attain goals’. Other authors, point on the final results of the activities without focusing on end goals: ‘the process of creating tangible artifacts to meet intangible human needs’ (Moran and Carroll cited in Visser, 2006, p.115). Visser (2006) mentions other definitions that go in this direction and neglect to mention the crucial difference between the specification and the artefact product itself. This difference is what separates design from craft and it is at the very basis of design methodology (Jones, 1992).

The following all-encompassing definition (Visser, 2006, p.116) provides an accurate image of design:

Design consists in specifying an artifact (the artifact product), given requirements that indicate – generally, neither explicitly, nor completely – one or more functions to be fulfilled, and needs and goals to be satisfied by the artifact under certain conditions (expressed by constraints). At a cognitive level, this specification activity consists of constructing (generating, transforming, and evaluating) representations of the artifact until they are so precise, concrete and detailed that the resulting representations – ‘the specifications’ – specify explicitly and completely the implementation of the artifact product. This construction is iterative: many intermediate representations are generated, transformed and evaluated prior to delivery of the specifications that constitute the final design representation of the artifact product together with its implementation. The difference between the final and the intermediate artifacts (representations) is a question of degree of specification, completeness and abstraction (concretization and precision).

So what is design?

Design is the generative, transformative and evaluative activity behind these artefacts:

Sketches (source unknown)

And behind these:

Prototypes for the Volta Paragon Bicycle Helmet

And these:

Illustrated specifications for the Volta Paragon Bicycle Helmet

And this too is design:

Final Volta Paragon Bicycle Helmet

So then, what is design?

As John Chris Jones argues, design is, above all things, ‘the performing of a very complicated act of faith’ (cited in Lawson, 2006).

References

CROSS, N. (2007) Designerly Ways of Knowing, Basel: Birkhäuser.

DESIGN COUNCIL (year n/a) What design is and why it matters, [online], available: http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/about-design/What-design-is-and-why-it-matters/ [Last accessed 08/03/2013].

HESKETT, J. (2002) Design: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

JONES, J. (1970) Design Methods: seeds of human futures, Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.

JONES, J. (1992) Design Methods, 2nd edn, New York: Wiley.

LAWSON, B. (2006) How designers think: the design process demystified, 4th edn, Oxford: Architectural Press.

PAPANEK, V. (1985) Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change, 2nd edn, Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers.

PEIRCE, C. S. (1998) The essential Peirce, Vol. 2 (1893 – 1913), Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

SIMON, H. (1996) The sciences of the artificial, 3rd edn, Cambridge: The MIT Press.

VISSER, W. (2006) The cognitive artifacts of designing, Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Have you read Defining Design (Part I)?

Defining the common aspects of design

It might be redundant to state that – except in pristine nature – we are surrounded by the outcome of design. So, if design is ‘the human capacity to shape and make our environment’ (Heskett, 2002, p.5), one cannot avoid wondering how can design and the designer accommodate to such a variety of requirements. Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, asserted – in what has become a very famous quote in the field of design – that architects (i.e. architectural designers) construct ‘from the spoon to the city’. After reading this statement, one cannot avoid wondering how can design afford such a variety of domains and how the activities of designing a bridge or designing a pen can be considered to be intrinsically the same activity. I shall try to probe into these issues, even though the questions will probably remain partially unanswered.

Design comprises several disciplines: product, interior, graphic, fashion… just to name a few. Within each of these disciplines there are sub-disciplines or specialisations: within graphic design one can find editorial design, information design, branding, etcetera. Some sub-disciplines are related or are even shared by two disciplines such as packaging, which can be considered product or graphic design or both; or interior lighting design, which can be considered product or interior design or both. Then, does it make sense to talk about design as a unique activity? Or, is it reasonable to consider common aspects of design such as design decision making or design cognition when designers are facing and tackling problems so apart from one another as the design of toothbrushes and car dashboards?

Lawson (2006, p.9) asserts that ‘we must be cautious […] in assuming that all design fields can be considered to share common ground’. But then he posits a notion with tremendous implications: ‘what is certain is that design is a distinctive mental activity’. Here Lawson asserts that design as a mental activity is different from the rest. Nigel Cross goes further and refers to designerly ways of knowing when positing the distinctiveness of design activity and a common cognitive approach among designers (Cross, 2007b, 2011). Designerly can be defined as: ‘the deep, underlying patterns of how designers think and act’ (Cross, 2007a, p.11).

Design methodology tries to be domain-independent (Dorst, 1997; Lawson, 2006), but a domain-agnostic design methodology makes sense if, and only if, designers share cognitive features regarding their approach to design. If there is not such a thing as a designerly way of knowing, pursuing a domain-independent design methodology shall remain a chimera.

References

CROSS, N. (2007a) Designerly Ways of Knowing, Basel: Birkhäuser.

CROSS, N. (2007b) ‘Forty years of design research’, Design Research Quarterly, 1(2), 3-5.

CROSS, N. (2011) Design thinking, Oxford: Berg.

DORST, K. (1997) Describing Design: A comparison of paradigms, Doctoral thesis, Tecnische Universiteit Delft.

HESKETT, J. (2002) Design: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

LAWSON, B. (2006) How designers think: the design process demystified, 4th edn, Oxford: Architectural Press.

Read Defining Design (Part II)