How Do You Define “Design?”

This weekend I was a guest teacher for a joint venture of the Chicago chapter of STC and Northern Illinois University, “Technical Communication in a Digital Age“:

I was talking about usability and content testing. I gave an overview of usability, user experience, and interaction design. Then we wrote testing scenarios for the STC Usability and User Experience SIG site. The students use the scenarios to test the site with each other.

I was throwing around terms like “design” and “content,” and we took some time to discuss what these meant. The students and I made a list to help define the term “design.” The list included:

• creating something for a purpose
• building
• structuring information
• a process
• consistency
• creativity
• ease-of-use
• making an idea concrete

I am curious what the student had in mind who mentioned “consistency.” I don’t recall this idea coming up during our other discussions, and I wish now I had explored that a bit more.

Here is a definition I like.

I came upon a paper by Richard Buchanan by way of elliottw, a blog by an interaction designer. The paper is “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking,” and in it, Buchanan states that design has evolved into “new liberal art of technological culture.” He describes four orders, or domains, of design: “symbolic and visual communication or graphic design, material or industrial design, activities and organized services or interaction and service design, and complex systems or organizational design” (elliotw’s breakdown).

In his paper, Buchanan states, ” The significance of seeking a scientific basis for design does not lie in the likelihood of reducing design to one or another of the sciences . . . Rather, it lies in a concern to connect and integrate useful knowledge from the arts and sciences alike, but in ways that are suited to the problems and purposes of the present. Designers, are exploring concrete integrations of knowledge that will combine theory with practice for new productive purposes, and this is the reason why we turn to design thinking for insight into the new liberal arts of technological culture.”

So, design as an integration of disciplines. This gets at the heart of why I am drawn to design. It gives me hope that I can specialize and still be a generalist.

Would you mind commenting with your own definition of design?

In case it’s helpful for considering your reply, the students are mainly English majors, and the class was a mix of graduate and undergraduate students. A couple are interested in tech comm as a career, some were interested in journalism, and at least one person planned to be a teacher. Most people had work experience (technical writers, journalists, entrepreneurs, and others).

Thanks!