I frequently come across a discussion about what design is, what it does and what a designer is doing. Lately a friend suggested that some definitions of design are descriptive (e.g. "Design is X"). These definitions don't work well in context of a scientific perspective, because they don't imply an agenda (especially no research agenda).
See for instance these definitions about design and information design from IIID. On the very first homepage they quote Richard Grefé:
Design is the intermediary between information and understanding.
But what does this mean? What does design resp. a designer do? The quote describes the effect of design - not a practice. There are numerous possible and complex descriptions to this. E.g. the definition page from IIID does list 15 items - each of which could be a start a fertile of a discussion about educational goals in design curricula and research agendas. And surely enough this is going on everywhere. But right now it seems that in relation to a scientific discipline design is in its early childhood.
I was once challenged to state with three items each to define a) what a designer does and b) how he does it. Not more than 3-4 items per answer! This got to be rough. Here is what I came up with:
What does a designer do?
- integrate new technologies/practices in daily life
- develop alternatives
- balance wishes and reality
- suggest formal solution strategies for informal problems
How does he do it?
- create order from chaos
- create chaos from order
- copy best practices
OK. This is very rough. But very basic as well. While the second list is more a frivolous joke (Sorry for that!), the first list has been thought through many times. The item that will naturally raise the most questions is "suggest formal solution strategies for informal problems". This calls for redefinition of "formal solution strategies", "informal problems" and it also begs two more questions: Why are these "suggested" instead of "provided"? And why is it "solution strategies" instead of just "solutions"?
I'd be happy to hear what you think.
