What is design?
A colloquium paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the Pre Diploma presentation By
Rohan Saraf Product Design (2007-2012) Project guide
Prof. Deepankar Bhattacharyya
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Abstract In this paper I would like to understand what design is. I don’t aim on solving the mystery of what design truly is but I look forward to understand different views on design by designers and also non-designers. I look forward to understand design as an activity, profession and as a noun. Â
Have you ever thought ‘What is design?’
Homo sapiens aka humans tend to ask lot of questions to others and also to themselves. Many say that this ability to ask questions is the quality that separates humans from other animals. The same question can mean different things, depending on the context in which the question has been asked, or depending on the person on the receiving end of the question. A simple question like “What are you doing?” can have multiple answers from the same person at a given point of time even if he/she is not multitasking. The answers varies according to how the answering person perceives the question. Sometimes the simplest questions are usually the most difficult to answer. Lot of times we are in situations when someone asks us a question and we have a very good knowledge of the answer, but still we are not able to get it across to the person asking the question. “who are you?” is one such question that may not be very easy to answer. Recently, I was in similar situation when someone asked me a simple question like “What is design?” I have been studying design for four years now. In the penultimate semester you are expected to be very clear about what you been doing and what you will be doing in the future. However, explaining what design is can be a very difficult task when you have to describe it to elderly people who think there are only three noble professions in the world – Medicine, Engineering and Finance. In trying to answer what is design to such people, one can get confused as what design actually is. The more you think about it, the less you know what it is. So what is ‘design’? Ask ten different people if they have heard of the word ‘design’. Chances are that they will all have heard of it, and nine of those ten would even be very sure of what design is. These
people need not be designers. The person sitting on your left, or the person on your right, your boss, or the office boy who gets photocopies done for you, the rickshaw driver, your house maid, all of them are aware of design. In most cases they pronounce it as ‘deezine’. Ask more people and you will keep getting more and more definitions of design. One might think it’s usual for people not knowing the meaning of a word and yet using it. Especially for Indian masses, for whom English is not a language of preference. The definition of design may vary from person to person. However the beauty of the word is that none of these definitions are incorrect. Definition by your maid (“pattern on her saree”) is as correct as Steve Jobs’s1 “Design is not just what it looks like or feels like, design is how it works”. As the article on Design Council’s website[II] says “Design is everywhere – and that’s why looking for a definition might not help you grasp what it is.” The article further says that the single word ‘design’ encompasses an awful lot, and that’s why the understandable search for a single definition leads to lengthy debate to say at least. It talks about how design has either too broad or too specific definitions with drawbacks of each. These definitions are either too general to be meaningful or too specific and exclude too much. All of this leads to a fact that design as a word has no singular definition. So is it at all possible to define design, or it has grown to a state where it actually is anything and everything around us.[III] If you can’t define what design is let’s try to define what design is NOT. Designers often say that art is not design. Many designers believe that art is an expression and design has purpose. Whereas they also believe that art is a major influence on design and that is why it is necessary to understand art, therefore history of art is included in the design curriculum.
1
Steve Jobs is Co-‐Founder and CEO of Apple Inc.
Now, let’s assume that all the naturally existing things are not design. Let’s hypothesize that animals, humans, plants, Earth, Niagara falls, insects, the Himalayas etc aren’t designed; That they have naturally evolved over millions of years. This leads to a question - isn’t a bird’s nest a work of design? In fact, a bird’s nest is equally or even better designed than the houses we live in. For this reason designers keep taking inspiration from nature, which is even included in design curriculum, in the form of ‘Study of Nature’. We can rearticulate this claim as, ‘things that are not planned/intentional are not design.’ This gives rise to another definition of design, “everything done with intention is design.” The best way to elaborate on this definition will be through the example of plants. Vegetables when growing naturally in forests might not appear to be by design, but as soon as you plant a particular tree in your garden, it becomes design. Hence, the very activity of doing anything on purpose is design. Eating might not be design but eating before you travel because you won’t get food later, is design. Now try searching for the meaning of word design on dictionary.com.[I] You are likely to receive about seventeen (as of 2011-03-11) different definitions about design. Of which eight are verbs and nine are nouns. If you use the meanings in sentences then the verbs will vary from “to design a new bridge” to “He was designed to be a doctor” and nouns will vary from “a sketch” to “a graphic pattern on textile”. The word design originates from a Latin word ‘dēsignāre’ which means ‘to mark out’. Dictionary also defines design as ‘intent’ or ‘purpose’. For example “He was designed to be a doctor”, Ever wondered who designs us? Who designs our professions and what we grow up to be? This is where design might take a very philosophical approach. If design is solving problems, then we all are designers. This contradicts the earlier talk about anything natural is not designed. While discussing the statement everything natural is not designed came the argument about human body being designed. Though it has evolved over a period of time (let’s stick to Darwin’s theory of
evolution) no two humans are similar (National Geographic’s video ‘The Incredible Human Body’). Our individuality is an outcome of the choices we make. Right from the birth we take our decisions. What to eat and what not to eat, what to read, what to see, what places to visit, what incidents individuals are exposed to? All these things shape up the person we are. A lot of times we don’t even have a chance to make choices. The situations we face makes/designs us as person, they make us unique. So is there anything that is not designed? Perhaps the answer is Paul Rand’s2 quote ‘Design is everything, everything.’ But perhaps that’s just my interpretation of the definition. Could finding meaning in things be design? Or is design a process of giving meaning to things? This supports the reasoning that planting a tree in garden is design. Does giving purpose to things makes it part of design? It might be aesthetic purpose, functional purpose or even for experiential purpose. According to Nathan Shedroff3, “Design is the process of evoking meaning.” What he means by meaning here is actually ‘Meaning is the deepest connection you can make with a customer/user/audience’.[IV] He also talks about creating meaningful experiences by design. He says experiences can be designed. This is infact also the very basis of the whole new branch of design “Experience Design”. It could soon become the vastest branch of design which includes all the other branches of design, like communication and industrial design, to give you one experience. An evolving glossary of experience design defines experience design as “Experience Design is an approach to creating successful experiences for people in any medium.”[V] This field includes design in all three dimensions, time, all five senses, interaction, customer value, personal meaning and emotional context. Experience design is not just design of user interfaces and on-screen interaction, it can even consist of environmental installations, print products, 3D products, services, broadcast images and 2
Paul Rand(1914-‐96) was well-‐known American graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs like that of logos for IBM, UPS and ABC. 3 Nathan Shedroff is a pioneer in experience design, he is also Chair, MBA in Design Strategy Program, California College of the Arts (CCA)
sound, live performances and events, digital and online media, etc. When I asked Soumitra Bhat4 about what exactly is experience design?, he gave an example about soap design. If you have to design a soap bar with experience design approach then designer won’t just design the form of the soap bar and the packaging but also look into the non physical aspects of the soap. Designer designs the texture (how soap will feel in hand when dry and when wet), the scent of soap when inside the packaging, scent of soap when outside packaging but dry, the scent of soap outside packaging when wet (in use) and even the scent left behind by the soap after you use it and dry yourself up. All these factors can go into consideration while designing a soap bar which is a daily use product. This multi-sensorial design approach is separating lot of brands from the others. This is the main reason lot of new products are designed with an experience design approach where the focus of the process is not on just solving the problem but also creating a sensation of interaction with the product, service, or event through all our senses over time and on both physical and cognitive levels. This sensation of interaction is what is called an experience. Soon we won’t be able to have our own experiences but we will be experiencing what some designer wanted us to experience. During Design Council’s Design in business week 2002, writer Richard Seymour5, said, “Design is making things better for people.”[II] This opens up an altogether different approach to define design. According to this approach, design is service. Most important thing you learn in design-education is that design is always user centric. You understand the user and his needs, and fulfil them so as to make user’s life simple. This also contradicts the approach of a lot of famous designers. For instance, Philippe Starck a world famous designer well known for his design for a juicer[VI] is always included in debate when it comes to what design is. His juicer, which does not resemble the juicers, the kinds of which we are used to 4
Soumitra Bhat is an IIT graduate and has done his Masters in Interaction Design from TU Delft. He is also a visiting faculty to MIT Institute of Design, and also lead vocalist in the band ‘Para Vayu’. 5 Richard Seymour is a British writer.
seeing, but looks more like an alien creature on tripod, could be one of the most recognised designs around the world. This juicer does not simplify your life by any means as it is not at all efficient as compared to traditional juicers available. However it is highly ratedin term of its form. It even comes in a gold plated version. Hence design clearly differs from serving a purpose to making statements. For some like Starck, function seems to be a by-product of great aesthetics. Jonathan Ive, designer at Apple is known for his design of iPod. In the BBC documentary ‘The Genius of Design’(aired 14 May–30 June 2010) he shares his point of view on what is design. He says that design is about making things a lot simpler for people. There is a lot of effort put into designing a product. There are hours and days spent to solve tiny design problems. Some problems are simple and some are complex. Designer’s task is to make a complex, simple for user. A good design should not make the user think about the complexity of product. This is the secret behind success of iPod according to Jonathan Ive. Going by Ive’s explanation, design could also be defined as solving the complex problem and making things look simple to user. Referring back to Design Council’s document[II], “design could be viewed as an activity that translates an idea into a blueprint for something useful”. This is a very valid definition of design. The whole reason of including sketching and drawing techniques in design curriculum is to imbibe the ability to translate your ideas into visuals. This definition sounds similar to the definition of art as an expression. So, expressing your thoughts through visuals is art or design? This is where we come across differentiating arguments between thoughts and feelings. Feelings are associated with heart and thoughts are associated with brain. Hence it can be said that artist sketch their emotions while a designer sketches his idea. However, that is not what the dictionary has to say. Dictionary says feelings are based on emotions while thoughts are based on reasoning abilities. Whereas after several hours of
discussions with peers, I concluded that idea is just a thought which has a direction which usually leads to a conclusion. Commonly design is also used in reference to fashion and style. This happened mostly because of media coverage given to the word design in association to the fashion industry. Many designers attempt to define design in their own way. Some of the product designers define design as interaction between people and product or people and environment. For some, design is the ability to evoke emotions in the user. Some think of design as an activity of visually guiding humans through the unknown. For some, design is creating the impossible and advancing in technology. While some think of it as aesthetic reinforcement of content or function. Ian Stewart6 has his own way of defining design; he says, “Remember when your mom straightened up your bow-tie just before your prom? That’s my metaphor for design in nutshell.” For some ‘design is making things right’. For a lot of people design is a process. Design is the process of finding the quickest or the most aesthetic way to complete the task. As Paul Scrivens7 says, “Design is the process of finding the most elegant answer to the question of ‘how do I?’” Even at our institute, the first design project any design learner will come across is “Design Process”. At the very foundation of design learning the focus is to pass on the design process to the learners. This process is one way of differentiating between designers and non-designers. The process is supposed to be followed like a basic guideline in all the design projects. This process then turns to be a way of thinking for many of design learners in their everyday life. The very motto of our institute “Ensure karman, leave phalam” talks about the design process. It says follow the process right in action and the product will evolve by itself. So how does this super mantra of design work? What is this process which leads to great design? As my classmate, 6
Ian Stewart is a professor of mathematics at the University of Warwick, England Paul Scrivens is Community Coordinator at (mt) Media Temple, mt is a web hosting and virtualization service provider headquartered in Los Angeles, California
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Tanya Bhandari, states in her illustration about the process, “It is a planning and decision making process which produces a solution.”[VIII] This process is to be followed over and over till you reach the final goal, or also known as the solution to a problem. A problem is the basic foundation of design process. Problem areas are identified in a situation with the help of user research and analysis of the collected data. The essentials are then separated and put into a statement which is known as the problem statement. This problem statement is also known as the design brief. Further research is done on this brief and then comes the process of ideation. In this ideation process multiple (preferably) ideas are generated, which in design terms are referred as concepts. Concepts are usually in the form of sketches and renders (this is how design is ‘expressing ideas through visuals’ fit). These concepts are then prototyped and tested with the users. This leads to validation and verification. Many a times the process restarts at this point as the new concept leads to new problem areas. Hence the process is repeated over and over again till you reach a most appropriate solution to the problem. Like ours, the curriculum of many other educational institutes is based on this process. This process becomes a part of the learner during his/her design learning. They start following this process in their projects knowingly or unknowingly. For some the process extends from the projects and becomes a way of thinking. This ‘process’ is being practiced in design for a long time and keeps evolving with time. The needs and problems to be catered keep changing globally. This change depends on various factors like resource availability, culture, technology, global economy and even things like media. This has also lead to a complete new profession of trend forecasting. This deals with forecasting the design opportunities by looking at all these controlling factors. Just like trend forecasting, there are other professions within design which kept evolving with time. Time plays a very important role in design. Time also plays a very important role in
other occupations. As technology keeps changing with time, new solutions and processes keep evolving. One year back almost every design competition was focusing on ‘Green Design’. Green design seems to have become the need of present times. After making products and services for so many years, the side effects have emerged. It is needful to take action well in time, i.e. design green products. Green products are designed with consideration of the entire product lifecycle. Right from the selection of material, to recycling, all is part of green design. Green design has become not only a possible approach to design, but many designers take it as a mandatory constraint in all of their design projects. Green design has also been included in design curriculum these days. After my Green Design course, I came to a conclusion that Green should not be just a way of designing but should be a way of thinking in no matter what you do, only then can one make a difference. Design has also entered into the domain of business these days. The tag of “Design Thinking” is used to enhance the value of a design firm. ‘What is design thinking, really?’ is an article by Venessa Miemis8 which talks about the same. The term design thinking was coined by David Kelly, Founder and Chairman of IDEO, a global design and innovation firm, the term refers to a set of principles, from mindsets to processes, which can be applied to solve complex problems. Venessa explains how design thinking is a path to innovation. She says, “Whether it’s called design thinking, lateral thinking, right-brain thinking, system thinking, integrative thinking, futures thinking or my own term ‘meta-thinking’ from my perspective, the concept itself is rooted in a capacity to understand the world and our relationship to it and within it, in a different way”.[IX] There is a discussion on how the word design got associated to the term ‘design thinking’. As design thinking is related to a business approach, which takes into consideration of all the possible aspects, it almost covers 8
Venessa Miemis is a New York based digital ethnographer, she has M.A. in Media Studies.
everything around. This might be a reason of association of word design to the term design thinking. One of the comments to the same article says, “About the name design, I feel it is the best choice because no other term can be as all encompassing as it.” This clearly supports the vastness of ‘design’. Sara Ilstedt Hjelm9 in her paper ‘If everything is design, what then is a designer’ talks about how everything is being designed from medicines to services. She further mentions that design today is a tool for innovation and development, and the design concept is losing connection to matter and products, and becoming a strategic tool for decision making. Danish Design Council has developed framework called as “Design Stair” where design maturity of a company is measured by studying how well they use design. The ground is no design, the first step is design as styling, the second step is design as a process and the final step is design as strategy. All of these different aspects are used in simultaneously in a design mature industry.[X] Due to the vast area that the word/profession design covers, it is often divided into specialisations. These specialisations are according to the end product that is delivered by designers. There are industrial designers who develop physical solutions to meet a particular need. There are communication/visual/graphic designers who develop visual solutions for a particular need. These specialisations are even further divided into lot of categories. The number of these categories is increasing with time. There are sub categories of these categories too. At the same time the focus also is shifting to interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary approach to a particular need. However, one thing that remains constant in all this, is that all these are serving a particular need.
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Sara Ilstedt Hjelm is a Swedish industrial designer and has a MfA in Industrial design and a phd in human-‐ computer interaction.
Design is not just about solving the problem but also is about identifying the problem, that too not just any problem but the right problem. So, design can also be defined as design is identification of the right problem or a need and solving or serving it. “Form follows Function” is fundamentally the notion that was held and promoted by modernists, and in particular by the Bauhaus movement. It is a phrase coined by an American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. It influenced the design world throughout the twentieth century and continues to be valued even today, says an article ‘What is Design?’[XI] If the form is following its function, it will also be aesthetically pleasing. This mantra stood true for years but now that world is advancing in technology, the products are gradually changing form. This can be seen with lot of new products, especially in the field of telecommunication. Most of the cell phones resemble cuboids and it has nothing to do with just calling or receiving calls, as the function of cell phone has widened over the years. A cell phone is not just a mobile telephone but it has advanced to be much more. Today it is your camera, MP3 player, Radio, GPS navigation system, social networking medium, gaming device, internet browser, email device, your conference calling device, and it can also be a movie projector. With not just one predefined function, the cell phones are turning into cuboids with some radii manipulation. This makes design even more essential as the integration of varied functions into one box is a very big task. This is the reason why user experience design is coming up in a big way. The products are being differentiated through their interfaces and the experience they give. The focus is on the softer side of the product, which these days is the differentiating factor between the products. If you are new to the term design and still haven’t figured out how vast it is then the following example might help. When we are going on a highway, we don’t feel lost till the time we have the sign boards showing us where we are going. Even at high speed of 80 km/h we don’t miss out on these sign boards. Is it just because they are huge and difficult to miss?
Maybe yes, but then who made it huge and difficult to miss? Who decided the font and font size on these boards? Who decides the location and placement of these boards? Who decides the colour of board, the colour of the text, the material of the reflective background, etc? Yes, it’s the designer who does it all and yes there is a thought put into all these things. That’s the job of a designer. Design is also about looking at details, tiny things that make something big, things which are not even seen but contribute to something very important. Design is also a lot of things which we tend to ignore around us. For example my personal accessories such as a wrist watch, gold ring, iPod, wallet, cell phone, spectacles, sandals, bunch of keys, and belt. These items we carry are designed. Even the clothes we wear are designed. Not only these products are designed but lot of things which go in these products are also designed. If you look at the cell phone, the symbols on the buttons, the placement of the buttons size of screen, placement of the brand logo, the speaker, the microphone, the interface, animations which popup when you do a certain task, texture of the cell phone, etc all of this is design.[XII] The texture on the crown of the wrist watch is design. The radium strip on the hands of the watch is design. How the buckle and belt fit together is design.[XIII] The currency in the wallet is design[XIV]. The ribs on the cap of a water bottle are design.[XV] The ceiling fan is design; placement of this fan in room is also design[XVI]. Look around you and you will see design. So what is design in the end? Is it a process, is it a sketch, an idea, a plan, giving meaning, problem solving, or is it experiences in our day to day life? This question might not have one right answer but the important thing is if you are into the field of design you should ask yourself this question so as to know what you are doing. You can understand the responsibility which lies on you as designer only when you think about the simple yet complex question, “What is design?”. If you are not from the field of design then you might not understand what design truly is, but you might start looking at design as you come across
it and understand its importance. There is a thought behind everything that is designed. Now look at the vastness of the man made world and then think about the thought that must have gone into making it or rather designing it. That might give you an idea about the seriousness behind design.
Works/Images Cited I. II.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/design http://www.hku.hk/bse/interdisciplinary/what_is_design.pdf
III.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design
IV.
http://www.nathan.com/thoughts/MeaningfulExperiences.pdf
V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI.
http://www.nathan.com/ed/glossary/index.html Refer to image 1 http://www.drawar.com/posts/what-is-design Refer to image 2 http://emergentbydesign.com/2010/01/14/what-is-design-thinking-really/ http://www.tii.se/reform/inthemaking/files/p73.pdf http://www.design-training.com/what-is-design.html
XII.
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XIII.
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XIV.
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XV.
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XVI.
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