What is Design?
Whenever I get asked about my job I am apprehensive to say I am a designer (even though that is what my job title says). Unlike other people in my field, I did not study Design at university; most of what I know comes from what I learned at work or from books. As such, my definition of what Design is is not very polished (or, if we want to be charitable, we can call it a “work in progress”). Like with everything else, what I have learned so far is insignificant compared to what I do not know.
John Heskett claims that, unlike other kindred disciplines like Architecture, there is no body of knowledge in Design which leads to designers “reinventing the wheel” in school and at work. But the fact that Design is not singly defined is what makes it so attractive to me in the first place: there is a lot of “playing it by ear”; spontaneity and continuous learning are very important.
I am sure that this definition will change as time goes on and I develop my work as a designer and change who I look up to, who I emulate and who I steal from. This is my (albeit very simple) view of what constitutes Design for me right now.
Design as utility
“Design can be defined as the human capacity to shape and make our environment in ways without precedent in nature.”
John Heskett
Design as utility is, in my mind, the easiest definition to grasp as it can be defined simply through the old dictum “form follows function”. Design as utility can be easily seen not only in the shape that our objects take, but also in the way species evolve in the natural world. For example, a wing and an arm differ because of their distinct purposes, each one having a different utility.
Maybe evolution has not been kind to us, but we have been able to leapfrog our physical and mental limitations through our tools and their designs. We expanded our physical prowess through the use of the club and the bulldozer and we were able to externalize our memory and mental capacity through written language and computers.
In the 1980s, during the second computational revolution, designers like Don Norman were tasked with designing not only personal computers ergonomics, but their operating systems as well. This marked the arrival of designers in the digital world and human-computer usability was born.
Design as aesthetics
“The visceral level is pre-consciousness, pre-thought. It is about the initial impact of a product, about its appearance, touch, and feel.”
Don Norman
Design as aesthetics relates to what we feel when we interact with objects. Furthermore, the visceral side of Design is coupled with our perception and ideas of what is beautiful. It is the sensual part of Design, that which happens at a physiological, unconscious level.
There is a tension between utility and aesthetics, like two horses pulling in opposite directions. This begs the question: which one should Design prioritize? It is often said that beauty should not interfere with utility, but this also is disputed. This “invisible discussion” becomes apparent when we look at how different companies approach the design of everyday objects (for example, Philips’ vs Braun’s Design philosophies).
Should a toaster be “just” functional or does it have to be beautiful, too? What role should the toaster play while not being used? Afterall, we use it no more than 10 minutes each day, but is often left on the kitchen counter the rest of the time. The toaster becomes an object that lives with us, spending most of our time looking at it, not using it.
Design as meaning
“Even purely functional things serve to socialize a person to a certain habit or way of life and are representative signs of that way of life.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Design as meaning transcends the utility and beauty of an object, having at its core the process of intellectualization. The questions that are important in this case are: how does this object relate to me? Does it fit with my values? Is it able to express them? What story can I tell from its use? How does it fit with the story I tell about myself?
Just like with utility and beauty, meaning in design is contextual: the answers to these questions might differ depending on where or when you lived. For example, the Volkswagen Beetle in 1930s Germany signified the productive capacity of its people, while a couple of decades later it was an iconic symbol of the hippie movement in the United States.
Here is a more recent example: the difference between Tinder and Bumble. Though they are different in how they function and look, one could say that their biggest difference is, more than anything, a difference of meaning, of how much they fit with people’s values. After all, Bumble is often referred to as the “feminist Tinder”.
Design as critique
“All good design is critical: it offers an alternative to how things are.”
Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby
Design is an inherently positive endeavour: we believe that change can be achieved through it (otherwise, why bother with it?). In this way, Design becomes a bridge between our present reality and an undefined future, one that could be radically different from the past. Potentially, it can bring forth a completely different reality that was latent in the present, often with unforeseen consequences.
Thus, Design is a testimony of how things could be. All Design, in some minor or major way, is a challenge to our values, ideas and beliefs. What we think is possible or impossible can change through Design, and through it we can bring about not only what is possible, but also what is preferable. Our only limits are these values, ideas and beliefs that collapse preferable outcomes, leading us to futures that we did not want or accept.
It is time, for instance, to seriously think about the future of transportation as our present is defined by climate change, urban sprawl, traffic jams, road deaths, etc. But is the electric car a serious solution to any of these problems? Maybe there is a different, preferable future that we should be striving towards as a society through Design instead of being led to catastrophe by a handful of people and their personal interests.
Maybe it would be best, as Michèle Champagne writes, if designers avoid using the word “Design” when describing what they do as it is often used as a crutch. Maybe trying to describe what I do without mentioning Design might give me the chance to better explain the work I do and to better understand what it means to me.
