Three Useful Definitions of Design
December 3, 2021
Many different definitions of the notion of “designing” (i.e., of the cognitive activity of design) exist. What it means “to design”, therefore, differs from one scholar to the next, from one problem domain to another, and on the scope of consideration.
Considering this variability of the notion of “designing” and its dependency on any given context, in this post I provide three different (yet equally valid) working definitions of designing, along with the explanation of where a particular definition applies best. Designing can thus be regarded as:
- A general cognitive activity,
- A reflective conversation with the materials of the design situation, and
- The activity of creating a new product or service.
1. Design as a General Cognitive Activity
If we first consider designing to be a general, pervasive human activity which can be applied to many different contexts and different problems (from e.g., finding the best route through a city, winning a game of chess or tennis, creating a house plan, writing a letter, or baking a cookie), I adopt the rather general definition of designing by A. Newell and H. Simon:
To design means to devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.
In this sense, the act of designing is a general mental activity which “is not the monopoly of those who call themselves designers”. Thus, any person (or intelligent agent) designs, schedules, and plans.
2. Design as a Reflective Conversation
When we consider designing to be an activity of working out the form of some artifact, for instance by sketching, modelling, or writing, and using some medium, representation or technique, perhaps the best applicable definition is the one by D. Schön:
To design means to have a reflective conversation with the materials of a problematic situation.
In this case, an analog (e.g., paper-based) or digital canvas might serve as the “material of a situation” that contains marks, objects, or abstract symbols describing a problematic situation. The designer therefore has a “reflective conversation” with the material (i.e., the canvas) by using the pencil, mouse, or some other device, and making and erasing marks (either analogue or digital ones) on it.
I should note that Schön’s definition can be reinterpreted in the terms of the Newell and Simon’s definition, if we consider the situation of “not having the design” of the planned artifact as the undesired one, which we would like to transform into the desirable situation of “having a design” of the artifact. And vice versa, if we would like to “devise courses of action”, this implies some medium (or material) in which we devise such courses of action, whether it’s merely in our memory, or on paper, or some other medium.
3. Design as the Creation of an Artifact Design
Finally, I will also now give a third definition of designing, which best captures the notion that when we design something, we usually go about creating specifications for a new product, artifact, or service. The following definition by W. Visser provides this specificity:
To design means to specify an artifact product, given requirements on the artifact.
Thus while the definitions by Newell and Simon (the problematic situation of not having such product or service) and Schön (having a reflective conversation with a material in order to come up with the blueprint for such product or service) still hold, Visser’s definition is more clear-cut and explicit, and more in line with the intuitive notion of what it means to “design” a product or service.
Conclusions
According to the three definitions of design given above, a designer can be described as a person who either:
- Devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.
- Has reflective conversations with the materials of a problematic situation.
- Specifies an artifact product, given requirements on the artifact.
The outputs of design can be defined correspondingly as well. A design is therefore:
- A course (or plan) of action.
- The set of materials (i.e., representations) describing a design situation.
- The specifications (i.e., blueprints) of the end product that is being designed.