What is Design?

In English Language the word design is both a noun and a verb. As a noun, it can mean “Plan”, “intention”, “Goal”, “purpose”. As a verb, “to design” means “to draft”, “to shape”, “to sketch”. The word is derived from the Latin word “Signum".1 This word probably might have been used most frequently in last two centuries after and during Industrial revolution. Today this word finds many different meanings and I’m sure it is more than just sketching and planning. The word Design has evolved a lot in recent times. So what is Design?

If we were to try and explore Design by its English word meaning and history of same, we could think about process of creating. Creating a plan. Creating a sketch. So that means design would be a process. A process which would start at one point and end at another. So what do we achieve through this process? The sketch and Plan at the end of this process would give us ideas. So design could also be called process of cultivating ideas. As the meaning of design has evolved throughout the history, it has more to do with problem solving than just process of cultivating ideas. Design involves finding a useful solution to problem through a systematic approach where user is at the center of the context we are trying to solve problem in. The context, the problem and desired outcome define the steps of design.

At Teague, during the recent bike project, the problem was to design a bike for people who did not ride bike. The context was Seattle which in its own was a problem when it came to riding bikes. Seattle is constantly wet and a dark place, it is also impossibly hilly, it is diverse but still bike friendly. Desired outcome was the ultimate urban utility bike. The team during the process started with the reason why people preferred driving rather than biking, especially in downtown. They found out there were three main concerns for not riding on bike. Safety, security and convenience. Biking was unsafe in considering the constant flow of traffic. There were security concerns about the bike being stolen and last but not the least, most aspects of biking like carrying/storing things, changing gears, signals and turning, navigating safely between cars could be inconvenient.

Hence there was a need for designing a utility bike that overcame all the challenges of biking in urban setting. Design is the way to create new realities.2 Things which can be improved should be improved. This would drive the design process to change an existing state of affairs into a more preferred one.3 That also means the preferred state is something that does not exist and design is the means to finding something that does not exist yet. The founder of this firm Walter Dorwin Teague made this bold statement in 1940.

This is the job of design. All men possess the wisdom to change the society. One needs a tool like design to make it happen. In today’s world, one need not go to design school to be capable of changing things using design. Any mind with will to design and desire to be in service to others would be able to utilize the tools he possesses. That doesn’t mean through design we can find solutions to all problems. There are problems defined as ‘Wicked Problems'5 which cannot be solved but can be only resolved.

Roger Jackson, Creative Director at Teague says “being a designer is a blessing.” We design because we are not perfect. Hephaistos, the Greek god, designed because he wanted to survive.6 Same applies to us as designers. Design is a way for us, as it was for Hephaistos, to become what we are capable of being, but do not have full capacity to be, without our creations to aid us. Roger Jackson in his presentation at CUSP 2014 highlights below 7 steps to be followed by the designer. Important characteristics of design process being, knowing the problem, knowing the correct why’s for solving a problem, having empathy with user and making things beautiful. E.g. finding out home field advantage for a sport team being more about negative effects of travel, which create an “away disadvantages” and less about effects of random crowds. Solution was Teague partnering with Nike to customize airplane interior focused on needs and challenges of travelling athletes.7

To conclude, design is the process which makes the society move to a better state than previous one. It is a tool used by designers to understand unique needs of the user, humans in most of the cases, and then to solve the problem.

1  https://www.jstor.org/stable/1511771?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

2  Nelson, H. G., & Stolterman , E. (2014) , “The design way: Intentional change in an unpredictable world (Second ed.”. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

3  Simon, H. A. (1996). The sciences of the artificial (3rd ed.). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

4  https://vimeo.com/110839724

5  dilemmas in a general theory of planning, horst rittel, Melvin webber 1973 155-169 Ritname Horst W. J., Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning , Policy Sciences, 4:2 (1973:June) p.155

6  Nelson, H. G., & Stolterman, E. (2014). The design way: Intentional change in an unpredictable world (Second ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

7  http://teague.com/latest/home-team-advantage-at-40-000-ft