Design

Lore & Background

The word design refers to something intentionally created by a thinking agent, and the verb to design expresses the process of developing a design. Traditional examples include architectural and engineering drawings, circuit diagrams, sewing patterns, and business process models.

People who produce designs are called designers, a term usually qualified by area of practice such as fashion designer or product designer. The design process can be brief or lengthy, involving research, negotiation, reflection, modeling, and re-design. Herbert A. Simon proposed that everyone designs who devises courses of action to change existing situations into preferred ones, and design researcher Nigel Cross stated that everyone can and does design, as design ability is a natural cognitive function.

Reader's Guide

The study of design history is complicated by varying interpretations of what constitutes designing. Some historians look to the Industrial Revolution and mass production, while others include pre-industrial objects and artefacts. The discipline of design history coalesced in the 1970s, with early influential historians including Nikolaus Pevsner and Sigfried Giedion. Design education covers theory, knowledge, and values, traditionally preparing students for professional practice through project work and studio methods.

There is substantial disagreement about how designers produce designs, with two dominant views: the rational model, which sees design as a plan-driven, stage-based optimization process, and the action-centric model, which views design as improvised, with analysis, design, and implementation linked. The rational model has been criticized because designers do not actually work that way and because goals and constraints often change. The action-centric perspective is supported by empirical evidence and includes paradigms such as reflection-in-action and sensemaking–coevolution–implementation.

Did You Know?

• Direct construction without an explicit prior plan may be considered design, as in arts and crafts.
• The rational model of design was independently developed by Herbert A. Simon and German engineering design theorists Gerhard Pahl and Wolfgang Beitz.