What Does "Design" Mean?
“The challenge with answering this question, in my opinion, is the unfortunate use, overuse, misuse, and occasional abuse of the word “design.” Perhaps the readers are familiar with a similar phenomenon to the word “love” in the Bible. The English word “love” is used to replace at least four different types of love that are distinct in the Greek language, namely, “Eros,” “Storge,” “Philia,” and “Agape.””
The word “design'' in like manner is used as a noun, an adjective, and a verb. Furthermore, within those designations, it holds additional connotations. Thus, it means lots of things to lots of people in lots of different ways. The following sections will not necessarily answer the above question directly but they will hopefully provide a background to consider when one is “designing,” discussing a “design,” or learning about the “design process.”
“Design” as a Verb - “I design, you design, we all design.”
First of all, design can be considered a verb, or as I learned in grade school, an action word. It is something we do. Like the verbs “to think,” “to want,” and “to know,” these action words may not have an outward manifestation observable to others, that someone is in fact, thinking, wanting, or knowing.
Designing has the same attribute. That is, it is hard to visually see when one is designing. Usually, we are required to decompose this action into more concrete verbs of: drawing sketches, collecting data, communicating ideas, solving problems, performing trade-offs, evaluating concepts, and countless other actions that are sometimes linked to specific steps or stages in a process.
Still, when performing any of these actions, one could say they are designing.
On the other hand, communicating is not always associated with designing, drawing can be something other than designing, and solving problems might not be classified as designing either.
Therefore, the verb “designing” is often a catch-all word for any of these other verbs.
What are you doing? - I'm designing a car.
Aren't you actually 3D modeling right now? - Yes... I guess that's true too.
Thus, a sort of paradox emerges, in that one is designing when doing any of those things (modeling, sketching, prototyping, etc.), but also one is not designing when doing just one of them (i.e. Is any one of those actions design? No. But I am designing when I am doing any of those actions).
Unlike the words thinking, wanting, and knowing, where the associated noun is more clear, (i.e. thinking a thought, wanting a desire, and knowing information or knowledge), the outcome of designing is ... well, a design.
“Design” as a Noun - “I want to design a design”
The result of designing is often a design (the noun form of the word). Unfortunately, this form suffers from similar problems too.
When people say “design” (the noun), they may be referring to the early-stage concept (“This design won't work for people with long hair!,”) the plans or blueprints to make something (“How long will this design take on the milling machine?,”) or even the product itself (“I've been driving this truck for 10 years, it's such a great design.”)
Therefore, similar to “design” as a verb, the word “design” as a noun is used (...overused?) at each stage, step, or phase to refer to something, often tangible, as a result of an action. It's again a catch-all noun for whatever thing is produced from any of the action words above. The idea is the design. The drawing is the design. The product is the design.
Can everything be the design? Well, yes and, of course, no.
The terms “deliverable,” “outcome,” and “artifact” are often invoked to help clarify when design is used as a noun. Generally, these are considered the thing produced at the end of a stage or process (i.e. an action verb).
However, these terms can fall short in describing all the uses since the design can refer to an intermediate point halfway through an action.
Can you look over my design and tell me if my holes are too close to the fillet?
Furthermore, the design (noun) is of course not any of the individual artifacts, but the collective group of all the outputs. Yet the term “design” may have been associated with each of them individually at different times. This is commonly referred to as “design evolution” (the adjectival form of design, discussed next) which allows for the design (noun) to change, improve, mature, and develop.
When using the generic term “design,” one can easily confound others to which it refers. Does it mean the initial idea, the CAD model, the 3D printed prototype, or the finished product? Context can usually assist with this challenge but not always. Therefore, invoking clarifying adjectives can find their place in our explanations and dialogue.
We see many adjectives qualifying the noun “design” including: systems design, graphic design, conceptual design, interior design, industrial design, web design, fashion design, and countless others.
But what if the adjective is also the word “design”?
“Design” as an Adjective - “One should follow the design process in design engineering.”
The third use of the word “design” is as an adjective.
The example mentioned previously of “design evolution” is really a slightly shorter way of saying “evolution of the design.” We often use the adjectival form of “design” to connote possession, limit, or constrain the application of the associated noun. In such situations, the terms can often be altered to include the preposition “of,” but not always. Thus, “experimental design” can be “design of experiments,” “design process,” is also “the process of design,” and “design engineering” is sometimes a synonym of “engineering design.” Most definitely, someone will take issue with the equating of these terms, pointing to the nuanced differences when the noun is reverse with the adjective, but the point is that one should be aware of the usage crossovers.
In a society where labels can be useful and efficient (i.e. time-saving heuristics) but also damaging (i.e. unfair biases and stereotypes) the label or adjective of “design” can be both differentiating and exclusionary.
Although some engineers think “design engineering” is redundant (already equating engineering with design) others seek to be defined with that specializing adjective. The reverse and potential downside also can occur with some engineers viewing “design engineers” as not traditional engineers. In their mind, this adjective has carried design engineers too far away from their “tribe.” Generally, this isn't a problem with as many designations (adjectives) as there are engineering departments at universities. But in reality, the space is continuous with arbitrary administerial lines drawn in the proverbial academic sand for, say, where mechanical engineering stops and electrical engineering begins.
The usage, therefore, of “design” as an adjective can be very helpful to reduce the field and make topics less daunting and palatable. For example, a book on “design thinking” seems more approachable than a book on “thinking.” Instantly, the adjective limits the principles therein discussed to the domain of design.
As discussed in the noun section, adjectives often precede the word design when it refers to a subset of the full scope of design. And again, the adjective “design” usually precedes the noun when limiting a more general term to the design domain. For example, since process can be more general than design (i.e. there are processes outside the design domain) we often use the term “design process.” The phrase “process design” occurs much less frequently.
Similar arguments can be made for “design management” (instead of “managerial design”), “design philosophy,” “design methodology,” and “design experience.” The opposite arrangements do exist but are used vastly less often.
Conclusion
In my above discussion of the uses of the word “design,” I nowhere advocate disbanding with the term. On the contrary, I believe there should be a high-level encompassing word that encapsulates a variety of verbs, nouns, and adjectives to save time and short-cut long lists of actions, sets of required components, and qualifying ways and means.
But as a designer, we should be aware that others on our teams, in our companies, or even in the same office, will have alternate perspectives on design and use the term differently. That's not a bad thing. We all want designers to be outside-the-box thinkers so why not be flexible with one of the first words that define us? As long as we all know this...
In the end, I leave you with this summarizing tautology - Design a design with a design process.
