Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the axe. Indeed, this speak volumes of the essence of design. Essentially, design helps us to solve problems. That is, it enables us to fish out the problem and find a solution to it.

In other words, Design is anything that touches human life, addresses its problems and makes it better. At the very onset, it starts with a plan. It is systematic. It has a goal. And it has the end-user in mind.

Obviously, there are several definitions for Design. According to Wikipedia, “design is the art of creating a plan or the consensus for building an object or system”

Indeed, the word “Design” came from two main sources Italian – disegno and French -dessin.  Both meaning “drawing.”

Again, the Strate School of Design also defines design as the process of imagining and planning the creation of objects, systems, software, product, and industrial items such as buildings, vehicles, etc. It is about creating solutions for ourselves and the world around us.

Others view Design as “the activity of transforming an idea into something useful, which evolves into a blueprint”.

Design takes after two disciplines, that is, art and science, and any great design requires the elements of both disciplines. 

Design as an Art

Design as an art, is the creation of an expression of the artist’s vision, thoughts and feelings. Design express emotions and impressions in the ideas, concepts work or product, but this is not the only goal. Indeed, we need the creative side of art, to create objects, tools and even experiences.

Design as a Science

According to Paul Ralph and Yair Wand in their Proposal for a Formal Definition of the Design Concept,  they defined design as a specification of an object, manifested by some agent, intended to accomplish goals, in a particular environment, using a set of primitive components, satisfying a set of requirements, subject to some constraints. In my opinion, this appropriately define design from a scientific angle.

The definition above may sound verbose or like bunch of big words put together without meaning. But every part of the definition was carefully chosen. Take “object specification” for example. This means that the result of “design” is not necessarily physical. Yes, it may or may not be.  However, essentially, it is always “a detailed description of the object in terms of its structure, ie, the components used and its connections”. This is, at the heart of scientific “design”. In other words, it is an object that is somehow distinct from but closely related to a particular Designed object.

Design as a Tool

Design should be viewed as a tool that we sharpen to enable us cut a tree with ease, and this aligns with Abraham Lincoln’s view. 

In the nutshell design can be said to be the tool which helps us to prepare, plan, engage, execute, iterate, till we have the best version of an idea, product or solution.

At this point it’s important to address the misconceptions about design. Indeed, the common misconception about design is the fact that most people think of design as what makes things beautiful just for the sake of it. But design is more than that. As Steve Jobs puts it “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Hence, every designer must take a critical look at the “end to end” of a product or system, process, procedure, policy and even the execution of an idea or concept.

Types of Design

Design is a huge and broad discipline and it means different things to different people.  But the outcome affects our lives in many ways.  Different types of design have been named; from product design, sound design, digital design, augmented, virtual and mixed reality design, even the interplay of industrial and architectural design such as domestic, indoors and outdoors design, automobiles, video games, software program interfaces, and many more. It even diverges into diverse sub-genres such as Interactive and experience designs.

Experience Design

At this point, it is time to unpack what Experience design (XD) is. It is a discipline that develops holistic experiences inclusive of all users across all aspects of a process, service, product or event, omnichannel journeys, and environments.  It places focus on the quality of the user experience and culturally relevant solutions. In other words, experience design is obsessed with the creation of user-focused experiences, that are based on their emotions, mindset, needs, context, and environment.

In the digital era where humans are living both in a physical and digital world, It’s important for the user to be able to seamlessly navigate through both worlds, hence, the need for experience design.

This is not just a discipline that develops holistic experiences for the user and his or her development but more importantly, experience design is also a business strategy. For example, revolutionary and disruptive businesses such as TikTok, Instagram, Airbnb, Uber and Bolt etc, all got market dominance because of their solid and fundamental focus on design and user experience. These businesses experienced the kind of growth they did because, when they were given six hours to chop down a tree, they spend the first four hours sharpening the axe. In other words, for these businesses, design matters and they design better.

Experience design/ creation or development goes beyond making their users or other stakeholders’ lives easier and enjoyable (the general and vaguely “user-centric” goal), but it also means shaping the way they feel, behaviour and even how they do things. For example, at some point in our life, every application was described as the “Uber of something”.

The benefits of design include the following inter alia.

1. Helps to improve business efficiency, in other words, the design process allow large projects to be broken down into manageable parts, and makes problem-solving very easy and efficient. Designers, Architects, engineers, scientists, and other thinkers use the design process also to allocate resources in during problem-solving. The process includes Empathy, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. This process is a non-linear, iterative process that is used to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. It is the most useful tool to tackle problems that are ill-defined or unknown. This mean businesses are more efficient in understanding the users and their challenge, their environment, allocating the right resources to define, Ideate, build & test whiles taking feedback to Iterate, iterate, iterate, before the problem will be fully resolved.  Example Tesla’s Cybertruck was launched November 2019 and was scheduled to be released in late 2021, however, the new release date is late 2022. 

2. Design builds competitive advantage: long story short, Apple is a classic example of an organization that has design at its heart, and it give her a competitive advantage.  In an article written by Seth Fiegerman titled “Jony Ive Reveals The Secret Of Apple’s Design Strategy” he shed light on reason to have design and explained into details, what is meant by competitive advantage.

3. Adds value to the organization, process, product & Service and experience/memories. In other words, the organization stands to gain from Design.

• A good experience design means that all interactions, (include machine to machine, or machine to human) are well-considered, planned, coordinated and strategically implemented or executed, to remain consistent, delightful and memorable
• Higher Revenue: Additional revenue from improved customer service leads to more customers and more sales.
• Cost Reduction: the organization’s bottom line is improved as a result, of better processes being design, systems design, and even digital transformation. 
• Speed-to-Market: Get the product or service you want to market faster and get closer to your goals at  first attempt, because the axe was sharpened well.
• New Concepts: Define new concepts and sources of revenue that can enhance your brand with new services and products.

In conclusion, we may say bad design ruins our lives. Design of products and systems is addressed by combining analysis and synthesis and borrows from many other disciplines such as research, art, psychology etc and hence, design is a game-changer in our digital age. Simply put, design improves our lives, creates value, and reduces or eliminates the unintended negative consequences of technology adoption through innovative and sustainable products and services.

Therefore, all businesses need to integrate design in their operation, so they become game changers in their industry, just as Apple, Airbnb, Netflix etc. have done.

 

Credit

This article was written with the inspiration and content from

• Proposal for a Formal Definition of the Design Concept by Paul Ralph and Yair Wand
• Is There A Scientific Definition of “Design”? by John Pavlus 

• What is experience design? Is it visual design? No. Is it UX? by Dean Huff
• The Strate School Of Design
• Interactive design Foundation 
• HBR, Design as Strategy by Adi Ignatius
• Andrew Aquino in Intro to Digital Product
• 4 Ways That Design Adds Business Value by Jeremy Johnson 
• Wikipedia