Design

A design is the concept or proposal for an object, process, or system. The word design refers to something that is or has been intentionally created by a thinking agent, and is sometimes used to refer to the inherent nature of something – its design. The verb to design expresses the process of developing a design. In some cases, the direct construction of an object without an explicit prior plan may also be considered to be a design, such as in arts and crafts. A design is expected to have a purpose within a specific context, typically aiming to satisfy certain goals and constraints while taking into account aesthetic, functional and experiential considerations. Traditional examples of designs are architectural and engineering drawings, circuit diagrams, sewing patterns, and less tangible artefacts such as business process models.

People who produce designs are called designers. The term 'designer' usually refers to someone who works professionally in one of the various design areas. Within the professions, the word 'designer' is generally qualified by the area of practice (for example: a fashion designer, a product designer, a web designer, or an interior designer), but it can also designate other practitioners such as architects and engineers (see below: Types of designing). A designer's sequence of activities to produce a design is called a design process, with some employing designated processes such as design thinking and design methods. The process of creating a design can be brief (a quick sketch) or lengthy and complicated, involving considerable research, negotiation, reflection, modeling, interactive adjustment, and re-design.

Designing is also a widespread activity outside of the professions of those formally recognized as designers. In his influential book The Sciences of the Artificial, the interdisciplinary scientist Herbert A. Simon proposed that, "Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones." According to the design researcher Nigel Cross, "Everyone can – and does – design," and "Design ability is something that everyone has, to some extent, because it is embedded in our brains as a natural cognitive function."

The study of design history is complicated by varying interpretations of what constitutes 'designing'. Many design historians, such as John Heskett, look to the Industrial Revolution and the development of mass production. Others subscribe to conceptions of design that include pre-industrial objects and artefacts, beginning their narratives of design in prehistoric times. Originally situated within art history, the historical development of the discipline of design history coalesced in the 1970s, as interested academics worked to recognize design as a separate and legitimate target for historical research. Early influential design historians include German-British art historian Nikolaus Pevsner and Swiss historian and architecture critic Sigfried Giedion.

In Western Europe, institutions for design education date back to the nineteenth century. The Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry was founded in 1818, followed by the United Kingdom's Government School of Design (1837), and Konstfack in Sweden (1844). The Rhode Island School of Design was founded in the United States in 1877. The German art and design school Bauhaus, founded in 1919, greatly influenced modern design education.

Design education covers the teaching of theory, knowledge, and values in the design of products, services, and environments, with a focus on the development of both particular and general skills for designing. Traditionally, its primary orientation has been to prepare students for professional design practice, based on project work and studio, or atelier, teaching methods.

There are also broader forms of higher education in design studies and design thinking. Design is also a part of general education, for example within the curriculum topic, Design and Technology. The development of design in general education in the 1970s created a need to identify fundamental aspects of 'designerly' ways of knowing, thinking, and acting, which resulted in establishing design as a distinct discipline of study.

Substantial disagreement exists concerning how designers in many fields, whether amateur or professional, alone or in teams, produce designs. Design researchers Dorst and Dijkhuis acknowledged that "there are many ways of describing design processes," and compare and contrast two dominant but different views of the design process: as a rational problem-solving process and as a process of reflection-in-action. They suggested that these two paradigms "represent two fundamentally different ways of looking at the world – positivism and constructionism." The paradigms may reflect differing views of how designing should be done and how it actually is done, and both have a variety of names. The problem-solving view has been called "the rational model," "technical rationality" and "the reason-centric perspective." The alternative view has been called "reflection-in-action," "coevolution" and "the action-centric perspective."