Dear All,
Firstly, my thanks to everyone who has offered their thoughts and further
revelations on this, admittedly rather simple, proposition.
Without wanting to detract too much from where the discussion has moved on
to I thought I had better explain how I arrived at the 'definition'. I am
soon to be attending the SEFI conference, where I will be presenting a paper
highlighting the importance of the broader application of design skills as
learned at University. My research is focused on Product Design, but the
audience at the conference are largely concerned with Engineering education.
I was therefore keen to understand how design relates to 'non-designers'
(please excuse this awful distinction), concluding that we all design, just
in different contexts - hence the broad definition.
For those still interested, here is how I broke it down:
SEEKING
I can design without having to realise the embodiment of product, so design
is the process not the product
DIFFERENTIATION
In the same way that the human eye is blind without contrast, we are only
aware of something being new, creative, innovative, nice, ugly, improved,
detrimental or whatever by an appreciation of what already exists (taking
account of social acceptance, belief, preference, etc). So for anything to
be 'creative' it has to be different to what we are already aware of. Note
that there is no implication of the positive outcome of design, as bad
products, policies etc are still subject to being designed.
INSIGHT
I can design a spreadsheet to control my finances; its usefulness depends on
my knowledge of the software and monetary principles, my understanding of my
own requirements and my experience of other related endeavors. Assuming that
this is design, I have employed knowledge, understanding and experience,
which I believe can be collectively called 'insight'.
Caveats can then be added to this 'definition' in order to set it within a
context, or social responsibility.
I am not proposing the universal acceptance of this simplification, but it
seems to work for me (although there are some very deep philosophical
principles to digest throughout the responses to the original post, which I
am certainly not discounting in any measure!) I wonder if this works for
anyone else.
From an educational point of view, the definition compels the student to
first and foremost gain insight such that they are aware of how their final
product may be qualified within its context (justify the solution). It also
serves to illustrate that design skill can work across domains, given that
the domain specific knowledge can be acquired and utilised.
The series of responses here has helped me to gain some much needed clarity
on the boundaries of the Design Domain, in so much as the boundary exists
only in relation to the context within which it is viewed. Which is a bit of
a circular argument. But please correct me if I am still off the mark!
Once again, thanks to all the listers,
Daniel
Doctoral Researcher
Aston University
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