What Design Is
What is “design,” anyway? Is it the ability to draw stuff? Is it the ability to cobble together a mechanism? Those may be part of it, but they miss the real point. Design is how you decide what to draw, and what to cobble together.
I spent part of today reviewing projects at the International Design Development Summit at MIT. About 60 people from around the world get together for a month to develop 10 projects in global health, food production, technology distribution, and other big deals. Some of the participants are students, some professionals, some teachers. I saw three project presentations, and gave feedback along with other participants and guest reviewers. It’s a pretty interesting event.
The project teams are made up of smart people with widely varying backgrounds. They’re capable of analyzing the situation in the field, coming up with solutions, building and testing prototypes. What they need help with, in the end, is making decisions: filtering the requirements; rating the criteria for a “good” solution; knowing when to stay within the paradigm of current solutions to a problem and when to develop completely new technology.
Those are the things “professional” designers really do. The technical skills are important, sure, but it’s decision-making that separates an OK solution to a problem from a great solution.
