Hasta La Ideas

By Cristina 1981, [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Over the last few years, design is increasingly seen as a tool for creating change. Through the work of many, including thought leaders such as Roger Martin and Tim Brown, design has become a key process and way of thinking that transcends disciplines and offers a roadmap for navigating and creating solutions. To both the like and dislike of many, business leaders, designers and non-designers continue to discuss design-thinking as the new pathway to innovation. Although design-thinking doesn’t replace good design, as Core77 columnist Helen Walters recently articulated, we do see a broader and broader scope of how the term “design” is being described. The expanding notion of design is captured by Core77’s upcoming design awards, which includes both traditional categories—web, interaction, graphic, interiors, transportation, services design—and emerging ones, such as research and strategy, social impact and design education. These conversations, books, articles, etc. collectively beg the question: “What is design?”

This is actually one of my favorite questions. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find the expanding definition of design terribly exciting. I used to say, “I don’t call myself a designer unless you change the definition of design.” When I was in school, Industrial Design was, for the most part, still confined to cereal boxes and toasters, but I knew that design, as a process and way of problem-solving, was applicable to far more than this. Don’t get me wrong, toasters and cereal boxes are well needed and well-designed ones add delight and productivity for millions, but I couldn’t help but to feel in my gut that design could be, would be and was, something more. So it is with great relief that those I admire started saying, “Yes, design is more. It’s design with a big ‘D.'”

However, those around me still don’t necessarily “get it.” When I tell someone I’m a designer, they either ask me to design them a website, or once I explain industrial design, they only half-jokingly ask me to design them an alarm clock. As a design educator, I see the design of a product or service as a means to learning the design process. If I’m going to be really honest with myself, I’m more interested in how a student learns to think than how good their renderings or prototypes end up. To impart this knowledge, I have to actually describe what design is in a way that encompasses the broader spectrum of how it is being discussed in the design world. One explanatory framework I have been using that seems to resonate with people is what I call the “Dimensions of Design.” It goes a little something like this:

2D: lives in the x-y axis including graphic design and images
3D: lives in the x-y-z axis with products
4D: when you add the human element you get systems, services, and experiences
5D: and when you apply this over time, you get the 5th dimension of strategy

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