Philosophical Outlooks to Design

The designer's (or organization's) philosophy and management perspective may dictate a specific approach. Some approaches guide the overall goal of the design while other approaches guide the tendencies of the designer. Typically, a combination of approaches may be used if they don't conflict.

In a large perspective, Dino Dini (see Dino Dini at wikipedia.org) suggests that design can be defined as "the management of constraints" and he identifies two kinds of constraints, negotiable and non-negotiable. Taking this view, the first step in the design is the identification, classification, and selection of constraints. Design then proceeds from here by manipulating design variables so as to satisfy the non-negotiable constraints and optimizing those which are negotiable. It is possible for a set of non-negotiable constraints to be in conflict resulting in a design with no solution; in this case, the non-negotiable constraints must be revised. Some common approaches that address the management of constraints include:

• User-centered design, which focuses on the needs, wants, and limitations of the end user of the designed artifact.
• Use-centered design, which focuses on the goals and tasks associated with the use of the artifact, rather than focusing on the end user.
• KISS principle, (Keep it Simple, Stupid), which strives to eliminate unnecessary complications.
• There is more than one way to do it (TMTOWTDI), a philosophy to allow multiple methods of doing the same thing.
• Seat-of-the-pants (my favorite), which is doing things in an ad hoc manner.

Assuming one takes a more structured path to design (i.e., not the seat-of-the-pants approach), design Methods, the actual steps one might take, typically include:

1. Exploring possibilities and constraints by focusing critical thinking skills to research and define problem spaces for existing products or services—or the creation of new categories.
2. Redefining the specifications of design solutions which can lead to better guidelines for traditional design activities (graphic, industrial, architectural, etc.).
3. Managing the process of exploring, defining, creating artifacts continually over time.
4. Prototyping possible solutions that incrementally or significantly improve the situation.

The old phrase of "Well, back to the old drawing board" teaches us that designs can fail and redesign is often necessary. Something that is redesigned requires a different process than something that is designed for the first time. A redesign often includes an evaluation of the existent design and the discovery of redesign needs. These findings often drive the redesign process.