What is Design? (Yes, all 10 definitions!)

When the term design is used it can mean many things, depending on who you are and which conversation you are having. Rarely do people stop to compare 'mental maps' and clarify which type of design they are talking about!

I believe this has to do with the multiple definitions of design and the lack of awareness of each specific type of design, its function and timing in a process. The other factor being how familiar you are with "design" based on your past experiences with different design roles.

Here are some examples of conversations I have and hear frequently that cause to stop and ask "What type of design are we talking here?":

• "We'll take care of that when we get to design"
• "That's something the designer will have to figure out..."
• "We're starting design now..."
• "We're bringing in a designer..."
• "Here are some early design concepts..."
• "This will be decided by the designer"
• "Have you started design yet?"
• "Why are these designs in Latin?"
• "The design looks great!"
• "This isn't the final design, we'll get to that later..."

Since the word "design" means many things to many people, let's define design as seen from a usability consultant's perspective.

Design for the Mind

Design that impacts cognitive processes (fit to the mind) including interpreting and understanding the experience.

#1 User Interface Design: Screen layout and design that focuses on user interactions and screen behaviors. User Interface (UI) design is an important component of user-centered and task-oriented design. The focus of UI Design is to improve the “user experience” or usability of the design. Since the mid 1980's, UI design has refined an understanding of human behavior and screen design. Also called "GUI" design, often confused for combined design and programming (see this post). UI Design is often seen as symbolic of green-screen era interfaces or coding, since developers used to be UI Designers before it was recognized that this was a special skill set...   

#2 Information Architecture: Skeleton mock-ups or "wireframes" of screen interactions, layout, navigation and features. Used to review, concept and test initial functionality.  Information Architecture (IA) is officially unrecognized by academic institutions, because it overlaps too closely with the already existing field of UI Design above. Few realize that IA was invented for commercial purposes originally by Argus Associates in the late 90's, (Rosenfeld & Morville, yes, the polar bear book guys) to promote consulting and book sales, as revealed by former employee Keith Instone at his 'alphabet soup' talk a few years ago in Portland, Oregon.

#3 Interaction Design: Focuses on how the user interacts with a page, application or product. Interaction design follows a task centered design approach ensuring the flow of the interaction as the central goal. Interaction design predates the Web world, and finds its roots in the wider field of Human Computer Interaction. Interaction design is a more general umbrella that many working on Web 2.0 interfaces and web applications prefer, since IA appears stuck in web-page centric paradigms.

Sanity check: Are the three design disciplines above different? Not really, their goals are all the same.

Design for the Heart

Design that impacts sensory processes (fit to the emotions) including the feelings and emotional or affective qualities of the experience.

#4 Graphic Design: The "eye-candy or look and feel". Graphic design is widely known and it's similarity to UI Design in what is often called "visual design" by people like Luke W at Yahoo! (Luke is a graphic design by background but does great UI design and visual design today).

In a usability process, once wire-frames are finalized, they are graphically treated to enhance the interaction design with aesthetic flavor. Graphic design focuses on enhancing layout, buttons, colors, icons and branding elements. The focus of graphic design is to improve the “look and feel” or stylistic aspects of the design. Because graphic designers operate from the heart, they are often accused of producing "fluff". If you give a graphic designer user interface specifications, however, their results can be outstanding. I see it every day at Experience Dynamics in Portland.

#5 Interactive Design: This Art college degree type is largely a hybrid discipline that captures a little of everything. An Interactive Designer produces good Flash pieces, animation, graphic design and some database programming or HTML. At the heart an Interactive Designer is great at graphic design and has a sensitivity and sensibility for usability. I taught Interactive Designers at the Art Institute of Portland (Oregon USA) and I kept telling the school the course should be called "Interaction Design" not "Interactive Design" but they wouldn't listen! My mistake.

#6 Emotion Design: Emotion design comes from the field of usability and product design. Emotion design is concerned with the specific social, environmental, personal and intimate qualities of user experience. Emotion design is a fringe discipline within the usability and user research communities that is gaining an "I told you so" voice with products like Apple's iPhone creating so many "ooooh, ahhhhs" from customers. Emotion design is an approach that can inform the outcome of any of the design types. e.g. "This user is influenced by this perception, expectation, color, shape, feeling..."

Design for the Body

Design that impacts anthropomorphic processes (fit to the human body) including the social and physical contexts of the experience.

#7 Industrial Design: Physical products that we can all relate to...the most obvious-- a mobile device. Like graphic design, industrial design is easy to spot in everyday experience. Physical product design has origins that can be found at any local history museum. Since the dawn of time, human civilization's has been defined by its tool or artifact creation abilities. Physical products with "good design" are intuitive: they feel, sound, look and work elegantly. Good industrial designers have, for much of the 20th century, mastered physically many of the design types described above, creating an impressive history of design for the human body, senses, environment and mind in a way that transcends, evokes and transforms experiences the user performs with the product.

The final group below are methodologies and approaches encompassing the design techniques above. Let's take a quick look at some of these approaches or methodologies that cross into the blurry line of "design".

Holistic approaches/ methodologies

#8 User Centered Design: The overall industry and ISO standard methodology and set of techniques that places the user at the center of the design. User-centered design (UCD) involves three key activities: User research; UI prototyping and Usability Testing. UCD is iterative by nature and has the most impact if conducted early on in a software, product or web development process. Its methods and techniques and general approach to design are proven from an ROI perspective and are widely accepted in industry, academia and in government sectors.

#9 User Experience Design: A relatively new term that updates the term and discipline of UCD or "usability engineering". User experience adding a more holistic element to the technique of designing the user experience (on web sites or web applications). User Experience or UX design I consider more an approach or umbrella of techniques or a general approach. It is not a type of design per say, as its practitioners will inevitably conduct UI design, IA or interaction design as the deliverable of the UX design approach.

#10 Experience Design: Experience design is often used as a short hand for User Experience Design, but is largely considered with what I call Environmental Design, or the design of the experience in retail or open space environments. Again, Experience Design is a general umbrella approach or methodology that penetrates all design decisions but with an experiential agenda.

"What will the customer experience as the do X?", must have been what the Starbucks experience designers were thinking...

Retail and public spaces can greatly benefit from improved loyalty (attachment feelings, comfort and personalization) and productivity (learning, exploring, browsing) studies have found. Experience Design makes use of the context, social and environmental phenomenon as well as the feelings, perceptions and intuitions of the user in that context.

In Summary: Perhaps at this point you can understand why understanding "design" can be so ambiguous at times. Now that we're on the same page, if you hear "design" and you haven't already had the "what design do you mean?" discussion with the person you are talking to, take a few minutes to level set and get on the same "design page".

Okay, I have to go, there's an email from my designer that I am giving some designs to, based on our client review of designs that we are redesigning...;-)

Best Wishes,

Frank Spillers, MS

Comments

[Dan]

Thank you, I really actually enjoyed reading this piece. It cleared things out for me a lot, I don't know what these other people are complaining about. Keep writing some great blogs!

[nemrut]

IA was not invented by Rosenfeld et al though theyve done everthing possible to claim credit for it.

Do some more research...

[Tim]

You're way off the mark with what must be your own definition of a graphic designer. Designers rarely, if ever, "operate from the heart". Normally they operate within the confines of a brief, briefs that often leave little room for emotive response.

What references do you have to support your statement that designers, "are often accused of producing fluff"? I've been a designer and tutor for 12 years and I have never heard this accusation leveled against designers.

Designers are not (generally) fine artists nor are they superficial surface decorators.

Good designers, designers as problem solvers, are more than just the producers of "eye candy", they engage in the process of bringing meaningful visual form to communication, translating communication goals through various means. Graphic designers use words and images to express messages that inform, persuade, and incite people to action.

You really need to think through your general definition of a graphic designer. Perhaps speak to a credible designer or someone involved in the academic processes of design.

[Mr Yap]

What about Information Design?

I suppose in your own words it "more an approach or umbrella of techniques or a general approach"?

[John McRee]

I like your breakdown here because it illustrates that design is complex. Every project has different criteria for success. Determining these criteria is essential, because they define which methods are used, or which have focus. Now here's a question I would love to hear some feedback on: When and where does specialization in these disciplines make more sense than a "Jack of all" approach? Does it ever make sense? Or do we, as "designers" need to remain Renaissance men and be able to employ these methods at will?

- John McRee
EffectiveUI

[Jeanette]

What about green design or environmental design?

[rajesh kumar singh]

fantastick !!!!!!!!

[Branden Christensen]

I love your look at the "definition" of design! Me being a future graphic artist in the communication of art and design; I really like seeing other peoples aspect of design. Like you had said in your summery at the end "Perhaps at this point you can understand why understanding "design" can be so ambiguous at times." when talking about design and a person saying or telling you what Design is often an understatement, similar to what you had stated in the beginning of your article! Thanks for the new outlook!

[Tom Humbarger]

rank,

I enjoyed your post and wrote a summary of it for my blog in the Catalyze community (http://www.mycatalyze.org).

Here is the trackback URL - http://tinyurl.com/24guo7.

Thanks again.

Tom Humbarger
Community Manager
Catalyze Community

[Tom Humbarger]

rank,

I enjoyed your post and wrote a summary of it for my blog in the Catalyze community (http://www.mycatalyze.org).

Here is the trackback URL - http://tinyurl.com/24guo7.

Thanks again.

Tom Humbarger
Community Manager
Catalyze Community

[Tom Humbarger]

Frank,

I enjoyed your post and wrote a summary of it for my blog in the Catalyze community (http://www.mycatalyze.org).

Here is the trackback URL - http://tinyurl.com/24guo7.

Thanks again.

Tom Humbarger
Community Manager
Catalyze Community

[Tom Humbarger]

Frank,

I enjoyed your post and wrote a summary of it for my blog in the Catalyze community (http://www.mycatalyze.org).

Here is the trackback URL - http://tinyurl.com/24guo7.

Thanks again.

Tom Humbarger
Community Manager
Catalyze Community

[Tom Humbarger]

Frank,

I enjoyed your post and wrote a summary of it for my blog in the Catalyze community (http://www.mycatalyze.org).

Here is the trackback URL - http://tinyurl.com/24guo7.

Thanks again.

Tom Humbarger
Community Manager
Catalyze Community

[Frank]

Hi Frank here...Thanks for all your comments!

CARL - yes it was Wurman in the late 60's who invented the term "Information Architecture" to describe the act of creating understanding and meaning from information. Few people know that in our community however, and the main reference point in the Web community that uses that term is the polar bear book and the term IA, the former Argus folks promoted into a field of it's own- it seems.

Fashion designers and architects are involved in design, but I wanted to only capture the use of the term design (and the techniques employed) in the field of usability engineering and user centered design, for web-software and product design (areas I work in).

JUSTIN- Instructional design is certainly valid, though I see that as a specific niche area. For example there are so many people technically doing Instructional design (or Computer Supported Collaborative Work)who are not calling it that. They are more broadly approaching design from one of the 10 areas above.

JOHN- Persuasive Design is a relatively new term mainly promoted by the sales-savvy Eiesenberg brothers in Brooklyn (Persuasion Architect, Chief Persuasion Officer). Persuasion from an academic perspective has been advanced by Stanford University and BJ Fogg at his Captology lab. To me persuasion is essential to understand and design into your web, software or product design. It's an outcome and an intention we build into our designs like trust, loyalty, desire, pleasure, fun (see Funology). To me you don't separate persuasion out from usability and treat it as if it's something new that usability isn't sensitive to- that's ridiculous (yes, that is a criticism of the articles I've seen on ClickZ by Bryan Eisenberg positing that!).

DAVE- Herbert Simon and the other social scientists, design luminaries from yester-year that are only uttered in academic contexts are certainly legitimate though I was afraid if I drilled into that level of philosophical and theoretical detail I might loose my readers.

Though I would put Bucky Fuller up there in your thinkers category, see the new poster I just created to connect his work to user advocacy:

(Cube Art, first poster down)
http://tinyurl.com/2obljs

[Carl Weiss]

- Wasn´t it Richard Saul Wurman that invented the term Information Architecture?

- I guess only bad graphic designers see themselves as just emotion expressers.

- If the analysis are broad, and even include industrial design, why aren´t fashion designers on the list? Or maybe architects?

[Justin Beller]

Might I suggest another definition of design? How about instructional design? This the creation of learning solutions to transfer knowledge. While the usability of a product ideally should be intuative in and of itself, there still is a need for a form of support or reference tools to enable end-users to complete tasks they may have little or no knowledge about. Sometimes these are in the form of electronic support systems. It's possible you can categorize this under design for the mind.

[John W. Furst]

Hi Frank! As I promised here I am to check back. I'd add "Persuasive Design" to your list. The goal it to increase the probability that users take a desired action (like subscribing to a list, place an order, ...). At its best I describe it as marriage between usability engineering and marketing. --John

[Dave]

Nice list, but I am curious why you left out the broader definitions of design created by some key design thinkers.

Herbert Simon, in the The Sciences of the Artificial defined design as
"transformation of existing conditions into preferred ones."

For those who are interested: Friedman, Cross, Stolterman, and Krippendorff also have interesting perspectives to share.