What is design топик

The Meaning of Design

Adapted from opening keynote presentation @ Toronto Tech Summit, Nov. 2016

It’s always felt a bit esoteric trying to describe what I do for a living.

Calling myself a designer frequently results in the misunderstanding that my job is to make software products “look pretty”. On the other hand, venturing to call myself a design leader or design strategist frequently garners looks of confusion, especially in those outside the technology and design industries. Even when speaking with others within the industry, a truly aligned understanding of design roles is rare.

What is Design?

Every company, every team, has their own understanding of what design is and what the role of designers should be. Within the user experience field, there are so many specializations within design roles — interaction designer, visual designer, information architect, motion designer, prototyper — and these roles can have overlaps with other domains such as marketing, architecture, industrial design, or even sound design.

To add to the confusion, no matter what the mix of roles on a team, UX as a discipline itself can be at varying levels of maturity within organizations. Some teams might be playing more of a service role and fighting for a seat at the strategy table. On the other hand, some companies might have Chief Design Officers and deeply embedded design teams that contribute at the highest levels of business and product strategy.

The understanding of what design is, can really vary across companies, organizations, and teams.

The Evolution of Design

In spite of the varying interpretation of design roles, we have universally seen a gradual maturing of the UX field over the years. At the industry level, the understanding of design and what designers do has evolved.

Design is no longer seen as just crafting UI elements or even product experiences. There is a broader understanding in the industry that design can influence the experience a user has with all of a company’s touchpoints. Ultimately, all these touchpoints and product experiences culminate in the overarching perception of a company’s brand — and design impacts all of this.

The focus has shifted. We’ve gone from the idea that designers simply create usable components and product designs, to the understanding that their work impacts the perception of entire brand and customer experiences.

Let’s Talk About Feelings

As we consider this broader impact of design on a company’s brand, it becomes important to see design as not just about usability, but also about feelings. People don’t just want products that work — they want to feel happy while using them.

Delivering delight and pleasure to our customers is critical for user engagement. However, what we are seeing increasingly is that customers want more. We are learning that delight alone isn’t enough.

As Steve Jobs spoke of the turmoil his generation experienced in the sixties, he mentioned a shift that began leading up to the new millennium:

“We wanted to more richly experience why we were alive, not just make a better life…there was definitely more to life than the materialism of the late 50’s and early sixties. We were going in search of something deeper.”

This search for depth has grown. Increasingly, people are finding gratification and a sense of purpose through creating connections, memories, and experiences. People are looking deeper for a sense of identity that can’t be derived only from material product purchases.

People want to feel as if they are involved in something bigger than themselves. They want to be able to identify with the products and services they use. People want to feel like that their lives have meaning.

What is meaning? Meaning is what gives us a sense of importance or worth. It’s very specific to each of us and it helps us interpret the world and decide how to act. Meaning is what helps us assess and determine what we value, believe, and desire.

Every choice that we make in our lives contributes to our own personal framework of meaning. Products or services that we decide to buy create a bond between us as the customer, and the company that we buy them from. And this bond becomes an intimate part of the meaning of our lives.

Designing for Meaning

Design isn’t just about making things look appealing, or just about usability, or even just delight. It is about taking products from being usable to delightful, and then beyond that — to meaningful.

Design is a way for us to deliver deep meaning to our customers through the experiences we craft.

We must strive to elevate the value we deliver to our customers from a basic, functional one, to one that goes much beyond. Design needs to not only deliver pleasure and delight, but must deliver the deep meaning that we know people are seeking.

The book Making Meaning is a great reference that contains powerful insights on driving brand and product innovation. It aims to get to the core of how to deliver meaningful experiences. It captures the 15 types of meaningful experiences that people most value and is based on extensive research around human needs.

Here are a few examples of how the work my teams have delivered in the past has translated to the concept of designing for meaning.

Example 1: Remote Collaboration

While working on a past remote collaboration design initiative, our team’s focus was to deeply understand how people work, and how they communicate and collaborate with each other remotely. Through our ethnographic research, we found what was really driving people was the desire to do well at work.

People wanted to appear valuable, they had a deep need to build strong relationships and rapport with others, and they were seeking to create things together. The deeper meaning that our customers were seeking was that of Accomplishment, Creation, and Community.

Example 2: Gaming & Entertainment

On another past project, our team was seeking to understand the deep meaning that people seek when they immerse themselves in gaming or entertainment contexts.

People lean on this type of entertainment to escape from reality and it was our job as gaming and entertainment designers to deliver fun, joy, and enjoyment to our users. The deeper meaning our customers were seeking was a sense of Freedom and Wonder — and a Community through which they could experience this with others.

Though I’m only a few months into my design leadership role at Google, I have already been exposed to some beautiful stories of the way Google products have changed people’s lives. The way in which Google products deliver a deep sense of meaning to users is astounding. The story below about Google Translate’s impact on the lives of new immigrants is bound to tug at your heartstrings.

Meaning is Important to Business

Everything that we design needs to embody the core meaning that users are seeking. Delivering meaning cannot be an afterthought. The desire to do so needs to be deeply embedded in a company’s culture, its mission, its strategy, and the core values of its employees.

Meaning needs to be part of the core intent of an organization.

Designing for meaning is not only beneficial for the user, but is also key for business success. Delivering experiences that get to the core of what customers really value means that they will identify more deeply with the brand and form a stronger bond with the company. Brand loyalty and advocacy will be higher and customers will have deeper engagement with products. This will in turn lead to higher use and retention. Rather than brief, transactional interactions with a product or brand, the interactions will be deeper and longer lasting.

Meaning is the guiding and driving force within each of us. It’s what helps us value ourselves, and the products and companies we interact with. Delivering meaning through experiences creates a deep bond with users. It elevates design to a higher level of maturity and strategic presence. And it helps deliver positive business outcomes.

Without meaning, we are missing the heart of what users are looking for.

No matter what industry we are in — whether we create products or services, whether we have an enterprise or consumer focus, and no matter what our role is — we have an opportunity to drive successful business results in a way that also impacts people’s lives.

Every touchpoint with the customer becomes an opportunity to bring more meaning to the lives of users. Regardless of whether you are a designer, product manager, marketer, or developer — I hope that you will allow your craft and your decisions to be guided by the goal of delivering meaning to others.

English Tech Blog

Technical student’s blog

What is Design?

11 Saturday Feb 2012

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Hello, dear readers!

It’s been very long time since I last wrote here. Sorry about that, I was busy a little bit. Meanwhile a new semester started and we already have plenty of boring academic stuff to do in all subjects. Our English classes are not an exception: we have a lot of tasks for our homework, and this semester is going to be full of reports, essays and presentations. So, I thought it would be a good idea to publish my homework right here. Any objections? 😉 Then, let’s get started!

The first task that our English teacher, Victoria Vladimirovna, gave us, is to prepare an article on the topic “What is design?”. I’ve done a little research on the net. Take a look at what I found.

Report: What is Design?

Design is everywhere – and that’s why looking for a definition may not help you grasp what it is. The word design means different things to different people. There are broad definitions and specific ones – both have drawbacks. Either they are too general to be meaningful or they exclude too much.

Wikipedia gives the following definitions:

One definition given by designer Richard Seymour is ‘making things better for people‘. It emphasises that design activity is focused first on human behaviour and quality of life, not factors like distributor preferences. But nurses or road sweepers could say they, too, ‘make things better for people‘. There may be no absolute definitions of design that will please everyone.

Scientists can invent technologies, manufacturers can make products, engineers can make them function and marketers can sell them, but only designers can combine insight into all these things and turn a concept into something that is desirable, practical, commercially successful and adds value to people’s lives.

There are many misconceptions about design. Magazines often use the word design when they mean style or fashion. For example, when they show a toaster or bottle opener which is well designed, the result is that people think that design is all about how things look. Design is also about how things work. In reality, the way how a product looks is something that (usually) happens at the end of development process.

Designers, unlike artists, can’t simply follow their creative feelings. They work in a commercial environment, which means there are many points to consider. Designers have to ask themselves questions such as: ‘Is the product really wanted?‘, ‘How is it different from everything else on the market?‘, ‘Does it fulfil a need?‘, ‘Will it cost too much to manufacture?‘ and ‘Is it safe?‘

Design is fundamental. People often need reminding that everything around us is designed and that design decisions impact on nearly every part of our lives, be it the environments we work in, the way we book holidays, or the way we go about getting the lid off the jam jar. When those things work, it’s taken for granted, but, as Bill Moggridge, founder of international consultancy IDEO, says: ‘A lot of trial and error goes into making things look effortless‘. And I completely agree.

What is design?

Generally speaking, it is the process of envisioning and planning the creation of objects, interactive systems, buildings, vehicles, etc. It user-centered, i.e. users are at the heart of the design thinking approach. It is about creating solutions for people, physical items or more abstract systems to address a need or a problem.

A common misconception about design

Design is not about making things pretty just for the sake of it

Nowadays, it can be categorized as a fancy sounding word, and there seems to be a certain amount of misconceptions surrounding it. But what is it really at its core? Is it simply a process to make pretty looking things? Far from it. It doesn’t focus purely on aesthetics, nor is it about adding ornaments to an item. First and foremost is it about making the user’s interaction with the environment more natural and complete.

The key concepts of design

Art or science?

While not being exactly an art nor a science, it takes elements from both. Art is about creating something that expresses the author’s vision, ideas and feelings. While designers can express feelings and leave impressions through their work, doing so is not their prime objective. So it takes the creating aspect of art, as it is about crafting an item, a tool, an experience even.

Design is at the service of the people

On the other hand, it takes the problem-solving aspect of science. It exists primarily to address a particular need. To quote Steve Jobs: “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

The creative design process

Problems are best solved when approached in a comprehensive and systemic way. The goal of this process is to guide you and organize your work to turn ideas into concrete solutions. Designers do research and collect information about the problem they are considering: who is person facing this problem? Why? How are other people trying to solve it? From this research, they make a general hypothesis and identify the main features should be part of the answer. Then with these key aspects in mind it’s time to experiment different solutions and iterate. This last part is about learning from what works, what doesn’t to adapt your solution to fit the user’s need best.

Great design is invisible

It is achieved when the user doesn’t even notice its presence. This principle is particularly true in interaction design. Navigating a user interface should feel natural and unhindered. The user should be able to understand its rules and the meaning of its elements almost immediately. The user is guided by an invisible hand made of colors, shapes, contrast, repetitions.

The Meaning of Design: What Design Is and Why It’s Important

The many-sided nature of design

In simple and brief words, a design is a plan to make something.

“Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose.”

― Charles Eames, American designer, architect, and filmmaker

fantasizing… by SAM JI

The purpose of design

Every type of design exists to solve problems. To see the problem and find a solution, designers rely on data. So the toolset of the designer is based on research, not prettification.

Your design doesn’t have to be original

The great design solution you are looking for is out there.

The real challenge is to find it.

Every time you make a user think through an ‘innovative’ navigation pattern or an unorthodox menu placement, it’s a chance to lose them. Not because they are dumb but because we gravitate to familiar things more than we do to the unknown. If we do go for it though, we make sure everything about the new design is bulletproof.

Attitude by SAM JI

Designers are not like their users

Everybody has biases and it’s okay. Cognitive biases reduce the load and help us stay sane. That being said, it’s important to know whether your bias is damaging your design work.
Designers and owners know their product inside out. Their bias is called the Curse of Knowledge. It’s when you find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people. On top of that, your goals are entirely different from those of the people you are building for.

People want to get things done, not listen about how cool you are.

What makes us different? If you are reading this, you are top of the food chain when it comes to computers. Most people are not and they don’t care. They don’t know what it takes to build a digital product just like we don’t know what it takes for our computers to work off the power line. Everybody knows something no one else does.
Oddly enough, the more employees a design company has, the stronger their detachment from real users. No matter how good they think they are. Ask Google about Buzz.
That is why it’s vital for design agencies to keep it humble and always research their users, study their goals and pains. The more we know about our users, the less biased we are. Eventually, people will have their own habits and biases about our product. But we have got to convert them first.

Submerged thoughts by SAM JI

UX design is more than just about usability

cover art by SAM JI

Design is not a stage of the project

Even in deep tech circles, there is an idea that design is a time in the project when they draw sketches of the interfaces. It is not. Design starts when the owner first puts together the image of the product and ends when the project is done which is never.
The choice of a business model can’t rely on the goals of the owners. There might be a natural talent and an insane gut feeling but it would be foolish to rest on them.

Knowledge of how the product could fit into people’s lives is UX. Knowledge of how to get that knowledge is UX.

UX does not result in UI. It penetrates production, testing, analytics, support, and updates that follow the creation of just interfaces. Those who realize that a designer is more than just a pencil, end up with a consistent and reliable product as opposed to a patchwork of narrow tasks.
A business owner shouldn’t be surprised when no other than a designer will start asking them about their business strategy. In fact, a designer will only be drawing the UIs for 12.5% of the time they’ll be involved in the project.

cover art by SAM JI

Eye candy design works

To reach more people, your expertise has to spread thin and let emotions onboard users. The visual design drives emotion.

This is how web design works. The vibe of a website decides whether a person will stay and discover the features. Design is engineering in the sense that we know how to engineer delight. Through visual design, we bring meaning to ordinary things and help people find value.

An illustration is a shell for something that it represents on a deeper level. When we designed a professional platform for architects, we created an animation of elements that mimics the behavior of a construction site.

It might look subtle and may not seem worth the struggle at the early stages of design like wireframing and prototyping. But it’s important for a designer to keep in mind the image of the finished product. More so, the way you visually present your digital product says a lot about the brand in general.

No matter how good the service, if it doesn’t care for itself, neither will the people.

For skeptics, no attractive things don’t work better but they are always worth a try. Beautifully designed products get half of their credibility because of the visual appeal. It’s the developer’s job to pull the rest of the features to that level. Most people think if it looks good, it has to work well as well.

“Usability is not everything. If usability engineers designed a nightclub, it would be clean, quiet, brightly lit, with lots of places to sit down, plenty of bartenders, menus written in 18-point sans-serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms. But nobody would be there. They would all be down the street at Coyote Ugly pouring beer on each other.”

The point is, how the product works is important but how it looks while doing that is a game-changer.

closer view by SAM JI

Simple vs minimal in design

Minimalism is a reduced quantity

The practice of reducing and decluttering is a discipline of its own. To know what to reduce means to have confidence there will be no tension put on a user as the result of our design experiments. It’s called friction. Every design decision we make has to reduce friction. Sometimes it coerces designers into minimalism, hence the thriving trend for minimalism in web and app design. But it’s important to know where to stop.

Reducing the volume of text on buttons means substituting it with icons. But how universal are the icons? Are you 100% confident your mute icon is unambiguous and won’t mean radar to some? The Floppy Disk “Save” Icon is starting to lose a whole generation of people who have never seen one in real life.

Minimal interface design is not purpose-driven. It’s a style. Simplicity comes from our understanding of the experience no matter how multi-elemental the UI is.

The design has to be visible first so that it won’t do harm. The notorious hamburger menu has taken a beating but made its way into the designers’ minds and earned respect. What this shows is you can’t force minimalism and count on simplicity.

All Adobe products are insanely non-minimalistic. At the same time, they are perfectly clear in terms of performance and functionality. You can research the interface and make it simple, yours. But you can’t make yours something that’s not there.

To demonstrate the magnitude of the issue with simplicity and minimalism, let us bring Nielsen Norman Group’s UX case study of Tesla Model S’ 17-inch screen car interface. The main idea is that by mounting this tablet-like device on the dashboard, Tesla tapped into a realm of drivelessness and made the experience way more simple. They minimized the driver’s input but created a new pattern of behavior that might appear dangerous.
Take lane assistance. It minimizes the driver’s efforts to change lanes on one hand and dissolves their attention on the other. An engineer’s urge to minimize the pattern might cost someone their life.

Designers have to step in and take responsibility for the mental state we put people in with our products.

If it’s driving, we can’t simplify it and give people a full sense of security because. We can’t know all the possible outcomes of all the possible scenarios. Let people stay in charge, but make the experience clear and enjoyable.

Vintage wheels by SAM JI

User interface design

A user interface is the main touchpoint of a designed product and a user. The UI design is about providing a user with the simplest and most efficient way to interact with a product. In that sense, a designer has to be well aware of the following three concepts of user interface design:

Understanding each of these three gives a designer the most important tools to build a visual solution for any type of product.

To become visual, elements have to be designed. Those which are visible by nature, need design even more.

The UI (user interface) consists of several fundamental elements that all have to be addressed with high-level awareness.

Color in design

What most people and, sadly, many designers know about color does not do it enough justice. Color is the first thing we’d notice but the last we’d understand. Colors can’t be explained and described unless seen. They can’t be changed but can be learned and used. This is how nature communicates with you, and that is why color is so important in design. Ben Hersh wrote a great guide to color in design, you might want to check it out to better understand the question.

“Colors are powerful symbols by which you live or die; they’re worth paying attention to.”

Psychology separates color studies into a standalone discipline. Marketers know the basics of color theory in design and use it to stimulate people’s sense of security, alert, and so on. Designers use color to speak instead of words. Yet, colors don’t exist outside our consciousness.
Before the age of digital screens, people used colors as attributes of physical objects. That’s why there are so many color names attached to the toponyms (names of places). Like umber named after the soil in the Italian region of Umbria and turquoise from the French for “Turkish”. To become a recognized color, it had to exist in the real world.
As our understanding of color grew stronger, color theories began to pop out attempting to define, systemize, and classify colors.

From the Middle Ages to the 1970s’ advent of HSL and HSV color models, all the exploration and discovery lead us to the three colors: red, green, and blue.

Out of the combinations of these three, you can get virtually any color. However, this is the set we decide to stick to today. It has been different before and it might change in the future. There is no such thing as primary colors apart from those we decide to consider as such.

Prism by Jack Sabbath

We differentiate the current color models depending on the media they will be displayed on and the purpose of the visual presentation. We might leave out some colors which are not visible on the screens or include those which are not visible by the eye. Modern color technology is controlled by mathematics. But the problem is the variability of conditions under which we see these colors.
A modern color theory puts our brain in charge of our color perception depending on the context and looks to find the schemes and methods of producing colors accordingly.

“The color spaces we can see look more like psychedelic pinecones.”

For a designer, to know color means to be able to mathematically select the colors and have the choice backed up by data. At the same time, we as designers have to be keenly aware of how colors are perceived in different cultures and how that perception changes over time.

Colors are the products of physics and mathematics but also intuitive and elusive enough to never let us rest.

Typography in design

Another thing that pops up every time there’s a talk about digital product content is typography. Technically, being just a shell for the meaning, it sometimes can be as significant as the meaning itself. Because if it doesn’t represent that meaning in good fashion, it will go unnoticed.
Text is the strongest medium of information. It might not be so much in terms of emotive response but definitely is in terms of being informative. Text is delivered by means of fonts, or typefaces, in general – typography.

Certain things only exist in one representation – text.

Typography is a design patrimony. Like any other design-specific method, typography is purpose-driven but also aesthetic. As a functional element, typography in the UI is used to guide people, invoke an action, and help them through the entire experience. That’s about the headings, titles, text in menus, buttons, CTAs, and so on.

Pet Care Website by Shakuro

Typography as part of branding helps the product stand out.

Scroll by Yoga Perdana

Icons in design

Turned out, lists are good for structuring but do no good in the visual aspect.

MaRc – Diner List Component by Paarth Desai

Rank System by 60.o

There is a fine line between icons that convey a metaphor allowing designers to cover all bases in case the textual meaning is missed and pure decorative-functioning icons. We make sure icons work in the first place, which means they motivate a user to do what we expect from them.
Ideally, icons should work the way emojis do – as a universal language flexible enough to deliver any message cross-culturally and obvious enough to leave no second guesses 💡

Animation in design

Every physical object moves. They might be still technically, but in relation to the environment, they all move. As the Sun goes over a stone in the woods, the game of light and shadows enlivens the dead stone.

Our eyes and brain are designed to capture movement because it bears a lot of information. It’d be a shame to leave it unaccounted for.

Motion is the first thing we see in the product along with color, images, and typography. These four are the main contributors to the brand’s/product’s personality. It’s important for a product to have a stance on how it’s elements move and what stands behind that movement. But first, why animation is important in UX design:

Triumph Motorcycle Shop Animation by Shakuro

The reason to animate the interface depends on the goal of that specific interaction. Let’s take engaging a user and directing their attention. Since movement is something we instantly see, it makes sense to use animation for things like banner ads and spams. Ads aren’t expected to sell the product, as much as they hunt for views. A view is a sell and they will get it from you by using cheap tricks. Banner ads animation is definitely a cheap trick that works.
How and when to use animation:

The principle itself is innocent though. More so, if we use animation to direct users in a way that helps them, the same banner ad principles might contribute to a good UX. For example, a file sending gone wrong does not have to be a pop-up with an error code or a “whoops” type message. We can attract attention to this by using a meaningful motion graphic.

Mail Warning Icon Animation by Ömer Korkmaz

This animation won’t get you confused about the success of your sending and will make sure you address the issue whatever that is. At the same time, it won’t be too intimidating because the animation is done in a friendly way.

Animation magnifies the satisfaction you get from successfully performing a task. The more complex the task, the more rewarding it should be. Motion is how we convey the mood and the attitude of a product to the user’s actions.

Submit Button by Claudio Scotto

Such animation can cover up the time needed to complete the technical request or form submission. The spinning bubble ensures there is work going on and appeals to our natural feeling of completion.

Most web processes have designated patterns that people recognize and expect. At the same time, with a variety of devices and screen media, it’s extremely challenging to maintain the same behavior with a lesser estate. This means we have to divide certain processes into comprehensible bits while mapping the entire progress.
This is how Google addresses a rather complicated and long process of copying information to Pixel phones.

Since this is a phone, you won’t be able to just switch to a different tab and keep yourself busy with something else. Still, you have to know what exactly is happening and why it is important.
The animation is a huge part of modern UI/UX design and we are just getting started with it. It’s a natural process of evolution that will ultimately make all animation meaningful and purposeful, forever cutting the ties to decoration. Added complexity will be replaced with modalities and subtle messages a well-thought-out animation certainly brings.

UX writing

UX writing is a process of creating copy for user interfaces. Some of you might be surprised to see writing listed among the fundamental aspects of interface design. However, writing is the most important accomplishment in human history. We are surrounded by products that are just the recreation of someone’s ideas. Sometimes those ideas are centuries old. Ideas travel by words.
The reason why animal life is finite is the inability to pass the experience of one animal to another after it. As humans, we can do this.

We pass knowledge and multiply it. This is called collective thinking and it has writing in its core.

Copywriting Keynote by Larissa Herbst

Design values individuality equally to usefulness. Tech culture took away individuality in writing only leaving it to the creative sphere. However, if the design speaks to the emotive perception, writing has to follow.
This is how UX writing was born. At some point, designers started using a specific vernacular to name the UI elements. Good or bad, they were authentic bits of text, specific for the product. We call it microcopy and it works like a regular copy with a tweak. The tweak is that even though the text is clear and simple, you can’t reuse it for another product. It won’t feel right, like something is missing. That something is context. Microcopy says things differently and exudes topicality.

Password Input + Microcopy by Mauricio Bucardo

All of a sudden the unification everybody was going for gave way to individuality through one of the best ways to pass information – words. Because words matter.
Some designers went astray and became… UX writers. And they started approaching writing with all their knowledge and skills of visual influence. The UX writing principles quickly found their form in a pyramid.

There are two layers. UX writing does not have to be personal. The essence of the product can be fulfilled by the UX writing principles alone. If it is clear, it’s helpful and if it helps, it becomes significant. The top layer is what UX writing is amplified by – the socially pleasing brand voice.
On paper, it’s quite simple but how do you put it to practice with real words and real problems?

Why we need design

Why do we use design in our everyday lives? As has been said at the beginning of this article, the meaning of design is basically about planning the most optimal way to reach a certain goal. From this perspective, everything that surrounds us is the result of design, and we design one thing or another every day, be it your breakfast or a complex report needed for your job. It’s something that is always around us holding everything together. Design is important in life because it’s an incredibly powerful force, forever changing and being changed.
Web and app design is about business goals at its heart. The value of good design is the heightened chances of success. It matters because, without an adequate design survey, every business venture is a shot in the dark. Maybe you get lucky, maybe you don’t. Professional web and app design give a company’s customers a better experience, and that’s what matters. Entrepreneurs are proud of their businesses, so why not make them perform even better, reflecting the companies’ personalities?
A good design can make people trust you more, alter customer perception, make you memorable, get your message across, make your product work to the fullest, and shine. A great one can do even more.

What is design? Every professional and author, every team, and every company has its own definition of design and understanding of what it does and what it’s all about. Each of them addresses the question of the meaning of design very differently.
But it seems that it all comes down to the simple fact that the meaning of design however it may vary depending on different projects, fields, and theories is not about beautification as such, but more of solving the specific tasks and making the lives of users better, clearer, more enjoyable.
The article was originally published in January 2020 and was updated in November 2020 to make it more relevant and comprehensive.

What is Design?

I dare to share my definition of Design by using just two words and to expound my theory about the elements which make Design possible.

You might notice that the best definition of design is Design itself, but conceptualization provided by language is essential in order to build the reality and to understand it. You know what to do, how to do it and why it is necessary.

Is every product designed? What is Design? And, what is not?

There are quite good definitions. There are many which I may share, but I am not completely satisfied with any of them, with their content or form. Usually, definitions are long. Boring. Abstract. And they might only be applied to a very specific field. In other words…
I have not found a well-designed definition of Design.

More than once, the definition was excellent, but, in my opinion, it did not get distinction. It was composed by words with empty meaning such as indefinite articles, pronouns, conjunctions… Although you might think that it could be an exercise in pretension and certainly not original, I would like to share a stylish definition of Design.

A good definition is one which summarizes the essence of the concept by using just a few words. This case, the essence is designing. Why it does exist. An interdisciplinary definition. Universal. With no expiration date. Everlasting. Eternal. And, for sure, obvious.

My Definition of Design

Design means. beautiful solutions

An obviousness made of just two words. Beautiful solutions. Any other word decorates what has been stated before with implicit information, therefore: unnecessary.

Why Beautiful and Solutions?

Beauty understood as contemplative satisfaction and usability (not decoration).

The target of any design is meeting NEEDS when specific SITUATIONS, for users (human, animal and vegetable) and products (space, component, contents…):

1. Among these NEEDS, designing deals with the way it works innerly and outterly.

2. When we refer to SITUATIONS, these are related to context and means: places, devices, clothes, paper, webs…

Design means Beautiful Solutions. But, why beautiful?

Beautiful (Good taste).

Although being invisible, beauty is the secret ingredient which makes the product goes further from its usability and what makes the user taste the gratifying pleasure given by the experience of using it.

Design does not exist if there is no beauty. They are shaped solutions. Usable shapes, with criteria and logic; but shaped.

We all have reached those shaped solutions after a designing process, but that was not the final result. It is like painting a picture and saying that it is Art. If Picasso did it, there is no doubt about it, but if we do it, probably, it will not be Art. I am aware of that demanding premise.

Creating something which will be used is a responsibility process which requires a great demand.

Beauty is a concept based on aesthetics which is quite subjective and cultural. There are a lot of types of beauty, depending on composition and emotions.

Some types transmit a desire to buy and status (such as Apple), other types are aseptic, anonymous, invisible and they may go unnoticed (such as Google). All of them are good and valid according to the product, usability, users and contents; but harmony and admiration are two universal elements which guide us in order to consider something beautiful.

Harmony

What is harmony? Wellness and aesthetic confidence.

Harmony might be achieved thanks to the balance of proportions among the different parts of a whole. It is a universal concept. Harmony leads to transparency, balance, consistency, contrast and, in many cases, symmetry. All these concepts may be applied with some variations according to user’s culture and mind.

Harmony can be noticed visually but, on a cognitive level, it reaches us almost automatically.

It is the other universal element in order to consider something beautiful, apart from harmony, it is admiration. Admiration, on an aesthetic level, is contemplative satisfaction. Concerning design, apart from contemplative satisfaction, admiration is satisfaction of use.

If harmony just exists, with no contemplative satisfaction or satisfaction of use, the product has no design. It is a shaped solution. As it was stated before, it is a demanding premise, but that is what I think.

What is a great design? It may be noticed instantly. It is the «Woo!» when you see something beautiful. And «Woow!» means harmony and admiration (contemplative satisfaction, affordance and satisfaction of use).

Design means Beautiful solutions.

Which elements, once solutions and beauty have been analysed, make a good design possible?

1/5.- Interaction

Solutions are to be used. Products are thought to be used and they are designed to be easily used.

Design is interaction. People. Contents. Customization.

Interaction between product and people. Interaction among users. Interaction with contents.

2/5.- Decisions

How to reach a solution? Decisions.

Design is at the service of user and product. In order to reach a good design, we must give priority to three decisions that will be taken during its development:

A) Simplicity… the way it is perceived.

B) Clarity… the way it is used.

C) Efficiency… the way it has been made + the way it works + the way it is kept = the way it is.

Simplicity (The way it is perceived)

Outer simplicity helps us to understand the product and it does not produce the logical stress which appears when something new, unknown, is noticed.

Nowadays, although we are living in a society in which the more you have, the more important you are, simplicity is an outstanding value. Rococo, epaulets and tunning have damaged our conception.

How many products which are excessively ornate have taken the spent of time? And how many products whose design seems to be quite simple have been in our markets for decades, centuries? A sequined dress which can only be worn in very special occasions? A black Chanel which fits during the day and at night?

Leonardo Da Vinci said: «Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.» It is a lovely sentence compared to the famous statement «Keep It Simple, Stupid».

Clarity (The way it is used)

What is clarity? For me, it is similar to usability. It is based on foreseeing the NEEDS with no ornaments. A visual, mental, targets and use prediction. It is related to outward appearance (visual, graphic, aesthetic design) and information design.

Clarity is functional harmony and, as it was stated before, it leads to transparency, balance, consistency and contrast. Clarity is a key ingredient in order to achieve differentiation.

For instance, an obvious case: if you are surfing the net and the text is black but links are blue, the user will be able to identify them much faster and easier. That is contrast! Differentiation!

Therefore, if there is no clarity, we will not understand and use the product appropriately. This product may be a building or a web page. If there is no clarity, solutions are not good enough. If there is no clarity, Design is not good.

How to reach clarity? Thanks to visual simplicity, by solving the main information demands since the very first moment while we are observing the different parts of the product.

Efficiency (The way it is)

If we go through Wikipedia, we can find that efficiency is the extent to which time or effort is well used for the intended task or purpose. From an economic point of view, we will be told that it is the relationship between the obtained results (profits, met targets…) and the sources that were used.

In Physics, it is the relationship between exergy and investid energy.
In my book, efficiency means, concerning products, respect. It is the love relationship between the way it has been made, the way it works and the way it must be kept. They all dance together the Blue Danube waltz. It is the sound of water in nature…

If the product itself or the material of the product (an airport, a mobile phone, a web page, a suit…) determines the visual aspect (in a bad way), it is not well-designed. If the final price has increased, if the energetic waste is high when making some non-basic parts and they do pollute too much, it is not well-designed.

If keeping the product, the web page, a suit, a public space… is too laborious, in case of users or creators, what leads to creating new models of those products, it do means that it is not well-designed.

Efficiency affects both the inner level and the outer level. It is based on creating something with regard to past in order it to work better in the present and it could put up with the coming features of future.

A web page; an example of efficiency: design the texts in order to create a web page similar to those in which the language is different. How many web pages have you seen which suffer from modifications when you change the language or when you use the Google translator? If they do not change, it is efficiency.

We have already talked about simplicity, clarity and efficiency as the three decisions that will be taken with the aim of creating a good design.

As a review, Dieter Rams told: «As little design as possible».

3/5.- Ethics

After having discussed about the topic, it would be quite obvious to state that designing is a lovely and tasty activity which leads to user’s happiness and pleasure.

Leaving the epicures and hedonists aside, Ethics goes further:

From the moment the user do use your product on, he is the owner. Make him or her feel like home. Create a simple design (but not poor). Do not create a product full of shapes and colours. Do not make people think but, if you do so, make him feel intelligent with a surprising solution. Yes, at times we have to surprise them. We should make them feel free on visual design, on contents, on space (not like in the crowded cabin scene by The Marx Brothers). The famous white space on web design.

Confidence. Make him feel powerful. Fashion knows how to do it perfectly. How many times have you worn some trousers or a sweater and you have felt more beautiful, intelligent, confident?
The experience of joy when using a product makes a person feel higher. It will make you earn money.

As a summary, how to get that feeling of freedom? By knowing the users and their needs. We must be honest. But, how to be honest?

Concerning design, what is honesty? What do we ask when we want a mobile phone, a web page, an airport…? We want them to work appropriately and to solve the information demands by the user. We want them not to make us waste money. A product without a planned obsolescence, easy and cheap to keep. Resistant. It is even letting the user customize the contents thanks to the elements that were mentioned before: beauty, simplicity, clarity, efficiency…

Honesty also means that the product does not change suddenly not to be recognized. That case, the process can be carried out progressively. Designing a web page and designing a blog is not the same. Known products with a lot of users change surreptitiously. Gradually.

Honesty is what we have already talked about and… social responsibility. The ethics of progress.

Which was the very first design in History? A stone to hunt? A bonfire? A torch? Designing means knowing. It means progress. Knowledge. Economic and social development. It is the key factor in order to reach equality, justice, solidarity, accessibility… If Design did not exist, we would live in the Stone Age. Does the Patent Register help or hinder innovation? Is it a break to wealth?

It is a quite important discuss that will take long, but let us talk about another controversial topic.

4/5.- Art

Is design Art? Yes, undoubtedly. A horrible picture is art, but horrible. A great design is art, brilliant art. It is…

I reached three conclusions after studying those three aspects which are shared by both activities:

1. Artists and designers not always create masterpieces. Bad design is all around us in our daily life but it has not affected to what we all know as actual Art.

2. Design is not decoration. Decoration does not lead the product to work appropriately or the user experience. Design does.

3. Both disciplines are subjective. Art is experience. The most important aspect in design is function. A visual design generates emotions (Google and the use satisfaction). Yes, the great design is Art.

Why is it Art? Designers create new realities as artists do, but they improve and transform them thanks to the interaction with users. As we have already observed, what is designed is used.

Therefore, if Design generates subjective and evocative experiences, apart from making our lives easier, we may define it as an upper Art. Is it a too bold statement? 🙂

From a creative point of view, which is the difference between architecture and the creation of a mobile phone? The target is the same; we all want them to work. The difference is that History stated seven arts and architecture is one of them.

In my book, architecture would not be an art on its own. It would belong to design and we would keep on having seven arts: music, painting, literature, dance, sculpture, DESIGN and film.
If we compare them, Design is the actual art concerning materials, shapes, intentions, expenses…

But, let us back to the beginning. Dieter Rams, Jonathan Ive, Zinedine Zidane… aren’t they artists? Isn’t Zidane an artist for being a footballer?

A designer is a person who creates beautiful solutions, who generates collective profits, I mean for other users, although people do not consider it.

Which is the best example of design as Art? The use of symmetry and geometry by Renaissance painters. The divine proportion. The Vitruvian Man…

5/5.- Results

And last, but not least. Design means results.

Art is quite subjective (you may like it or not). From that moment on, the market creates a demand and it fixes the price of the piece. Design, apart from being an art, can be measured clearly. It is subjective, but some results are measurable: number of users, sales…

In short, these are numbers which are not quite subjective, as it happens in other arts.

Does the lack of emotion in maths break the charm of art? Do not lie to ourselves. It is not the enemy of creativity or inspiration.On the contrary, it provides diffusion, attractiveness… Value.

Which is the role of design when we have to buy and decide? We all agree that if the price is appropriate, design is more important: sales, credibility, reputation…

Conclusion

When disruptive moments, Design became prestigious. It is a decisive economic factor.

In History, the high class did not think that design was an art like painting, music or architecture are, because it was a millenary activity based on small objects. This consideration has changed, mainly, thanks to the challenges met by designers in the twentieth century.

CEOs must be designers. Enterprises whose CEOs are really aware of what design is are much more innovative than those which have just better managers. The clearest example is Steve Jobs.

Think of design. Create beautiful solutions. Our children’s world will be better.