What is design?

For most people, the word design is associated with the act of creating something beautiful. Whether it be a website, art, or architecture, the result is often thought of as a single, tangible product.

Design isn’t pretty-making. It’s problem solving.

To those in the world of design, it is much more than that. It goes beyond creativity, instead focusing on using raw data to create something that will solve a problem for the target audience.

Data (n): things known or assumed as facts, making the basis of reasoning or calculation.

Just what is data? Data goes beyond what you learned in your statistics class or your weekly financial spreadsheet. Who are the people behind those numbers? What are their thoughts, feelings, emotions, and actions? Those sorts of data are what we uncover as we explore a problem through the lens of design. It may present itself in a number of ways: quantitative surveys, qualitative interviews, even the prototypes generated through design thinking can be considered data.

Armed with these artifacts and data, we can begin the process of design. Using this data, we attempt to create an understanding of the specific needs of the customer to help us “design” a new experience.

Again, design in this context may not necessarily be visual. It may be better to think about design as a system of asynchronous events that are working together to communicate specific instructions, inspire a particular emotion, or motivate a user to take a particular action. As with most systems, it is complex: consisting of numerous touchpoints all working together to inspire these actions.

Next time you see a design you like — whether it be a website, a building, or a waiting room — take a moment to think about what that design is actually accomplishing. What are the hidden elements that tie together the experience and inspire you in a specific way? This is what we aim to do when we approach a problem with “design” — it’s not prettymaking, it’s problem solving.