What Is Designing?

(2009)
by John Chris Jones

1. The objectives of designing become less concerned with the product itself and
more concerned with the changes that manufacturers, distributors, users, and
society as a whole, are expected to make in order to adapt to, and to benefit
from, the new design.
2. The fundamental problem is that designers are obliged to use current
information to predict a future state that will not come about unless their
predictions are correct. The final outcome of designing has to be assumed
before the means of achieving it can be explored: the designers have to work
backwards in time from an assumed effect upon the world to the beginning of a
chain of events that will bring the effect about.
3. Designing should not be confused with art, science, or mathematics. It is a
hybrid activity which depends, for its successful execution, upon a proper
blending of all three and is most unlikely to succeed if it is exclusively identified
with any one. The main point of difference is that of timing.

Design : A Very Short Introduction (2005)

Chapter : What Is Design?
by John Heskett

1. Design is one of the basic characteristics of what it is to be human, and an

essential determinant of the quality of human life. It affects everyone in every
detail of every aspect of what they do throughout each day. As such, it matters
profoundly.
2. No other creatures on the planet have this same capacity. It enables us to
construct our habitat in unique ways, without which we would be unable to
distinguish civilization from nature. Design matters because, together with
language, it is a defining characteristic of what it is to be human, which puts it
on a level far beyond the trivial.
3. Part of the reason why design can be used in this arbitrary manner is that it has
never cohered into a unified profession, such as law, medicine, or architecture,
where a licence or similar qualification is required to practise, with standards
established and protected by self-regulating institutions. Design has splintered
into ever-greater subdivisions of practice without any overarching concept or
organization, and so can be appropriated by anyone.