Glossary of Design
A lot is going on in the world of Design. People are starting to use design in many different ways, from Aesthetics and Process, through to Strategy, Systemic and Culture change. Over the last couple of years we’ve experienced it all, and we’ve seen a lot of confusion with the numerous Design roles people are using.
So to clear things up, we’ve created the following list, with headliners from us, and with descriptions from around the internet that we feel best define that Design role.
We’ve tried to condense each role down to it’s bare minimum, these are not the ultimate outcome of each role, just a way for people to think about what each role is trying to achieve.
Note: this list is not exhaustive, or in any particular order, I like chaos.
Co-Design
‘Designing With People’. The practice of Designing something with the people who will use it.
Co-Design is designing for, and most importantly, with, people. Governments around the world are starting to adopt Co-Design as a way to connect people to policy, see Lauren Tan’s post on this here….
Design Thinking
‘Design something like a Designer’. Using the mindset, process, and methods of a designer to create or change something.
“Design thinking is a human-centred approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”
Tim Brown, president and CEO, IDEO.
Human-Centred Design
‘People first’. Using a Design Thinking (see above) approach, with humans at the very centre of everything you do. This includes customers, employees, citizens, the community.
“Human-centered design is a creative approach to problem solving and the backbone of our work at IDEO.org. It’s a process that starts with the people you’re designing for and ends with new solutions that are tailor made to suit their needs. Human-centered design is all about building a deep empathy with the people you’re designing for; generating tons of ideas; building a bunch of prototypes; sharing what you’ve made with the people you’re designing for; and eventually putting your innovative new solution out in the world.”
Service Design
‘The Best Service for people’. Designing a service from the point of view of the customer, rather than the organisation.
“Service design is a method for improving the quality of your service. Those improvements are directed at both the users and staff of your organization.”
Graphic Design
‘Beautiful and motivating visual messages’. Creating print, digital, or physical assets to convey a message in a visual way to people.
“Graphic design, also known as communication design, is the art and practice of planning and projecting ideas and experiences with visual and textual content. The form of the communication can be physical or virtual and may include images, words, or graphic forms. The experience can take place in an instant or over a long period of time.”
Juliette Cezzar.
Experience Design
‘The Best Experiences for people’. Designing something from an experience point of view, for example, the experience of buying a product, receiving it, using it, and interacting with the supplier long into it’s useful life.
“Experience design is not a checklist, a recipe, or a series of manoeuvres; it is a way of thinking. It uses brand as a compass for identifying differentiated value and experience. It considers how products, services, and solutions play a role in delivering value over time and how this must be accounted for even in the early phases of innovation or the product design process. It considers all stages of the customer journey as opportunities to provide value and further engage customers. And it brings the concept of time to the table as a way of exploring options, innovation, implications, and interdependencies.”
Patrick Newbery, Principal at Method.
Interior Design
‘Beautiful and energising places for people’. Designing the physical spaces where we work, live, and play.
“Interior design is all about how we experience spaces. It’s a powerful, essential part of our daily lives and affects how we live, work, play, and even heal. Comfortable homes, functional workplaces, beautiful public spaces — that’s interior design at work."
Design Strategy
‘The Right Choices, based on Design’. Using Design, and in particular, human needs and desires, to inform the strategic direction of an organisation.
“Big global companies are already quietly making a rather fundamental shift in the way they approach and perceive strategy. In essence, these companies are shifting from thinking of strategy as a problem-solving exercise — to viewing it as a design challenge.”
Niklas Leifelt
Business Design
‘Business models focussed on Customers’. Designing business models from a customer or employee point of view, rather than purely a market focus.
“Business Design is a human-centred approach to innovation. It applies the principles and practices of design to help organizations create new value and new forms of competitive advantage. At its core, Business Design is the integration of customer empathy, experience design and business strategy.”
Motion Design
‘Beautiful and motivating moving visual messages’. Designing dynamic on-screen experiences involving sound and visuals to convey a message to people.
“Essentially, motion design is a discipline that applies graphic design principles to filmmaking and video production through the use of animation and visual effects. Examples include films, videos, animated text, and web-based animations and apps.”
Interface Design (UI): VR and AI and Digital
‘The Best Interfaces for people’. Designing the interfaces we interact with on our screens, this is an emerging field in the world of VR and AR where interactions have no 2D bounds, in this world, an apple can act as an interface.
“User Interface (UI) Design focuses on anticipating what users might need to do and ensuring that the interface has elements that are easy to access, understand, and use to facilitate those actions. UI brings together concepts from interaction design, visual design, and information architecture.”
Interaction Design
‘The Best Interactions for people’. Designing the interaction we have with things, this is very similar to experience design, but focuses more on touch points.
“Interaction Design (IxD) defines the structure and behavior of interactive systems. Interaction designers strive to create meaningful relationships between people and the products and services that they use, from computers to mobile devices to appliances and beyond. Our practices are evolving with the world.”
We do Human-Centred Design with clients. Subscribe to our Design for Business publication for more, and if you have any questions, feel free to get in touch.
