> [A Designer] is a planner with an aesthetic sense [[Design as Art – Bruno Munari#^rw283601349|◇]] > — [[Design as Art – Bruno Munari|Munari (1966)]] > Design is the conscious and intuitive effort to impose meaningful order.[[Design for the Real World (1984)#^bad34c|◇]] > — [[Design for the Real World (1984)|Papanek (1984)]] Design is many things, and takes place under the cover of many other names. Planning with an aesthetic sense makes sense, but I would restate it as ‘Planning with an aesthetic sense for the benefit of our entire living ecosystem’. High stakes. Many people call what they do *Design*, but many don't call their work, design. Many of these are engineers, programmers, marketing people, [[Everyone is a designer|but they are also designers]]. However, in the field of *traditional* design,[^1] there is also a tendency to call *Designers* something other than Designers; UX Practitioners, Creatives, Artists![^3] Often these names are given to us by non-designers, as a way of clarifying — *for them* — what they perceive to be some sort of alchemy. Design in all its forms — like any seemingly other complex process — only a series of simple atomic steps that combined add up to complexity and the *feel* of deliberate design, usually when [[Form and function cannot be usefully separated|form follows function naturally]]. This can be done by anyone with the right process. There is no need to invoke the spirit world when describing design and the people who do it.[^4] When we look at a page and ask why it looks designed, compared to another page which looks undesigned, it is simply the absence of a few simple atomic tweaks. %% - Spacing (or Rhythm) - Hierarchy - *TODO* Finish this section When a product feels disharmonious, it usually as a result of incomplete or siloed [[Systems Thinking]]. %% - - - ## Design MOC ### Thoughts [[Aesthetic design isn't for later]] [[Best practice emerges from something like plagiarism]] [[Don’t put work in a silo]] [[Ethics are essential to design]] [[Everyone is a designer]] [[Form and function cannot be usefully separated]] [[People perceive attractive product as more usable]] [[Strong Opinions, Loosely Held]] [[The Correct Order of OK & Cancel Buttons]] ### Concepts [[Atomic Design]] [[Codesign]] [[Open Design]] [[The quality which has no name]] [[Systems Thinking]] [[Incremental Change]] [[Intuition]] [[Usability]] ### Roles [[Product Designer]] [[User Experience]] [[User Research]] ### Methods [[Codesign]] [[Crazy 8's]] ### Tools [[Figma]] ### Definitions [[Aesthetic-Usability Effect]] [[Fredkin's Paradox]] [[Integrated Design]] [[Miller's Law]] [[Modal and Modeless UI]] [^1]: Graphic Design, Product Design, Industrial Design etc [^2]: [^3]: Artist is a perfectly acceptable term, it is also a series of simple repeatable skills combined to create complexity. To me, the main distinction is Design is service for sale, Art has the benefit of not needing to benefit humanity, it can be its own thing, art should not be a service. [^4]: We are not Evangelists, Gurus etc