At the moment we have a pro­fes­sor from the Maas­tricht Uni­ver­si­ty embed­ded in our design stu­dio. He is study­ing design­ers in the wild like an anthro­pol­o­gist would study an unknown tribe in Africa. One of the sub­jects of his research is the design process. I always found this an inter­est­ing top­ic and this is what led me to Chimero’s book: it speaks about the design process from a design­er’s point of view. His insid­er’s view is a feast of recog­ni­tion.

What stuck with me the most about his descrip­tion of the design process is the idea of clear think­ing. Chimero has an inter­est­ing descrip­tion of the way he works: he just “shows up” and lets the “con­text speak what it requires”. He says “it’s the design­er’s job to fig­ure out a way to have the prob­lem show it’s actu­al self so he can respond to the truth that has emerged.” This is clear think­ing: to see the truth about the prob­lem at hand.

When we start ask­ing why and start think­ing about truth we enter into the domain of phi­los­o­phy. I have always seen design (and oth­er arts) as a visu­al form of phi­los­o­phy. One that is more elab­o­rate than tra­di­tion­al phi­los­o­phy because it not only thinks through words but also through images. Some might call this par­tic­u­lar form of phi­los­o­phy design think­ing. When we define design as a branch of phi­los­o­phy, the next step is to ques­tion some of the great thinkers of this world to see what they have to say about design. For me, there are two philo­soph­i­cal texts by Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger that define good design.

There’s a clear sto­ry here. Adding a buffer to a mod­el says this mod­el isn’t per­fect, but there’s a sci­ence to how we man­age the down­side of assump­tions or vari­abil­i­ty in the data.

Just like art, design is in con­stant need of def­i­n­i­tion. I think the answer to the ques­tion of what good design is, defines the design­er. So, design is about ask­ing why (so it’s basi­cal­ly phi­los­o­phy), web design’s aim is to find the truth about the client, the user, and the inter­net, the truth is best com­mu­ni­cat­ed through beau­ty, to find the truth about your medi­um you have to forge a deep con­nec­tion to it