About Design
To design is to devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.
What is design?
Design is how we shape our world to suit our needs. We design when we erect a wall from stones; when we tie branches and leaves together to make a shelter; or when we sharpen a stick into a spear. The complex, modern world that we inhabit is the product of human ingenuity in manipulating materials and harnessing the forces of nature to our will. That is design.
Over the centuries, people from many disciplines have contributed their skills to this great ongoing project of transformation. All sorts of people do design: both specialists and lay people; architects, engineers, and technologists in every imaginable area; scientists and researchers; bureaucrats and politicians too. The subjects of design range from the minutiae of the products that we consume; to all forms of media, encompassing the written word as well as still and moving images; clothing and adornment; to the grand scale of our urban and domestic environments; technology and infrastructure; even our social and political systems, and rules and regulations are designed artefacts. All these things are, to a lesser or greater degree, done expressly to shape our world and our experience of it. That is not to say that the consequences of all design acts are predictable. Designing, like many things we do, has both intended and unintended consequences.
The great aim of education is not knowledge, but action.
Why teach design?
Change is one of the buzzwords of our time. Children entering school today will emerge into a very different world. Politics, technological change, social pressures, economic imperatives, and environmental exigencies will make sure of that.
While formal schooling imparts explicit knowledge of the world and useful skills such as reading, writing, and arithmetic; some critics bemoan the negative impact of school on children’s creativity. Indeed, many agree that additional skills will be required to manage and succeed in an unpredictable and complex future. The so-called 21st Century skills include: critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, information literacy, media literacy, technology literacy, flexibility, leadership, initiative, productivity, and social skills. The central government here in India has proposed the introduction of subjects such as artificial intelligence, design thinking, holistic health, organic living, environmental education, and global citizenship education as measures to prepare their children for the future.
Design, as a subject, is being introduced into school curricula around the world as one way for students to acquire those 21st Century skills and gain practical knowledge and experience beyond the traditional school subjects.
About design thinking…
Read the next section for a brief introduction to design thinking.