Lou Shackleton

What do I mean by design?

My definition of intent is this one: the rendering of intent. “Design means choosing an intent, and then making that intent real in the world.” This is my favourite definition of design, from Jared Spool. The results of the design process might be a chair, a phone, a website or a healthcare service. Whichever it is, we can design these things so that they delight or frustrate the people who use them.

making intent real. got it. sounds, er simple…?

It is, in a way, because that’s what we’re trying to do. Simplify things. But, as humans, we can make things pretty complicated pretty quickly when left to our own devices. And that single line from Spool, presented on its own, implies that ‘making that intent real in the world’ is a simple next step. It’s not. It’s complicated, messy, confusing. And there’s another concept we can borrow from design to help us here.