Design for life
Professor Ken Friedman, University Distinguished Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Design, shares his thoughts about the art of design.
Design is young as professions go, but the practice of design predates professions. The practice of design - making useful things - even predates the human race. Making tools is one of the attributes that made us human.
Design began more than 2.5 million years ago when homo habilis manufactured the first tools. Human beings were designing before we began to walk upright. We began to manufacture spears about 400,000 years ago. By 40,000 years ago, we had moved up to specialised tools. Urban design and architecture came along 10,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Interior architecture and furniture design probably emerged with them. It was another 5000 years before graphic design and typography got their start in Sumeria with the development of cuneiform. After that, things really picked up speed.
All goods and services are designed. The urge to design - to consider a situation, imagine a better situation, and act to create that improved situation - goes back to our pre-human ancestors. Making tools helped us to become what we are. Design helped to make us human.
Design is first of all a process. The word “design” entered the written English language by 1548. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines the verb this way: “to conceive and plan out in the mind; to have as a specific purpose; to devise for a specific function or end.” Today, we design tables, tools, and teapots, along with complex products, systems and services. We also design the organisations and structures that produce them. Design has changed considerably since our remote ancestors made the first stone tools.
Today, design means many things. The common factor is service. Designers meet human needs by shaping the future world in which we plan to live. Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon defined design as “devising courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” But the design process is always more than an abstract concept or a way of working. Design takes concrete form in the professions that meet human needs in concrete form. Design forms an integral part of a broad range of making and planning disciplines.
These include the design disciplines we work with at Swinburne: industrial design, graphic design, communication design, furniture design, information design, process design, product design, interaction design, transportation design, educational design, systems design, urban design, design anthropology, design leadership, design management, engineering, product design engineering, information technology, computer science and organisation design.
The Faculty of Design is only one of the faculties where we do this work, and at Swinburne, we increasingly work across faculties to develop the design field. Business and enterprise, information and computer technology, engineering and industrial science, life and social sciences all work together with design - and we work with them - to serve our students and to serve the larger community.
We are celebrating Swinburne Design all this week - follow @Swinburne or @swindesign on twitter for updates. You can also like us on facebook:
Swinburne University of Technology or Swinburne Design
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