Current mood:	creative
Current music:	Bob Dylan - Absolutely Sweet Marie
Entry tags:	philosophy, technology

Design
Design is what has allowed our species to adapt the environment to our desires in ways that no other species ever has. There are two sides to design: the first stems from art, focuses on form/presentation/austhetics, and results in style; the second stems from science, focuses on function/behaviour/usability, and results in engineering. We want things that work well to serve our needs/desires while simultaneously appealing to our senses in a manner that makes us feel good about using them.

Of course, the utility value of a thing will influence the balance of importance that each of these two side is given when designing it. For instance, style is more important in decorations and engineering is more important in medical equipment. But for most things both aspects of design are significant and neglecting either one will almost certainly result in a bad design.

We seem to be tackling this problem by getting people trained in the different sides of design to work together. Unfortunately, it doesn't usually work as well as we'd like. It's hard to collaborate on projects when we don't share the same mental frameworks.

It is a shame, then, that our formal education system pushes people to focus on one side at the expense of the other. Engineering students are given a scanty handful of electives and Arts students are effectively barred form taking engineering courses. I am concerned that this state of affairs is damaging our capacity to continue designing wonderful things by making the ability to do so into the exception rather than the norm.