peterme.com

A little over two years ago I wrote a post, "The Tricky Word, 'Design.'" In it, I discussed how Adaptive Path was avoiding the word design on our website, because when used without qualifiers, it meant visual design, which we didn't practice at the time. (We do now.)

I wrote that such an association was an unfortunate reduction of the potential meaning and power of the word. But we didn't consider it our fight.

A few months ago, I realized something: "design," when used unqualified, no longer means "visual design." Design is increasingly being used to mean "big D"-design. Businessweek's "Power of Design" and "Get Creative" issues, the iPod as an icon, even discussions of design thinking (for all their problems), are freeing "design" from the graphic ghetto.

Design is being respected for its complexity, its multidisciplinary nature, and its ability to address serious business problems.

This appreciation of Design makes me think that the idea of "user experience" as a term to describe a discipline really is dead. Because that discipline being discussed is simply design. I'm not the only one moving in this direction. Dan Brown wrote a bit back, "I’ve started replacing the words 'user experience' in my writing with 'design', a la Todd Warfel, and have been pleased with the result." Perhaps "user experience" is an artifact of the pejoration of "design"?

Posted by peterme at August 4, 2005 09:40 PM

Comments

Posted by: Manu Sharma at August 5, 2005 02:07 AM

Posted by: alevin at August 5, 2005 07:29 AM