Choice Reviews Online · 2013 · 656 citations · 0 references
Architectural DesignSecond EditionEngineeringGraphic DesignDesignInterdisciplinary DesignUser ExperienceDesign ThinkingIntentional ChangeHuman-centered DesignHuman-computer InteractionDesign ScienceUser-centered DesignDesign WayDesign IssueHealth Care DesignSocial SciencesDesign Management
Design is a broad, intentional activity that extends beyond software, blueprints, or fonts to encompass technologies, organizations, processes, systems, environments, and ways of thinking, and Nelson and Stolterman argue it forms its own culture of inquiry and action. The authors claim that design constitutes its own culture of inquiry and action. They describe the design way through foundations, fundamentals, and metaphysics, applying it to diverse domains and illustrating it with new images and schemas that visualize and structure design inquiry. The book has been revised and expanded in response to reader feedback.
Humans did not discover fire--they designed it. Design is not defined by software programs, blueprints, or font choice. When we create new things--technologies, organizations, processes, systems, environments, ways of thinking--we engage in design. With this expansive view of design as their premise, in The Design Way, Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman make case for design as its own culture of inquiry and action. They offer not a recipe for design practice or theorizing but a formulation of design culture's fundamental core of ideas. These ideas--which form the design way--are applicable to an infinite variety of design domains, from such traditional fields as architecture and graphic design to such nontraditional design areas as organizational, educational, interaction, and health care design. Nelson and Stolterman present design culture in terms of foundations (first principles), fundamentals (core concepts), and metaphysics, and then discuss these issues from both learner's and practitioner's perspectives. The text of this second edition is accompanied by new detailed images, schemas that visualize, conceptualize, and structure authors' understanding of design inquiry. This text itself has been revised and expanded throughout, in part in response to reader feedback.