How does the design community think about design?

  • Authors:

  • Michael E. Atwood;Katherine W. McCain;Jodi C. Williams

  • Affiliations:

  • Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA;Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA;Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA

  • Venue:
  • DIS '02 Proceedings of the 4th conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

Design is a term that brings many people together. Collectively, we distinguish ourselves from others by the fact that we are designers and members of a design community. But, design is also a term that pushes people apart. The design that some value in the new fashions in the boutiques in Milan is not seen by everyone as design. While some are impressed with the design of a new telephone, not everyone sees this as design. As a community, we believe design is important. But, as a community, we do not have a common definition of what it is. Many views of design have been proposed. Several classifications of design have been proposed. In this paper, we also seek to classify views on design. Unlike earlier efforts, however, we want to find the classification that the global community of designers uses. To this end, we examine the patterns of citations to key authors' works (Author Co-citation Analysis) to uncover this classification and identify seven key author clusters representing identifiable theory groups or schools of thought/practice in design.