Bill Moggridge: What is Design?

I highly enjoyed the video “what is design, by Bill Moggridge. A key strong factor as to why I enjoyed it so much was because it did not specify to one general field of design, or style of design, or aspect of design, instead it spoke about design in total….from various fields of works and different key factors like aesthetics, functionality, innovation and so on. This gave me, an industrial design student an open eye to key notices in good design and good design ideas.

One strong point that Bill stated was that design is a human thought up concept. Along with this being a human thought up concept it is the style of how it is shown to the user on what makes it a good design. It solely revolves around the communication between the individuality of the design, and the people. With this he also made a strong statement which I did already know, but it is great to have a reputable individual have the same statement. This was the statement that a designer does not design something to suite and use themselves or the average person, they design something so everyone else can use it, people that are outliers; the old, the young and many other categories.

The context of designing was very informative for me, explaining how designers originated to think they are there to design “things”, but instead it has been given the context of people, social, and environment. This goes on to describe how it is first designed for a person or people, to help a need. After it is there to suite the need they make it to suite the social area. Then finally designed to suite the environment, if you have all these areas fulfilled you will make a good design. I found this rather informative as I then noticed that these contexts are filled in good design, without me even knowing about it till now.

Generally speaking this “what is design” by Bill Moggridge was more a recap on design, rather than a factual speech. Many aspects of this I did already know, but despite already knowing, it did open my eyes into certain areas that I already knew about. Something I need to highly commend this video on is how they relate it to ALL design, not just one specific area.