Design As a Language of Clarity

You can’t make sense of the world!

Unless you break the world down into comprehensible pieces.

You break down the world and present it in chunks people can digest. That is what you do when you design.

Design is much like a Lingua Franca. A universal method to get clarity of what is messy and present it in a manner that everyone can understand—or at least those your actions are addressing.

Design is a means to connect. It is a manner to understand needs, means, context, aspirations, and wanted outcomes (sorry if I forget some) and translate these into desirable actions to create those outcomes. It is what we all do to work towards a wanted impact.

Making sense of the world and making a world of sense requires you to inquire about the need or problem thoroughly.

When you want to solve a problem or address a need, the first thing you want to do is to understand that need or problem. So you start investigating who it is a problem for, in what context they encounter the problem and what other solutions there are already out there.

Only after that can you start building a solution iteratively and preferably in collaboration with the people you are working for.

Both actions require understanding. You need to understand the problem. The people you work for need to understand your solution.

That is a matter of decoding or translation. And for that, design is much like a language. Design elements or artefacts represent a meaning or an intention.

To make sure the used representation is right, you have to understand the language (oral and visual), maturity and context of the users/customers.

Design helps you decode and understand a problem and clarify the solution you provide.

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