Definition of design
My own definition of what design is. Written around 2013.
My own definition
A definition I came up with in 2012 by loosely mixing together Larry Tesler’s Law of Conservation of Complexity, Kent Beck’s Beneficially relating elements, and Andy Clark’s distributed functional decomposition. It’s quite useful.
In every system, there exists inherent complexity that can no longer be removed. Design is the work of distributing this complexity as efficiently as possible across the limited resources (memory, CPU, human memory, cognition, attention, body, environment, latency, bandwidth, accuracy of the information-transmission channels between each entity, etc.) of the various elements involved in the system (networked computers and networked humans), and of beneficially relating those elements to one another. At this time, rather than the physical properties of each element, the designer must think based on what function or role the element actually performs within the overall system. #
For a more detailed explanation, refer to the following article: