La Progettazione

As an Engineer it was surprising to listen how others with different backgrounds defined 'Design'.

In Engineering we are taught that design is meeting a set of criteria or requirements which define a problem. One thing that as Engineers we do not keep prominently in mind is how the overall design fits together or how elegantly it is presented.

In the book "Materials and Design: The Art and Science of Material Selection in Product Design" by Mike Ashby and Kara Johnson, they divide the definition of design into two aspects: Technical Design, and Industrial Design.

Technical, or as they refer to as Engineering, Design includes the aspects of design that deals with the technical functioning of a design. Aspects such as mechanical or thermal performance.

Industrial Design includes the visual and tactile attributes, associations and perceptions. In other words attributes that describe its personality or character.

It is interesting that as Engineers we are trained to mainly focus on the technical aspect of a design and sometimes take its complement for granted. This could be one of the reasons why many products and ideas are created and developed into products, but yet so many of them fail.

The aforementioned book mentions the following interesting observation:

In Italian there is one inclusive word for design and engineering - la progettazione; a designer or an engineer is "il progettista." Translated literall "il progetto" is the plan. In English, too, the word "design" is defined as "the plan".