The subjectivity of Design

One of the things that make “Design” so complex is its “subjectivity”. By subjectivity I mean that any given problem can have numerous solution each having some unique quality. It solely depends on the ‘design decisions’ that are made during the course of designing. Design decisions are primarily governed by its designer’s understanding of the problem, people, technology etc. That’s why any a single design problem could have multiple solutions if designed by different designers or design teams.

The ‘kind’ and the ‘amount’ of parameters (or priorities) that a designer considers while designing shapes the outcome. The more aware and sensitive a designer is about the problem the better design s/he makes. So when we say “this is a good design that takes care of even the minor details” means that the designer have built the design not only with the ‘right parameters’ but also have worked with a ‘large amount’ of parameters during designing. If the parameters or design decisions are realistic and as per users expectations there is a good possibility of it being a good design. This means that a designer should have a very rich knowledge about all the aspects of users, their interactions with the product and the technology. The more aware a designer is, the more parameters s/he can work with and thus more is the probability that the design s/he makes is useful and thus successful. One crucial skill a designer should have is a hunger to grasp knowledge though all sources – observations, reading, research etc. Another skill is the ability to see a problem with different Points of Views; thus bringing in more and more parameters to work with to build a rich design.