What Is Design in the Context of Human-Centered Computing?

some hope for enriching design's scientific foundations and for crafting new and better approaches to it. Essays in this department have introduced such notions as the Sacagawea Principle: 2 Human-centered computational tools need to support active organization of information, active search for information, active exploration of information, reflection on the meaning of information, and evaluation and choice among action sequence alternatives. Certainly this suggests a constraint on or a goal for design, but how do we go from such statements to actual designs that accomplish the stated goals? We approach this class of question by considering the origins of and historical influences on the notion of design , then by considering the assumptions underlying our modern conception of design in light of the principles of human-centered computing. An investigation of word origins and current usage reveals a number of meanings of " design. " Making meaningful marks on things The word " design " comes into English from the Latin de signum meaning " to mark out, " with the root signum meaning " mark, " " token, " or " seal, " and also having relations to Latin words meaning " to cut " or " to saw. " Signum evolved, mostly through French, into words such as signify , assign, designate, signal, and many others. The original meaning of " design " was to physically make marks on something, marks that bear some signification. Current meanings of " design " preserve the notion of drawing rep-resentational marks (that is, sketches for artifacts such as machines or buildings). Working with people In the eras of the craft guilds, craftsmen gathered the design knowledge behind artifacts such as woodworking tools, farming equipment, and horse-drawn coaches by direct collaboration with the individuals who used their devices. The design knowledge was passed through generations of craft masters and apprentices. The knowledge and skill weren't freely available, at least until Denis Diderot produced Le Encyclopedie, which contained essays describing the guildsmen's knowledge and skills. 3 With the emergence of larger-scale designs, especially in the Industrial Revolution, the necessary skills had to be distributed among many specialists. This new task— designing for a class of people with whom the designer did not interact—helped mark the origin of industrial design.