Design + research
“Design doesn’t have to be new, but it has to be good. Research doesn’t have to be good, but it has to be new.”
I really like this essay on design and research by Paul Graham. It’s an exploration of what’s different between design and what he describes as an active, exploratory form of research.
He’s talking here about the design of a programming language, but what I like is the ease with which he introduces and argues for some of the core principles of design research: starting with needs, prototyping, iteration. He also pushs some buttons with the argument that design (decision) by committee is necessarily a bad thing.
I love the idea that these methods are so cross-disciplinary, so much just a skill set like reading and writing, owned by everyone, not just one group of technicians. Graham elegantly captures the spirit of that idea here.
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