Frankly, one of the great strengths of design is that we have not settled on a single definition. Fields in which definition is now a settled matter tend to be lethargic, dying, or dead fields, where enquiry no longer provides challenges to what is accepted as truth.

Defining design is not about coming up with a single definition, but resolving the seemingly conflicting and incompatible definitions.

Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that’s why it is so complicated.

One definition, aired by designer Richard Seymour during the Design Council’s Design in Business Week 2002, is ‘making things better for people’. It emphasises that design activity is focused first and foremost on human behaviour and quality of life, not factors like distributor preferences. But nurses or road sweepers could say they, too, ‘make things better for people’.

Design is simply planning. My definition of design is this: it is going from an existing position to a preferred one. It’s everything.

Having no purpose is the function of art, so somebody else can look at it and ask a question. Design is different—you’re supposed to understand what’s going on. You can be delighted by it, intrigued by it, but you’re supposed to know it’s a hot dog stand.

Design is the intermediary between information and understanding.

I don’t think of design as a job. I think of it as—and I hate to use this term for it—more of a calling. If you’re just doing it because it’s a nice job and you want to go home and do something else, then don’t do it, because nobody needs what you’re going to make.

Design is the process of going from an existing condition to a preferred one.

No, it’s everything: it’s the way you experience the world, it’s the way you experience your life, it’s the way you experience the service, or — yeah an app or a computer system — but it’s a system that’s everything. Got it?