What is Design? Note on Jono Hey’s Sketchplanations

This is from 2013:

Jono Hey’s archive of sketches-as-explanations are like watching TED talks manifested as simple 1- or 4-frame sketches.

One of his sketches brought back my memory of learning design in Japan — particularly the work of Noriaki Kano. Like most of the so-called “design research” work in Japan (I know it well because my PhD work was done at Tsukuba University), it tries to create a rigid framework around what we all know to be somewhat difficult to describe with any precision.

Most recently while on the phone with Sonos designer Tad Toulis, I liked his take which felt right:

“You can’t turn design into complete logic, otherwise it loses its true power.”

and posted it on Twitter with lots of good feedback. -JM