The sum of all constraints

Design depends largely on the sum of all constraints — Charles Eames

Design is not to have a beautiful idea and protect it against the world. It is having an OK idea and enthusiastically exploring the world for constraints in order to improve it.

If you design a chair you have to account for the chairs necessary weight, material, balance, surface, price etc.

To quote Charles Eames — “Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem: the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible. His willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints.”

In our complex world we shouldn’t reward confidence but curiosity. Design is not the artefact (the outcome), but the process of problem solving. We are all designers [if] in the sense that we need to be willing to challenge our own thinking and ideas. To enthusiastically go out into the world and find out why we are wrong and then fix it.

A complex world doesn’t have only one answer, and if you find one it might change as soon as the system changes (all the time) and so are we in a perpetual state of design?