From the course: John Maeda on Design, Business, and Inclusion

The three kinds of design in business

From the course: John Maeda on Design, Business, and Inclusion

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The three kinds of design in business

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- The reason why design is so confusing is because there's so many kinds of design. I've boiled down the three kinds of design that matter for business. The first is Classical Design. The design of physical things: chairs, shoes, whatever. Stuff you've always known. There's no computers in them, per se. The second kind of design is Design Thinking. It's used at large organizations to break logjams that organizations create to unlock innovation. The third kind of design is Computational Design. It involves the fact that mathematics, semi-conductors, software, are producing exponential increases in speed and how we think and the products that we make. This kind of design is brand new. When I say, "brand new," the last 20 years, 30 years. And now's it's the kind of design that matters. So any kind of software is just a machine. It's a machine that you cannot see. It's almost imaginary. Computer science people, engineers, we make those things. They're amazing. They're like in "The Matrix" movie. (high-pitched warbling) But when it actually is used by people, that's where design comes into play. And the more that people are using these magical things, computational clouds and surfaces, we more design over here. So designers come into play when people need to use computation.

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