At Adaptive Path, and in this book, we take a different approach to the idea of design. At heart, we believe that design is an activity. As an activity, it incorporates these elements:
Empathy. Design must serve a human purpose, and so design requires an understanding of how people will interact with whatever you're designing.
Problem solving. Design really shines when it's used to address complex problems where the outcome is unclear, many stake-holders are involved, and the boundaries are fuzzy.
Ideation and prototyping. Design produce things, whether they're abstract (schematics, blueprints, wireframes, conceptual models) or concrete (prototypes, physical models). Design is a creative activity, and thus requires actually creating something.
Finding alternatives. Design is less about the analysis of existing options than the creation of new options. Sometimes that means looking at existing options in new ways, and at other times that means creating from scratch. An effective design process offers many solutions to a problem.