4 Fields of Design

Commercial Design

-Commercial Design is what is commonly understood as industrial/product design.

- This is design work oriented toward and driven by, the market.

-The primary intent of the designer is to create useful, useable, and desirable products that customers can afford and that generate adequate profit.

Responsible Design

- Responsible Design encompasses what is largely understood as socially responsible design, driven by a more humanitarian notion of service.

-Here the designer works to provide a useful, useable, and desirable product to those who are largely ignored by the market.

-Issues such as ethics, compassion, altruism, and philanthropy surround the work, be it for users in developing or developed countries.

For example The XO is a potent learning tool designed and built especially for children in developing countries and also its extremely durable, brilliantly functional, energy-efficient, and fun.

Experimental Design - Experimental Design represents a fairly narrow swath within the broad field of design, and its primary intention is exploration, experimentation, and discovery.

-Instead is motivated by a curiosity—an inquiry into, for example, a technology, a manufacturing technique, a material, a concept, or an aesthetic issue.

Discursive Design -Discursive Design refers to the creation of utilitarian objects whose primary purpose is to communicate ideas—they encourage discourse.

-These are tools for thinking; they raise awareness and perhaps understanding of substantive and often debatable issues of psychological, sociological, and ideological consequence.