Fourth Order Design: A Practical Perspective

The essence of design is the nature of thinking it entails. It is integrative, rather than merely analytical; visual rather than merely abstract; and humanistic rather than mechanistic. It is fundamentally about invention, not research. It begins with love and passion, rather than mere problems and puzzles. In the end, design is intuitive and irreducible to component steps, but still tantalizingly capable of description. All people taste it; a few excel in it. This design thinking, rather than just the practice and products of design, will become increasingly intriguing and attractive to a wider audience than that which currently uses the services of the design industry. The design industry specifically is focused on very narrow portions of organizations, and on a narrow set of organizations. There are many organizations which have no idea what a "designer" offers, and have never used one; but for whom design thinking is looming as a coming dawn. The so-called fourth order of design is taking design out of its narrow, original boundaries, and preparing it for wider application. In this essay, I intend to investigate the nature and the tendencies of this fourth order of design. My vantage point will be practical rather than theoretical.