Toward a System Design Science

Design is a universal concept. It links the immaterial world of concepts to the physical world. It is an essential area of human experience, expertise, and knowledge, which deals with our ability to mold our environment to satisfy material and spiritual needs. Design has two different connotations. One is simply a plan or a pattern for assembling objects constituting a given artifact. The other is the creative process for devising plans or patterns and carrying them out to produce an artifact. For this paper we focus on the second interpretation. We are ultimately interested in putting design on a more scientific basis. Toward this end, we focus here on articulating a new structure for the design process, which we believe will support this goal.