Design Terms & Vocabulary
This term refers to the action or specific use for which something has been designed.
What is function?
Professionals in this classic design field must balance aesthetics with functionality while planning load-bearing walls, concrete strength, and drainage systems.
What is an architect?
This clear statement or series of statements highlights the problem to be solved or the need to be met without predetermining possible solutions.
What is a design brief?
This three-letter acronym refers to an automated computer system used for the design, drafting, and display of graphic information.
What is CAD (Computer-Aided Design)?
Meeting the needs of current generations without compromising the resources of future generations is known as this design principle.
What is sustainability?
This concept relates to how something looks, particularly how visually pleasing it is to the observer.
What is aesthetics?
This type of designer works with client briefs, social trends, and color schemes to curate indoor living and working spaces.
What is an interior designer?
These specific details, such as budget limits or deadlines, create boundaries and guide the project scope.
What are constraints or limitations?
This process scans CAD sketches to rapidly create a preliminary 3D model of a product before mass production begins.
What is rapid prototyping?
Designers conduct this type of assessment to monitor energy usage and environmental impacts at every stage of a product's existence.
What is a life-cycle analysis?
This term describes using an existing material or technology for a completely different purpose, or developing something new and unprecedented in a market or society.
What is innovation?
They create functional machines and processes across diverse industrial fields like mining, food production, and electronics.
What is an industrial designer?
This document compiled after the research stage includes the concept, criteria, and constraints needed for careful project analysis.
What is a design specification?
In automated manufacturing, these devices monitor environmental factors like temperature, color, and air quality to ensure quality and safety.
What are sensors?
Designing wheelchair ramps in public spaces to ensure access for individuals with disabilities is an example of addressing this core principle.
What is equity?
Working together with others on a project to achieve a common goal is known as this practice.
What is collaboration?
These creative professionals collaborate with directors to transform performance spaces, creating scenic, lighting, costume, or prop layouts tailored to a production's brief.
What is a theatre designer?
Free-form visual communication, such as quick drawings and initial sketches, is used during this early phase to capture a wide range of creative concepts without worrying about fine detail.
What are initial design ideas (or initial sketching)?
Replacing humans in high-risk or repetitive assembly line tasks, these programmable machines help increase productivity while reducing occupational overuse injuries
What are industrial robots (or robotics)?
This critical cognitive organizer stands for Plus, Minus, and Interesting.
What is PMI?
This phrase refers to the total of surrounding conditions or influences, especially the combination of external physical conditions affecting growth, development, and survival.
What is the environment?
Focused on solving specific user problems, these designers create everyday consumer goods by synthesizing market research, functional needs, aesthetics, and manufacturing methods.
What is a product designer?
Because a designer constantly tests, reflects, and returns to different stages throughout a project, the design process is considered to be this type of cycle.
What is an iterative (or cyclic) process?
This computer-integrated software system uses digital information directly from CAD drawings to automate machines and control actual manufacturing processes, a CNC cutter is one of these machines.
What is CAM (Computer-Aided Manufacturing)?
Using sacred Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander artwork without permission in graphic design is considered taboo because it fails to show sensitivity to these shared societal values.
What are cultural beliefs?