Redefining Designing: From Form to Experience

Redefining Designing From Form to Experience C. Thomas Mitchell Redefining Designing: From Form to Experience offers a comprehensive new theory of design in which user needs and wishes are central. This landmark work focuses on design in terms of human experience rather than physical form. The book offers a highly critical study of design philosophies that have emerged since industrialization: modernism, late modernism, postmodernism, and deconstruction. C. Thomas Mitchell points out how many designs, particularly in architecture, fail to suit their intended purpose -- not because of their style but because of the design process itself. Mitchell then reviews user-responsive design methods, which he calls "design turned inside-out." He explores collaborative, contextual, and intangible design, and cites examples of each. International case studies illustrate up-to-the-minute topics such as "humanware," softecnica, the pattern language, and soft design. Also featured is an interview with Brian Eno and graphic work by artists Christo and Robert Wilson. Many never-before published illustrations enhance the book throughout. A broad synthesis of new thinking on design, Redefining Designing: From Form to Experience will be of great interest to a wide range of professionals, including architects, planners, and landscape architects, as well as product, interior, and industrial designers.

About the Author C. Thomas Mitchell is Professor of Design and Director, Center for Design Process, at Indiana University.