The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist

15. The Divorce of Design

Wright Brothers’ first flight, Nags Head, North CarolinaLibrary of Congress

Around the sixteenth century, there emerged in most of the European languages the term “design” or its equivalent. . . . Above all, the term indicated that designing was to be separated from doing.

MICHAEL COOLEY [1988]

The Divorce of Design from Use and from Implementation

One of the most striking 20th-century developments in the design disciplines has been the progressive divorce of the designer from both the implementer and the user.

Consider the 19th- to turn-of-the-20th-century inventors. Edison fabricated working versions of all his inventions ...