Short answers, pulled from the story.
Design is the concept or proposal for an object, process, or system, intentionally created by a thinking agent. The word can also refer to the inherent nature of a thing, and as a verb it means the process of developing a design. A design is expected to have a purpose within a specific context, balancing aesthetic, functional, and experiential considerations.
Herbert A. Simon wrote in The Sciences of the Artificial that everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The design researcher Nigel Cross made a similar claim, describing design ability as a natural cognitive function embedded in our brains.
Design history coalesced as a discipline in the 1970s, when academics worked to recognize design as a separate and legitimate target for historical research. It originally sat within art history. Early influential design historians include Nikolaus Pevsner and Sigfried Giedion.
The Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry was founded in 1818, followed by the United Kingdom's Government School of Design in 1837 and Konstfack in Sweden in 1844. The Rhode Island School of Design was founded in the United States in 1877, and the Bauhaus was founded in Germany in 1919.
The rational model treats design as plan-driven problem solving in a discrete sequence of stages, optimizing for known constraints and objectives. The action-centric model treats design as improvised, driven by creativity and emotion, with no universal sequence of stages. Dorst and Dijkhuis linked the two views to positivism and constructionism.
Approaches to design include conscious design, critical design, ecological design, participatory design, scientific design, service design, sociotechnical system design, transgenerational design, and user-centered design. Each prioritizes a different goal, such as ecological health, cultural critique, stakeholder involvement, or the needs of the end-user.