What is the point of design?

I think that the point of design is to take something people want and make it intuitive and delightful for them to use.

Paul Graham always says, "make something people want." It's a great maxim. Where design comes in is in the making, so to speak. Design takes certain principles and applies them to the making of the product to make sure that when the user gets it, they find that they can use it, and that they enjoy using it. After all, something people want can be made shoddily and put off the very people who might have otherwise used it.

The reason to place a premium on this in a highly competitive world is quite obvious to me. Take a random example: say bats. Everyone can sell bats, but if I make the best bats, and I have the best bat-selling process, I'm likely to have a better bat-selling business because the odds are that customers gravitate towards the better product and process.

The classic example of this is Apple of course. We all know why Apple became the most valuable technology company in the world. Other companies made phones, but when you hold an iPhone, it feels different, better, like it's more than a phone. The designers at Apple HQ did all they could to make the best phone, to make something they knew users wanted, and to make it easy and delightful for them to use. Samsung makes phones, Nokia did, even Google makes phones now. And yet, none of these companies have been able to recreate that special feeling that comes from holding an iPhone.

Okay, enough design yapping for now.

What is first principles thinking? It is simply an approach to problem-solving that begins with the most fundamental facts or principles about the problem space and goes from the ground up in constructing a solution to the problems.

I could attempt an explanation of first principles thinking but I think Elon Musk does a better job than I could do here.

So, Design From First Principles?

Here's a definition of Design I found on the Strate website:

Generally speaking, it is the process of envisioning and planning the creation of objects, interactive systems, buildings, vehicles, etc. It is user-centered, i.e. users are at the heart of the design thinking approach. It is about creating solutions for people, physical items or more abstract systems to address a need or a problem. 

So, basically, design is about making the best possible solution to a particular problem that a particular user has (or a particular group of users have).

Of course, here I am especially concerned about digital design, or what is usually referred to as product design (or UI/UX design). The definition above still applies but this time there is a constraint. It's about designing digital products that are the best possible solution to a user's problems.

So, how can I approach designing digital products from a first principles approach? Well, I imagine that a number of things need to go into the process of designing for a digital audience.

First, you have to actually identify what the user's problem is. Then, you have to create something that you think solves that problem (using, I imagine, certain principles about how to create such solutions). Then, you have to give it to the user to use and see if it solves their problems. And rinse and repeat if it doesn't solve their problem as well as it should.

This is of course, another way of summarising what is usually known as the design thinking process, and I did not even realise that until I was halfway into the paragraph.

If I'm right, trying to get a foothold in the world of digital design would encompass thinking about certain questions over and over.

How do I determine what the user's problem is?

How do I create solutions to that problem?

How do I get the user to use the solution I've create?

How do I get feedback from the user to see how I can further improve the solution?