I am always surprised to find that much of the online community so narrowly defines design that a number of other terms have been coined to cover what’s purportedly lost: user experience being the worst. The field also includes such terms as interaction design, user-centered design (hey, if it ain’t, it ain’t design), user experience design, and usability.
Design is all about usability: it’s not art. This is true whether it’s online or in old-fashioned print. “User experience,” my personal favorite, even has its own magazine, UX. Gads!
Not to be splitting hairs here, but the design of something includes how someone uses it, how someone feels about it. It involves how someone will use that which is designed.
I think we just confuse the issue and dilute the importance of design as a field when we use these other high-falutin’ terms. If something is designed well, the “user” will have a good “experience” when using it, when interacting with it.
That’s good design. Period.
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