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Public Design Atlas
In the objects, spaces, screens, and decisions of every day. Tap the dots to see what is behind them.
10 ideas in this scene
02 / 08
Design is in the objects and spaces that make life more comfortable.
9 ideas in this scene
03 / 08
Signs, maps, and services take us from one place to another almost without thinking.
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04 / 08
Screens, buttons, and voices: design decides how we talk to machines.
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Letters, charts, and pages organize what we read and what we understand.
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How options are presented changes what we end up choosing.
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Design also organizes what we share: streets, services, and rules for everyone.
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Designing is also imagining possible futures and discussing which one we want.
9 ideas in this scene
Discipline
Designs whole digital products and decides with product and engineering what to build and how to measure it.
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Discipline
Designs books, magazines and newspapers, in print and on screen, so they read well.
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Discipline
Designs what it is like to use a digital product, so it is useful, easy to understand, and pleasant.
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Discipline
Arranges images, type and space to communicate a message to a specific audience.
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Discipline
Organizes and presents information so it is understood and used well: charts, signs, instructions.
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Discipline
Designs the complete experience of a service: what the person sees and what makes it possible.
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Specialty
Organizes what research at scale needs: participants, tools, permissions and what was learned.
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Specialty
Designs systems used through voice, gestures, touch and screen, using whichever works best at each moment.
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Discipline
Tells a story in space with objects, texts, images and a path through them.
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Theory
What we feel when we see and use an object changes how we judge it, how much we use it and whether we keep it.
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Discipline
Creates images that inform, explain, tell stories or persuade.
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Discipline
Designs mass-produced objects: how they work, how they are used and how they look.
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Specialty
Designs furniture that supports the body, organizes space and can be made viably.
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Discipline
Designs interior spaces so they work, are pleasant to live in and convey what they should.
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Discipline
Designs garments and accessories: from fabric and shape to the collection that reaches people.
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Specialty
Designs the light of a space so it can be seen, moved through easily and has the intended atmosphere.
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Specialty
Designs fabrics and prints: their structure, feel, color and how they are made.
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Method
A pack of open-ended tasks that people complete on their own in daily life and send back.
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Specialty
Helps people orient themselves and find their way in a place.
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Specialty
Designs the spaces where a service is delivered, because they affect customers and employees.
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Discipline
Designs with the environmental and social impact of what is produced in mind, from start to finish.
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Specialty
Designs how a car's screens and controls are used without taking attention off the road.
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Specialty
Designs the mix of products and services that meets a need, instead of selling more things.
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Specialty
Designs websites and digital services that use less energy, without losing usefulness or accessibility.
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Method
Also talking to people at the extremes to see needs the average hides.
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Specialty
Organizes, labels and connects content so people find what they are looking for.
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Discipline
Designs what the person sees and touches on a screen: controls, text, hierarchy and states.
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Discipline
Designs how a product responds to what the person does: actions, feedback and behavior.
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Concept
The farther away and smaller something is, the longer it takes us to point at it.
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Specialty
Designs apps for the phone: small screens, fingers, and use in a hurry and on the move.
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Concept
One website that adapts to any screen size, from phone to computer.
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Specialty
Designs virtual, augmented and mixed reality experiences, where the interface fills the space around you.
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Method
Living firsthand what it would be like to use something, with a simple setup, before building it.
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Method
A ten-statement questionnaire that gives a 0 to 100 score for how easy something is to use.
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Specialty
Designs what you feel through touch when using a device, mostly vibrations, to inform without looking.
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Specialty
Chooses and sets type so that a text reads well and conveys the right tone.
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Specialty
Designs publications made for screens: e-books, digital magazines and reading on the web.
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Concept
We believe most people think and choose as we do, more than is really the case.
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Specialty
Draws the letters of a typeface family so they work together when reading.
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Concept
An option nobody wants makes another one look better.
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Field
Studies how we really decide, with biases and shortcuts, rather than as the rational model predicts.
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Concept
The first number we see shapes the ones that come after.
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Theory
Changing how options are presented changes what we choose, without banning anything.
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Discipline
Designs a product’s packaging, which protects it, makes it stand out in the store and is used at home.
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Specialty
Reduces a product’s environmental impact at every stage of its life, starting when it’s designed.
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Method
Classifies a product's features by how they change the satisfaction of the people who use it.
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Concept
Designs that exploit how we decide to get you to do something you didn't want to.
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Method
Measures a product's environmental impact over its whole life, to know where to act when designing.
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Specialty
Goes beyond reducing harm: it aims for designs that help restore living systems.
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Discipline
Designs so that as many people as possible can use something, starting from those left out.
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Discipline
Uses design to address social needs and support community-led innovation.
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Specialty
Designs the touchpoints between citizens and democracy: voting, paperwork, getting informed.
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Approach
Protecting personal data from the first sketch, with the most private option already set.
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Approach
Taking into account the values of everyone affected throughout the design of a technology.
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Concept
Small hints of a change that is still uncertain but may grow.
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Specialty
Shows objects from a fictional world as if they were ordinary, to make a change believable.
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Concept
A technology that doesn't exist yet, shown working inside a fiction.
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Specialty
Designs objects from possible futures to ask questions, not to sell them.
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Model
From today, possible, plausible, probable and preferable futures open up.
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Method
A framework for talking about change with three curves: what works today, what's coming and the transition.
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Method
Looking at a problem in four layers, from what the news says to the myths that sustain it.
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Method
Showing many ideas as storyboards, one after another, to see which ones meet a real need.
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Method
Imagining the project has already failed, to find in time what could go wrong.
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Concept
We treat money differently depending on where it comes from or what we set it aside for.
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Concept
We stick with something just because we have already paid for it.
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Theory
We see groups and whole shapes, not loose pieces: what is close, similar or continuous joins up.
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Model
An invisible structure of columns and margins that organizes everything on a page or a screen.
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Specialty
Defines and looks after a project’s visual style and coordinates the people who produce it.
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Concept
The mental effort a task demands from a memory that can only hold a few things at once.
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Model
Eighteen guidelines for designing AI products, ordered by the moment of use.
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Concept
What looks beautiful to us also seems easier to use, even when it isn't.
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Field
Studies how design has changed over time and what objects say about the society that made them.
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Field
Studies signs: how something comes to mean something else to someone.
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Discipline
Decides what content people need and in what form, based on what they need to do.
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Model
Signs, things, actions and systems: four places from which to approach the same problem.
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Theory
Value doesn't come inside the product: it is created by using it, together with whoever offers it.
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Field
Studies what makes services distinctive and how they are managed and delivered.
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Specialty
Organizes people, processes and tools so a large design team works well.
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Specialty
Studies the people who use a digital product to decide what to design and check whether it works.
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Specialty
Designs so that people with disabilities can perceive, use and understand a product.
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Discipline
Designs conversations with systems, such as voice assistants and chatbots, so they feel natural.
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Specialty
Designs interfaces that are used by speaking, with no screen or almost none.
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Specialty
Designs the space of a performance, with its set, light, costumes and objects, with the audience in mind.
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Specialty
Chooses a product's color, material and finish so it looks, feels and lasts as intended.
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Discipline
Designs what a person goes through and remembers when using something, starting with the reason to use it.
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Discipline
Designs how an organization or a product is recognized and remembered.
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Concept
What an object lets you do, and whether you can tell at a glance.
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Model
Seven principles for designing products and spaces almost anyone can use, without adapting them.
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Field
Studies how people fit with what they use: the body, the mind and how work is organized.
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Discipline
Designs how people experience and move through a space, indoors or outdoors.
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Specialty
Designs so that products and materials stay in use instead of ending up in the trash.
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Specialty
Designs what characters wear in theater, film, TV, opera and dance to show who they are.
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Specialty
Objects that question how we live with technology, instead of selling it.
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Method
People record what they do and feel over days or weeks, as it happens.
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Method
Spending time in people’s world to understand their daily life and culture from the inside.
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Concept
The idea we form of how something works, which we use to predict what will happen.
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Concept
The tangible side of an intangible service: objects and spaces that show the service exists.
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Specialty
Designs stores and sales spaces to guide people, show the product and create an atmosphere.
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Specialty
Designs the form, interior and use of cars, buses, trains, bicycles and other vehicles.
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Discipline
Applies design to how an organization creates value, delivers it and makes money from it.
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Specialty
Designs websites that are understood at first glance and work on any screen.
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Method
A long, open conversation with one person to understand their experiences and motives.
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Method
Research-based characters that represent groups of users and their goals.
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Concept
The more options there are, the longer we take to choose, though each new option adds less time.
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Model
Seven facets of a good user experience, beyond whether the product is easy to use.
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Concept
Show the essentials first and keep advanced options for when someone asks for them.
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Field
Studies how we use computers and how to design them to fit our abilities.
Concept
The dizziness, nausea or discomfort caused by some headset or moving-image experiences.
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Concept
A line from the real world to the fully virtual; mixed reality is everything in between.
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Method
Ideating in the real place, acting out with your body how the idea would be used.
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Method
Acting out a future situation with simple objects to come up with and test a product or service.
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Concept
What people say about their behavior does not always match what they do.
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Concept
How well specific people achieve what they want with a product, without extra effort.
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Method
The same questions to many people, to measure how many think or do something.
Concept
Technology that informs without demanding attention, staying in the periphery until it is needed.
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Method
Watching real people attempt tasks with the product to find out where they get stuck.
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Specialty
Designs a brand’s visual and verbal system: logo, colors, typography, tone and usage rules.
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Concept
Faced with three options, we tend to choose the middle one.
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Discipline
Designs products, services and policies based on how we actually behave.
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Field
Studies how we perceive, pay attention, remember, reason and decide.
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Theory
We think in two ways: one fast and intuitive, the other slow and deliberate.
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Discipline
Applies design to creating and improving public policy, based on citizens' experience.
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Approach
To change a behavior, make it easy, attractive, social and timely.
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Method
Checking whether what you offer responds to what a type of customer is trying to do, suffers and wants.
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Discipline
Brings together systems thinking and design to intervene in complex social problems.
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Discipline
Applies human-centered design to law, so that contracts and legal procedures can be understood.
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Discipline
Designs how we use, understand and correct products powered by artificial intelligence.
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Approach
Designing from the needs, context and participation of the people who will use something.
Method
Continuously looking for signals of change outside your field to anticipate what may come.
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Method
Detecting and explaining changes in society, culture and consumption before they become widespread.
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Method
Imagining several plausible futures to make decisions that hold up in all of them.
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Method
A card game for imagining objects from possible futures and talking about them.
Theory
Societies steer toward the image of the future they share.
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Method
Imagining the future you want and walking back to today to see which steps lead there.
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Discipline
Uses design to make possible futures tangible and debate which one we want.
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Field
Explores possible and desirable futures to decide better today, without claiming to predict.
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Approach
Researching by designing: prototypes are used to generate knowledge, not just products.
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Method
Building quick, incomplete versions of an idea to test it before developing it.
Method
Asking “why?” several times in a row until you reach the root cause of a problem.
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Method
Reviewing an idea as a group, everyone from the same angle at once, switching angles in stages.
Process
Five days to go from an important problem to a prototype tested with real customers.
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