According to Dino Dini

According to video game developer Dino Dini in a talk given at the 2005 game design and technology workshop held in Liverpool JM university, design underpins every form of creation from objects such as chairs to the way we plan and execute our lives. For this reason it is useful to seek out some common structure that can be applied to any kind of design, whether this be for video games, consumer products or one's own personal life.

For such an important concept, the question "what is design?" appears to yield answers with limited usefulness. Therefore the design process can be defined as "the management of constraints"; I think there are 2 kinds of constraints, negotiable and the non-negotiable. The first step in the design process is the identification, classification and selection of constraints. The process of design then proceeds from here by manipulating design variables so as to satisfy the non-negotiable constraints and optimising those which are negotiable.