Philosophy and Design

In this chapter, I argue for an intentionalist reconstruction of artifact design, called the “use-plan analysis.” In it, design crucially involves the construction and communication of a use plan. After presenting an outline of the use-plan analysis, I show that it can be used to accommodate four aspects of the phenomenology of artifact use and design: creative use, serendipity, the unread manual, and unknown designers; and I briefly indicate how the analysis facilitates the evaluation of artifact use and design. From this, I conclude that the use-plan analysis provides a phenomenologically viable, evaluatively useful, intentionalist account of use and design.