Design in the context of "Human–computer interaction"

A handicraft is a traditional main sector of craft making and applies to a wide range of creative and design activities that are related to making things with one's hands and skill, including work with textiles, moldable and rigid materials, paper, plant fibers, clay, etc. One of the oldest handicraft is Dhokra; this is a sort of metal casting that has been used in India for over 5,000 years and is still used. In Iranian Baluchistan, women still make red ware hand-made pottery with dotted ornaments, much similar to the 4,000-year-old pottery tradition of Kalpurgan, an archaeological site near the village. Usually, the term is applied to traditional techniques of creating items (whether for personal use or as products) that are both practical and aesthetic. Handicraft industries are those that produce things with hands to meet the needs of the people in their locality without using machines.

Collective terms for handicrafts include artisanry, crafting, and handcrafting. The term arts and crafts is also applied, especially in the United States and mostly to hobbyists' and children's output rather than items crafted for daily use, but this distinction is not formal, and the term is easily confused with the Arts and Crafts design movement, which is in fact as practical as it is aesthetic.

The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, image, filmmaking, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts, also involve aspects of the visual arts, as well as arts of other types. Within the visual arts, the applied arts, such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design, and decorative art are also included.

Current usage of the term "visual arts" includes fine art as well as applied or decorative arts and crafts, but this was not always the case. Before the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain and elsewhere at the turn of the 20th century, the term 'artist' had for some centuries often been restricted to a person working in the fine arts (such as painting, sculpture, or printmaking) and not the decorative arts, crafts, or applied visual arts media. The distinction was emphasized by artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, who valued vernacular art forms as much as high forms. Art schools made a distinction between the fine arts and the crafts, maintaining that a craftsperson could not be considered a practitioner of the arts.

Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings or other structures. The term comes from Latin architectura; from Ancient Greek ἀρχιτέκτων (arkhitéktōn) 'architect'; from ἀρχι- (arkhi-) 'chief' and τέκτων (téktōn) 'creator'. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural symbols and as works of art. Historical civilizations are often identified with their surviving architectural achievements.

The practice, which began in the prehistoric era, has been used as a way of expressing culture by civilizations on all seven continents. For this reason, architecture is considered to be a form of art. Texts on architecture have been written since ancient times. The earliest surviving text on architectural theories is the 1st century BC treatise De architectura by the Roman architect Vitruvius, according to whom a good building embodies firmitas, utilitas, and venustas (durability, utility, and beauty). Centuries later, Leon Battista Alberti developed his ideas further, seeing beauty as an objective quality of buildings to be found in their proportions. In the 19th century, Louis Sullivan declared that "form follows function". "Function" began to replace the classical "utility" and was understood to include not only practical but also aesthetic, psychological, and cultural dimensions. The idea of sustainable architecture was introduced in the late 20th century.

Urban planning (also called city planning or town planning in some contexts) is the process of developing and designing land use and the built environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as transportation, communications, and distribution networks, and their accessibility. Traditionally, urban planning followed a top-down approach in master planning the physical layout of human settlements. The primary concern was the public welfare, which included considerations of efficiency, sanitation, protection and use of the environment, as well as taking account of effects of the master plans on the social and economic activities. Over time, urban planning has adopted a focus on the social and environmental "bottom lines" that focuses on using planning as a tool to improve the health and well-being of people and maintain sustainability standards. In the early 21st century, urban planning experts such as Jane Jacobs called on urban planners to take resident experiences and needs more into consideration.

Urban planning answers questions about how people will live, work, and play in a given area and thus, guides orderly development in urban, suburban and rural areas. Although predominantly concerned with the planning of settlements and communities, urban planners are also responsible for planning the efficient transportation of goods, resources, people, and waste; the distribution of basic necessities such as water and electricity; a sense of inclusion and opportunity for people of all kinds, culture and needs; economic growth or business development; improving health and conserving areas of natural environmental significance that actively contributes to reduction in CO₂ emissions as well as protecting heritage structures and built environments. Since most urban planning teams consist of highly educated individuals that work for city governments, recent debates focus on how to involve more community members in city planning processes.

A hierarchy (from Greek: ἱεραρχία, hierarkhia, 'rule of a high priest', from hierarkhes, 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important concept in a wide variety of fields, such as architecture, philosophy, design, mathematics, computer science, organizational theory, systems theory, systematic biology, and the social sciences (especially political science).

A hierarchy can link entities either directly or indirectly, and either vertically or diagonally. The only direct links in a hierarchy are to one's immediate superior or subordinate. Hierarchical links can extend "vertically" upwards or downwards via multiple links in the same direction, following a path. All parts of the hierarchy that are not linked vertically to one another can also be "horizontally" linked through a path by traveling up the hierarchy to find a common direct or indirect superior, and then down again. This is a system of co-workers or colleagues; each reports to a common superior, but they have the same relative amount of authority. Organizational forms exist that are both alternative and complementary to hierarchy. Heterarchy is one such form.

The applied arts are all the arts that apply design and decoration to everyday and essentially practical objects in order to make them aesthetically pleasing. The term is used in distinction to the fine arts, which are those that produce objects with no practical use, whose only purpose is to be beautiful or stimulate the intellect in some way. In practice, the two often overlap. Applied arts largely overlap with decorative arts, and the modern making of applied art is usually called design.

Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in advance of the manufacture or production of the product. Industrial manufacture consists of predetermined, standardized and repeated, often automated, acts of replication, while craft-based design is a process or approach in which the form of the product is determined personally by the product's creator largely concurrent with the act of its production.

All manufactured products are the result of a design process, but the nature of this process can vary. It can be conducted by an individual or a team, and such a team could include people with varied expertise (e.g. designers, engineers, business experts, etc.). It can emphasize intuitive creativity or calculated scientific decision-making, and often emphasizes a mix of both. It can be influenced by factors as varied as materials, production processes, business strategy, and prevailing social, commercial, or aesthetic attitudes. Industrial design, as an applied art, most often focuses on a combination of aesthetics and user-focused considerations, but also often provides solutions for problems of form, function, physical ergonomics, marketing, brand development, sustainability, and sales.