Chee Yeow Meng: Design Can Make the World Better

Lianhe Zaobao, 李耀明：设计，让世界变得更好

By Professor Chee Yeow Meng, Provost and Chief Academic & Innovation Officer

(Translation)

The greatest challenge of design is that too many people believe they already understand it. They do not.

Design is not decoration—it is judgment. It asks what should be created, and for whom. It exists across all fields, yet is often overlooked or never truly taught. In the era of AI, design matters more than ever.

The world around us did not form naturally—it was constructed by people: MRT lines, government service portals, hospital queue systems, payment flows. These are not natural landscapes of life, but systems meticulously built to support daily living. They operate quietly in the background, and only when they break do we realise how omnipresent they are.

When these systems confuse us, waste our time, or exclude certain groups, we are reminded of a simple but profound truth: they were designed by people.

A form asks for your address but not which language you can read; a clinic queue system shows a number but no waiting time, as if patients have nothing else to attend to; a sheltered walkway may end abruptly a few metres before the destination, as if getting wet at the final stretch does not matter.

I have walked that final uncovered stretch myself, shoes soaked, wondering why did they not extend the shelter just a little more? In that moment, I realised that a seemingly trivial design decision can affect a person’s entire day.

Such decisions are rarely malicious, but they are not neutral. They determine who is cared for and who is overlooked.

Precise, Yet Blind to Perspective

At its core, design is the act of making judgments under constraints. It balances what we aspire to achieve with what is feasible, aligning our intentions with how the world actually works. As Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon said: “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” Behind this simple line lies a deep truth: someone must decide what “better” means, and for whom.

Our education system trains students to calculate, explain, optimise and execute, but seldom asks them to pause and think: How does this system affect real people? What biases or rigidities does it create? What assumptions have we taken for granted? Would another perspective lead to something better? We chase precision and often ignore perspective.

Every profession is, in fact, designing something. Teachers design lessons; policymakers design incentives; engineers design structures and networks; doctors design clinical pathways; entrepreneurs design products and services; civil servants design public workflows. Yet many systems are designed unconsciously—not because designers do not care, but because they do not realise they are designing.

Professionals may not see themselves as designers, but once they recognise design in their daily decisions, they begin making choices that are more humane, inclusive and thoughtful.

Different disciplines focus on different things: art on emotions, science on facts, law on justice, engineering on structure, politics on values and conflicts. Design focuses on what should exist, and for whom it should exist.

When design awareness is absent, systems become rigid, confusing, or unfair. People are “excluded” not because the system failed, but because they were never considered in the first place.

Singapore is known for efficiency, precision and order. But in the future, we will need not just efficiency, but empathy.

In an increasingly complex, diverse and digital society, we need systems that function efficiently, but also make people feel understood and cared for.

This means design must consider everyone, not just the ideal user who already knows the system well. User frustration often points to exactly what needs improvement. Human-centred design does not begin with perfection; it begins with listening, observing, and understanding people’s circumstances.

Design is not the same as “design thinking”. Brainstorming may spark ideas, but it is surface-level. Real design education teaches decision-making under constraints, managing conflicting needs, and taking responsibility for outcomes. It cultivates not just creativity but judgment.

Today, AI can generate code, write documents, design interfaces, and even execute complex tasks. This may mislead people into thinking design will become less important.

Why Design Education Is Especially Critical Now

The truth is opposite: AI can generate answers, but it cannot ask the right questions. It cannot make value judgments—what trade-offs are worthwhile, whose needs deserve priority, or which goals are worth pursuing.

These are questions design must answer. When design and AI work together, they enhance each other: design gives innovation direction and purpose, ensuring what we create reflects human values and real needs; AI gives innovation speed and scale, enabling faster implementation and iteration.

Together, they not only increase efficiency but also turn innovation from accidental inspiration into intentional progress and choice.

That is why design education is vital today: not merely to teach people how to use intelligent systems, but how to guide and shape them. It integrates human judgment with machine computation to ensure technology remains human-centred rather than the other way around.

Design education is not about turning everyone into product designers, but about helping people see the systems they live within and giving them the ability to reshape them. That is what design empowers us to do – turning frustration into action, and problems into possibilities.

This does not mean adding another course. It means re-examining how we teach what we already teach—engineering, policy, business, urban planning, even law. The question is whether we truly examine how systems function in reality, and how people are treated within them. If we do not teach people to think with a design perspective, they remain passive recipients of systems rather than agents capable of questioning and improving them.

A better world does not appear on its own. It must be intentionally designed. At the Singapore University of Technology and Design, where I work, “A Better World by Design” is not just a vision – it is our responsibility.

• The author is the Provost and Chief Academic & Innovation Officer at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).