Approaching design problems differently

Instructional designers have become accustomed to decomposing their design problems in terms of general phases or steps of problem solving. This approach, however, is but one of many possible avenues to simplifying problems for solving. Design fields other than instructional design have employed approaches that break the design problem down in terms of the characteristic functions of the artifact. I suggest we think in terms of a layer theory of design architecture that leads to a method of decomposing design problems by the generic functions of the class of artifacts being designed—functional design.