Why we use same word "Design" for designing class diagrams and designing UI elements?

Question

I noted that we use design for design software, design class diagrams, design, ... I also know we use design for UI design. Why we use same word for two different purposes? Is there a way to distinguish between them?

tnks

Answer 1

Strangely enough, the word "design" is also used for building houses, carpentry, town planning and developing evil schemes to take over the world :-)

"Design" is a generic term meaning the work before actual building or doing of something.

If we had to use a different word for every type of design, we'd either end up like eskimos with the 600 words for ice, or be in a similar position as I once was when developing communication software with even more protocol layers than those contained in the OSI 7-layer model - we had to use blocks, datagrams, segments, chunks, packets, sections and doodads to avoid confusion.