When the work of a design team begins, across messy tables strewn with sketches and coffee cups, amid the building and the talking, there’s a challenge before us, and there are lots of roads we could take to get there. We have practical and aesthetic choices to make. Which way is the best way to make an object that functions but one that also counts, one that can elicit a story bigger than its parts? How will the object work, but also: Why will it matter? And where shall we begin? Design professionals, drawing on several fields of expertise, say that design should address a mix of what historian John Heskett summarizes as “utility and significance.” On the surface, that’s an effectively succinct and even commonsense way of saying that the stuff in our everyday lives should (1) exhibit a workhorse pragmatism that’s (2) simultaneously packed with expressive qualities. But consider: this dual job that design has to do is a mammoth task! How do you make a charismatic thing — not just a thing that works, but a thing that has elegant presence or pleasure in its handling, some kind of draw, a thing that pulls you in or makes you think while also being handy, modest, even garden-variety in its value? This combination is what makes design so interesting to so many people. It’s not just the quest for a better mousetrap, and it’s not just a free-form experiment, and it’s not just a slick new color scheme for a mobile phone case or a toaster oven. Design calls for all of those things together: trade-offs and opportunities for mixing utility and significance. It’s a mix that’s hard to get right.