Technology / Software Design
03

Software Design

If architecture is the system at rest, design is the system in motion — its interactions, flow, and dynamics.

Form and behaviour

Architecture gives a system its form.
Design gives it its behaviour.

Architecture decides what the parts are and how they are arranged — the system at rest. Design decides how those parts act together once the system is running — how it moves, responds, and behaves over time. Form is what a system is; behaviour is what it does.

Design · Behaviour
The system in motion. How the parts act.
The dimensions of behaviour

We design how a system
acts — not just how
it is built.

A system's behaviour is not an accident of its code. It is designed — through the way its parts interact, the way information flows between them, and the way the whole responds and changes over time.

Behaviour
How the system acts
Structural Interactions
How parts call, depend on, and respond to one another.
Structural Flow
How information and control move through the system.
Structural Dynamics
How the system responds, adapts, and changes over time.

Design is the final stage
of structural reasoning.

If the design is cluttered, the underlying architecture has not yet been resolved.

Solutions Architecture Implementation