Beyond Design: What Can Design Learn from Home Science?

Almost everything can be designed now. So perhaps we should ask a more basic question: are we designing enough, or are we understanding enough?

Design has become a powerful word. We design products, spaces, services, interfaces, experiences, even systems and policies. The field has grown well beyond aesthetics to take in human-centred design, inclusive design, service design, social innovation and design for sustainability.

That growth is necessary and exciting. But it raises a question. As design turns its attention to human beings, what happens to the disciplines that have always studied human life in its everyday context?

One of those disciplines is Home Science.

More Than the Home

For many people, Home Science still means cooking, stitching and household management. That picture undersells it badly.

At its core, Home Science studies the individual, the family, the environment and the resources that shape everyday living. Its scope covers nutrition, clothing and textiles, housing, human development, resource management, consumer studies and family relationships.

Home Science was never only about the home. It was about the person within the home, and within society.

The Home: The First Human-Centred Environment

Long before "user experience" became a job title, the home was where human needs, behaviour and resources had to be understood and balanced every day.

• Why is a kitchen organised the way it is?

• How does furniture affect movement, posture and comfort?

• How should clothing respond to climate, culture and the body?

• How does nutrition shape health and wellbeing?

• How do children interact with their surroundings?

• How are household resources allocated?

• How do new technologies change domestic routines?

• How does housing affect relationships and quality of life?

These are not just domestic questions. They are human-centred questions.

Home Science treated everyday life as a connected system. A garment was linked to comfort, climate, culture, cost and behaviour. Food was linked to nutrition, family practice and wellbeing. A house was an environment in which people grew, related to one another and lived.

That is a useful reminder for design today: understanding the context of living can matter as much as designing the object itself.

When Design Became the Language of Innovation

Design has changed how we solve problems. It has given us strong methods for observing, ideating, prototyping and testing, and it taught us to ask what people need rather than only what can be made.

But its rise has also created an unspoken hierarchy. Design is associated with innovation, creativity, technology and the future. Home Science is associated with domesticity, routine and the past.

That distinction doesn't hold up.

Many of today's challenges cannot be solved with new products or services alone. They need an understanding of behaviour, wellbeing, consumption, relationships, resources, culture and everyday constraints.

• A beautifully designed sustainable product can fail if it doesn't fit how people live.

• A high-tech kitchen can be wrong for a particular household.

• An innovative garment can go unworn if it ignores climate, culture, cost or comfort.

So the question is not only Can we design it? It is Will it work within the complexity of real life?

This is where the knowledge held by Home Science becomes essential.

From Designing for People to Understanding People

Designing for people and understanding people are not the same thing.

Design usually starts from the intention to create a solution. Home Science usually starts from understanding everyday life in all its complexity. The difference shows in the questions each one asks:

Design asks: What should we create?

Home Science asks: What do people actually need, and how will it affect their daily lives?

Design asks: How can we make the experience better?

Home Science asks: How will this fit existing behaviours, relationships and resources?

Design asks: Can we innovate?

Home Science asks: Can people afford, adopt, sustain and integrate this innovation?

Neither approach is better. Each lights up a different side of the same human problem. The real opportunity lies in bringing them together.

What Changes When AI Enters the Picture?

This conversation matters even more now.

AI can generate thousands of options in seconds: products, interiors, garments, interfaces, recipes, experiences. Producing design alternatives is no longer the constraint.

The harder question is: what should we design in the first place?

AI can generate a kitchen layout. But knowing how an elderly person, a child, a working professional or a multigenerational family actually uses that kitchen takes contextual knowledge.

AI can generate sustainable fashion concepts. But knowing why people buy, reuse, repair, discard or hold on to clothes involves behaviour, culture, economics and lived experience.

AI can generate solutions. People still have to decide whether those solutions deserve to exist.

As technology gets better at producing possibilities, the ability to understand people becomes more valuable, not less. That puts the disciplines of human development, wellbeing, consumption and everyday life back at the centre.

From Home Science to Human-Centred Futures

Home Science does not need to justify itself by becoming another design discipline. Its value lies in the different perspective it brings.

• Design contributes creativity, ideation, visualisation, prototyping and innovation.

• Home Science contributes an understanding of behaviour, wellbeing, everyday practice, resource management, consumption, and family and social context.

Together they make a more complete human-centred process:

Understand how people live → Identify genuine needs → Explore possibilities → Design solutions → Observe adoption → Measure impact → Improve everyday life

This matters for sustainability too. Sustainability is not only about designing a recyclable product. It is about consumption habits, household practices, resource use, care, repair and disposal. A product cannot become circular through material innovation alone if the behaviour around it stays linear. The science of living has a direct role in designing sustainable futures.

For institutions and policymakers, the implication is practical. Curricula, research programmes and public-sector design initiatives should create shared space where Home Science and design work together, instead of placing them at opposite ends of a hierarchy.

Perhaps We Have Been Asking the Wrong Question

The debate is often framed as: "Is Home Science still relevant in the age of design?"

A better question is: "Can design truly be human-centred if it doesn't understand the science of how humans live?"

This does not have to be a competition. It can be a dialogue between two complementary ways of understanding human life.

Design helps us imagine what could be. Home Science helps us understand what is.

Design pushes us toward better possibilities. Home Science reminds us that those possibilities must eventually enter real homes, real routines, real relationships and real lives.

In a world where AI and technology can help us design almost anything, the bigger challenge may not be learning to design more. It may be learning to understand better.

So before we ask "What should we design next?", we might return to a more basic question:

How do people actually live, and what would genuinely help them live better?

The future of human-centred design may depend less on moving beyond Home Science than on rediscovering what it has been trying to teach us all along.

About the author

Dr. Vandana Gupta is Professor and Examination Head at Parul Institute of Design, Parul University, Vadodara. She has more than 15 years of experience in teaching and research, and her career began as a Lecturer in Home Science. She holds a PhD in Textile and Apparel Design from Haryana Agricultural University, a Master's in Clothing & Textiles and a BSc in Home Science from Government Home Science College, Chandigarh, and she qualified UGC NET in Home Science. Her research covers textile design and technology, traditional textiles and crafts, sustainable and ethical production and consumption, green composites, and AI. She has previously held academic leadership roles at Chitkara Design School and Chandigarh University. She is a life member of the Home Science Association of India and the Textile Association of India.