What concept design is

Concept design is a language and a method for designing courses of action: behaviors that fulfill specified purposes. Concept design was developed originally for designing software, in which the behaviors were executed by machines. But because concept design views behaviors abstractly, rather than in terms of particular physical or computational mechanisms, it is not specific to software. Behaviors can be executed by humans, machines or agents. This means that concept design can help in any domain in which behaviors are important. In particular, it can help with the design of software, AI agents, organizations, business processes and policies.

Three features of concept design are especially important.

• Shared language. Concepts define a language for talking about behavior that is accessible to people with different backgrounds, understandable by LLMs, and executable by machines. This language helps align all the participants in the development of a solution, human and not.
• Untangling of complexity. Concepts offer a way to decompose complex behaviors into simpler ones, with each constituent behavior defined by a concept that can be designed and realized independently of other concepts.
• Familiar patterns. Many (maybe even most) concepts used in practice are familiar patterns that arise repeatedly. By teasing design-specific details and familiar patterns apart, concept design lets you maximize reuse of ideas, design experience and implementation.