The product design process manipulates information creatively. The product design process is a decision-making process. There seem to be two extremes to the design process. Most design processes seem to use both the contraint and target concepts to some degree, although, they may be biased heavily to one extreme or the other. Time will tell.
Multidisciplinary optimization is a test bed for that determination.
When we design, we design a system to satisfy a set of purposes. The typical system contains hardware, software , people, processes, purpose , organization, and behavior. The associated considerations, such as safety, become a part of the set of purposes. The set of the purposes of the system is often called the requirements . The net effect is that we must design the system holistically and we must design the system for many purposes .