Videogames are indeed design: They're sophisticated virtual machines that echo the mechanical systems inside cars.

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.

As a genre, videogames take our minds on journeys, and we can control and experience them much more interactively than passively - especially when they are well-designed.

The design of many of these systems is really based on how adults think, and the machines are complicated and children take years learning how to use them.

Anyone with a computer and a design program can create a page layout. But unless you're trained in design, it won't look very good and it won't communicate very well.

In the '70s and '80s there was an attempt in K-12 to teach science through art or art through science. The challenge today is how do you build the ethos of art and design into the academy of science.