A View of Design (and JMD): The French Perspective A quick glance on history of science and engineering shows that the creation and invention of technical products has held a great appeal in France. A tradition of inventiveness, engineering and entrepreneurship has developed over the past several centuries; some famous mechanical and industrial pioneers, for instance, Gustave Eiffel, Louis Renault, André Citroën, André Michelin, Marcel Schlumberger, Louis Blériot, William LeBaron Jenney are alumni of the Ecole Centrale Paris. Technical realizations like the TGV train or Concorde airplane also illustrate this tradition of design. The French research in design is anchored in the mechanical discipline. In the late 1980's, a design community was progressively constituted through the desire to merge mechanics with computer science...