[grimpy]

this is a useless semantic position.

could you frame innovation problems as "design" problems? sure.

was the cotton gin framed as a "design" problem in the sense that it had some sort of epistemological lineage to the "design" discipline when it was invented? I suspect not.

the worst thing design ever did for itself was frame itself as "the" human-centered problem solving discpline. everyone is a human-centered problem-solver in the most general sense, in the same way that everything is a "design" problem in the most general sense.