  From a software design perspective, a clear definition of design can enhance
project success and development productivity. Even though the focus is on
software engineering, in this paper, we view the notion of design from the
wider point of view of poiesis, the field of the study of the phenomena of
creation and production of the artifacts. In poiesis, design operates through
the medium of modeling. According to several sources, there is as yet no
systematic consolidated body of knowledge that a practitioner can refer to when
designing a computer-based modeling language. Modeling languages such as UML
are practice-based and seldom underpinned with a solid theory-be it
mathematical, ontological or concomitant with language use. In this paper, we
propose adopting a recent addition to the diagrammatic languages, the thinging
machine (abbreviated TM), as a design language in the general area of Poiesis
and we exemplify TM by applying it to software engineering design. We show
intermediate steps of design that led to producing a TM model for a case study.
The case study is taken from a source where a full UML-based design was given.
Contrasting the models produced by the two methodologies points to the
viability of TM as an integrating and unifying modeling language in the design
field.
