Software design methods: life belt or leg iron?

Do software design methods have a future? The issue I explore in this article is concerned with the problems that the use of design methods can present. It can be expressed as a question: "Will the adoption of a design method help the software development process (the 'life belt' role), or is there significant risk that its use will lead to suboptimum solutions (the 'leg iron' role)?" (I use "method" to mean "a way of doing something", rather than using the more pretentious-sounding "methodology", which more correctly means "study of methods"). To address, but not necessarily answer, this question, I first consider what designing involves in a wider context, and then compare this with what we do, and finally consider what this might imply for the future.