In a Q&A with CNN’s Manav Tanneeru, Warren Berger explains the premise of his new book, Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your Life, Your Business, and Maybe Even the World.

Berger, who collaborated on the book with designer Bruce Mau, suggests that design can be applied to any challenge and design principles are accessible to anyone. Here are few Q&A excerpts from the very interesting article.

CNN: How can design change the world?

Berger: When people talk about design changing the world, it tends to sound a little grand and ridiculous, because they think of design as, in one fell swoop, changing the world and solving our problems. What design actually can do, it can solve problems on a case-by-case basis around the world. As it does that, it changes the world, because it changes the reality for people wherever the situation is happening.

If design can change water delivery in a certain part of the world, then it changes that part of the world for those people. That’s the way design changes the world.

CNN: Information is just about everywhere, it seems. How does data visualization fit into the premise of your book?

Berger: Making things clear to people is such an important part of design. And data visualization is really an important part of that, as is any kind of visual design. Really, I think what design is trying to do is to show you something so that you understand it. If it’s trying to educate you on a problem, it needs to show you the problem in a way that is compelling and that makes it very clear to you.

CNN: The striking thing about data visualization is that it seems, almost, a new way of looking at the world around us.

Berger: It’s all about making sense of what would ordinarily be overwhelming to us. There’s so much going on around us. There’s so much information that you need to have certain things arranged and highlighted so that you know what to focus on.

The people who study this, who study visualization and the way the mind absorbs information, what they say is that the brain is always looking to figure out what’s important, what should I be focusing on. And it sometimes has trouble. Your eye kind of goes all over the place, and it doesn’t know where to look or where to stop and focus.

What designers do is that they try to get you to focus where you’re supposed to focus. Now, of course, they could also do that in a bad way.