What is design?

I feel the need to define the term "design" as used by an architect.
I've seen the word thrown around a lot by various people and to me design is more than just nick-naks, pillows, and wallpaper. To me those things are purely personal. I don't think I could hire someone to pick the art for my walls or choose the color of my bedspread. We all need to decorate the interior of our homes as we see fit and for what feels good for us.
For an architect, design is the layout and feel of the interior space. If something is designed well the space won't change much with the addition of wall paper. It's the way a room flows from one to another, its the layout of the windows and the size and type of windows, the use of wood trim or the lack thereof. It's creating a space that feels either welcoming, cozy, reverent, or utilitarian, what ever the rooms needs to be to be functional.
Most houses that are mass produced these days are designed to be blank boxes that HAVE to be painted and decorated to reveal your homes personality. When an architect designs a house for you there should be less blank wall space and less that needs to be "decorated" in order for the house to feel like your own.
So when I talk about designing homes that are for families and children I am not talking about the furniture or the towels in your guest bath. I'm talking about the way the rooms relate to one another, the amount of storage that is designed into the house, and the way a space facilitates its purpose. Every room should have a feeling and if it's a plain white box with a 3x3 window on 1 or 2 walls, it has no feeling.
There are so many things that can be done with the architecture of a room that can give it character. There are arches, and soffits, wood trim, built in shelving, vaulted ceilings, beamed ceilings, tin ceilings, pointed arch windows, clerestory windows, walls of windows, concrete floors, mosaic tile floors, all in the architect's toolbox just waiting to be used.
I get so frustrated at builders building crap that does not jive with the way a family actually lives. There is no storage, no character, no ease of traffic flow, and such poorly designed bathrooms that it drives me crazy. But what is 1 woman to do? I can complain here all I want, but only I can make a difference and change the way we view the family home.