As you're kind of implying, both 'intent' and 'design' are ideas that sort of revolve around the 'mind', which makes this whole discussion prone to being metaph

As you're kind of implying, both 'intent' and 'design' are ideas that sort of revolve around the 'mind', which makes this whole discussion prone to being metaphysics. If for example you think that the designer doesn't have a mind, then intent isn't something that people do but rather something that sort of happens to things. It could be the case that the designer made the can opener exclusively for right-handed people and doesn't even know about it. We can still say the can opener is intended only for right-handed people, but the origin of that intent is much more ephemeral- it's the intent of a predominantly right-handed society or whatever.