5. About Personification

Design is concerned with complexity. There is enormous complexity in the ways things, both tangible and intangible, are parts of larger systems, influenced by culture, exist in a social context, and more. It raises the question: How can a Designer think through the complexity of…

4. About Affordances

My Design professor describes understanding affordances as the difference between going from thinking about Design to Designing. Different thinkers like to describe affordances in different ways but they tend to all describe the relationship between a subject and object. We will begin by…

7. About Practices

If one wanted to learn about the patterns of what people do and their lifestyles as Designers we need to learn about Practice Theory from sociologies. At a high level, Practice Theory is about understanding the relationship between what people do and the systems and infrastructures they exist…

0. About Being

People have described Design as problem solving, applied creativity, or a particular process. People have also tried describing it by stating what it is not, they’ll tell you that Design is not art. The truth is there is no simple answer. Simplicity does not do the true complexity behind defining…

9. About Responsibility

To wrap up our discussions on Design Thinking I want to talk about responsibility. The good intentions of a Designer are still dangerous when they fail to think responsibly. Many of the past units discussed responsibility within its context. For example, the political nature of…

3. About Reflection

I consider the practice of reflection to be central to my own identity as a Designer. It is the habit that has contributed the most to my growth as a Designer yet is one that I am still refining. Before we go any further…

1. About Things

To understand the “artificial” let’s begin with the simplest definition and before expanding upon it.

The artificial is that which is not natural

While the definition addresses how the artificial consists of the technology we create and the systems…

6. About Taste

There are many who view Design as no more than aesthetics, applied artists in a sense. There are others who describe Design as Design Thinking and a process of solving problem with nothing to do with aesthetics. There is another way to view Design, one that I would argue is more correct, that…

2. About Thinking

What makes Design Thinking any different than the thinking used in fields like computer science or math? To understand the difference we have to reference a notable figure in Design Thinking history: Christopher Alexander.

8. About Infrastructures

We discussed practices in the previous unit using the example of how cars were made possible by a change in the infrastructure within cities and across the country. For this unit let us dig more deeply into the infrastructure that we must accommodate with Design.