Up Close & Personal | Design United

A consequence of this entanglement is that interactions have a local and global character and consequence. Connected interactions bring home the idea that interacting with something in a particular time and place transcends it, impacting other concurrent interactions.

Many ‘things’ that designers envision and make are no longer singular but plural: things with multiple identities and material substrates. Organic living material combined with digital material, assemblages of human and artificial intelligences, blends of machines and meanings. How does this plurality challenge our perceptions of things and which tools and techniques do designers have at their disposal to craft them?   

How are designers embedded in the ecologies in which they design and intend to transform? Their mere presence is not neutral. How do they choose their position? How do they deal with situations in which they find themselves, and how do they enable change: from within or from the outside, as humble catalysts, or as an outspoken activist?

Design as a discipline is evolving and so are the collective methods, tools, and techniques that constitute it. How can design become a more mature field of research and practice, while facing increasingly complex challenges that require its methodologies to continuously and rapidly evolve? How can design collaborate with other disciplines in cross-domain problem spaces, while maintaining its own identity? And what roles are emerging for designers, to integrate different forms of knowing and to intervene in contested issues?