Designing beyond the common good : an evolutionary process between speculation and reality
- To what extent can designers direct their professional practices towards serving the common good? Design constitutes itself anew with every project. Each project is both conditioned and made possible through a unique constellation of actors, timeframes, objectives, skills, etc. which arise from both social values and political agendas. We discuss the different approaches of two selected design projects by the authors, and the respective strategies and methods. While the designers' ambition in both projects was certainly to change an existing situation into a preferred one - the first by the means of interactive user engagement, the second through the idea of semi-finished product semantics - we emphasize on the challenges and ambiguitiesTo what extent can designers direct their professional practices towards serving the common good? Design constitutes itself anew with every project. Each project is both conditioned and made possible through a unique constellation of actors, timeframes, objectives, skills, etc. which arise from both social values and political agendas. We discuss the different approaches of two selected design projects by the authors, and the respective strategies and methods. While the designers' ambition in both projects was certainly to change an existing situation into a preferred one - the first by the means of interactive user engagement, the second through the idea of semi-finished product semantics - we emphasize on the challenges and ambiguities arising from the evolutionary process of design, aiming at the common good. Eventually we conclude that design processes can serve as a tool to debate rather than create the common good.…
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| Document Type: | Conference Object |
|---|---|
| Author: | Dustin Jessen, Simon Meienberg |
| URN (citable link): | https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:wup4-opus-77494 |
| Editor(s): | Massimo Botta |
| Publisher: | University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland |
| Place of publication: | Manno |
| Year of Publication: | 2021 |
| Language: | English |
| Source Title (English): | Design as common good : framing design through pluralism and social values ; Swiss Design Network Symposium 2021, conference proceedings |
| First Page: | 157 |
| Last Page: | 173 |
| Divisions: | Nachhaltiges Produzieren und Konsumieren |
| Dewey Decimal Classification: | 600 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften |
| Licence: |  Creative Commons - CC BY-NC-ND - Namensnennung - Nicht kommerziell - Keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 International |
