Discursive design : critical, speculative, and alternative things /

Exploring how design can be used for good-prompting self-reflection, igniting the imagination, and affecting positive social change. Good design provides solutions to problems. It improves our buildings, medical equipment, clothing, and kitchen utensils, among other objects. But what if design could...

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Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Tharp, Bruce M. (Author), Tharp, Stephanie (Author)
Format:	Book
Language:	English
Published:	Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2018]
Series:	Design thinking, design theory.
Subjects:	Design > Psychological aspects. Design.
Summary:	Exploring how design can be used for good-prompting self-reflection, igniting the imagination, and affecting positive social change. Good design provides solutions to problems. It improves our buildings, medical equipment, clothing, and kitchen utensils, among other objects. But what if design could also improve societal problems by prompting positive ideological change? In this book, Bruce and Stephanie Tharp survey recent critical design practices and propose a new, more inclusive field of socially minded practice: discursive design. While many consider good design to be unobtrusive, intuitive, invisible, and undemanding intellectually, discursive design instead targets the intellect, prompting self-reflection and igniting the imagination. Discursive design (derived from "discourse") expands the boundaries of how we can use design-how objects are, in effect, good(s) for thinking. 'Discursive Design' invites us to see objects in a new light, to understand more than their basic form and utility. Beyond the different foci of critical design, speculative design, design fiction, interrogative design, and adversarial design, Bruce and Stephanie Tharp establish a more comprehensive, unifying vision as well as innovative methods.