Theoretical and Practical Effects

What, I wonder, are the theoretical and practical effects of using design-speak to describe all our hopes, dreams, qualms, criticisms, and visions for change? What is gained and by whom in the process of submerging so much heterogeneity under the rubric of design? I can see how it might work as a way to draw out commonalities and build coalitions, as when Costanza-Chock writes: “Design justice as a theoretical framework recognizes the universality of design as a human activity.”35 In enrolling so many issues and experiences as design-related, maybe this could build a foundation for solidarity … but it could also sanitize and make palatable deep-seated injustices, contained within the innovative practices of design.

If, in the language of the workshop, one needs to “subvert” design, this implies that a dominant framework of design reigns – and I think one of the reasons why it reigns is that it has managed to fold any and everything under its agile wings. I am not the first to raise this concern.

In a recent set of essays, science and technology studies scholar Lee Vinsel warns that “design thinking is a kind of syphilis” and that its overblown claims are “boondoggle.”36 If it were just another fad, that would be one thing. The problem is how it envelops ideas and practices that have been around for a while, across a number of fields, while throwing in vague and unsubstantiated claims about the efficacy of design thinking for other fundamental institutions. Vinsel, for his part, is especially frustrated with the application of design thinking to “transform” higher education. He takes special issue with Stanford University d.school, whose executive director, Sarah Stein Greenberg, recently proscribed some “radical ideas for reinventing college.” Her talk starts by discussing how lecture halls, in the way they are designed, reflect certain assumptions about learning even as they shape the very possibilities for doing so.