Things We Could Design
Things We Could Design

Author: Ron Wakkary

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2021-08-24

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0262542994

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How posthumanist design enables a world in which humans share center stage with nonhumans, with whom we are entangled. Over the past forty years, designers have privileged human values such that human-centered design is seen as progressive. Yet because all that is not human has been depleted, made extinct, or put to human use, today's design contributes to the existential threat of climate change and the ongoing extinctions of other species. In Things We Could Design, Ron Wakkary argues that human-centered design is not the answer to our problems but is itself part of the problem. Drawing on philosophy, design theory, and numerous design works, he shows the way to a relational and expansive design based on humility and cohabitation. Wakkary says that design can no longer ignore its exploitation of nonhuman species and the materials we mine for and reduce to human use. Posthumanism, he argues, enables a rethinking of design that displaces the human at the center of thought and action. Weaving together posthumanist philosophies with design, he describes what he calls things--nonhumans made by designers--and calls for a commitment to design with more than human participation. Wakkary also focuses on design as "nomadic practices"--a multiplicity of intentionalities and situated knowledges that shows design to be expansive and pluralistic. He calls his overall approach "designing-with": the practice of design in a world in which humans share center stage with nonhumans, and in which we are bound together materially, ethically, and existentially.

Pretense Design
Pretense Design

Author: Per Mollerup

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2019-04-23

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 0262351587

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How some design appears to be something that it is not—by beautifying, amusing, substituting, or deceiving. Pretense design pretends to be something that it is not. Pretense design includes all kinds of designed objects: a pair of glasses that looks like a fashion accessory rather than a medical necessity, a hotel in Las Vegas that simulates a Venetian ambience complete with canals and gondolas, boiler plates that look like steel but are vinyl. In this book, Danish designer Per Mollerup defines and describes a ubiquitous design category that until now has not had a name: designed objects with an intentional discrepancy between surface and substance, between appearance and reality. Pretense design, he shows us, is a type of material rhetoric; it is a way for physical objects to speak persuasively, most often to benefit users but sometimes to deceive them. After explaining the means and the meanings of pretense design, Mollerup describes four pretense design applications, providing a range of examples for each: beautification, amusement, substitution, and deception. Beautification, he explains, includes sunless tanning, high heels, and even sporty accessories for a family car. Amusement includes forms of irrational otherness—columns that don't hold anything up, an old building's façade that hides a new building, a new Chinese town that mimics an old European town. Substitution pretends to be a natural thing: plastic laminate is a substitute for wood, Corian a substitute for marble, and prosthetics substitute for human organs. Deception doesn't just bend the truth; it suspends it. Soldiers wear camouflage to hide; hunters use decoys to attract their prey; malware hides in a harmless program only to wreak havoc on a user's computer. With Pretense Design, Per Mollerup adds a new concept to design thinking.

Meaningful Stuff
Meaningful Stuff

Author: Jonathan Chapman

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2021-08-03

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 0262045729

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An argument for a design philosophy of better, not more. Never have we wanted, owned, and wasted so much stuff. Our consumptive path through modern life leaves a wake of social and ecological destruction--sneakers worn only once, bicycles barely even ridden, and forgotten smartphones languishing in drawers. By what perverse alchemy do our newest, coolest things so readily transform into meaningless junk? In Meaningful Stuff, Jonathan Chapman investigates why we throw away things that still work, and shows how we can design products, services, and systems that last. Obsolescence is an economically driven design decision--a plan to hasten a product's functional or psychological undesirability. Many electronic devices, for example, are intentionally impossible to dismantle for repair or recycling, their brief use-career proceeding inexorably to a landfill. A sustainable design specialist who serves as a consultant to global businesses and governmental organizations, Chapman calls for the decoupling of economic activity from mindless material consumption and shows how to do it. Chapman shares his vision for an "experience heavy, material light" design sensibility. This vital and timely new design philosophy reveals how meaning emerges from designed encounters between people and things, explores ways to increase the quality and longevity of our relationships with objects and the systems behind them, and ultimately demonstrates why design can--and must--lead the transition to a sustainable future.

The Space between Look and Read
The Space between Look and Read

Author: Susan M. Hagan

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2023-04-18

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 0262374293

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Unleashing the potential that can be found in the space between words and images. Designers have long understood that image, text, and typeface can work together to produce new meanings, creating semiotic registers impossible to achieve with image or text alone. In The Space Between Look and Read, a study of complementary meaning in design, Susan Hagan presents a framework, called Inter-play, which explains how these new meanings emerge. Inter-play is not simply an analytical tool; it is also a method for using complementary meaning to encourage critical thinking in design audiences. Drawing from cognitive psychology, art theory, discourse analysis, design, and rhetoric, Hagan breaks down the synthesis of looking and reading into a complex series of registers, which are revealed through examples of excellent design. Thus, the book is both a theoretical exploration of how designers communicate and a casebook in communication well achieved. From the physiology of vision to the limits of language, from Allan Paivio to Uwe Loesch, The Space Between Look and Read expands our understanding of complementary design and argues that by engaging audiences through multiple cognitive registers, complementary design serves as a cognitive tool, helping audiences reach new conclusions about complex problems.

Lying and Deception in Everyday Life
Lying and Deception in Everyday Life

Author: Michael Lewis

Publisher: Guilford Press

Published: 1993-02-05

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780898628944

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"I speak the truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare...."-- Montaigne "All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.'" -- Tennessee Williams Truth and deception--like good and evil--have long been viewed as diametrically opposed and unreconcilable. Yet, few people can honestly claim they never lie. In fact, deception is practiced habitually in day-to-day life--from the polite compliment that doesn't accurately relay one's true feelings, to self-deception about one's own motivations. What fuels the need for people to intricately construct lies and illusions about their own lives? If deceptions are unconscious, does it mean that we are not responsible for their consequences? Why does self-deception or the need for illusion make us feel uncomfortable? Taking into account the sheer ubiquity and ordinariness of deception, this interdisciplinary work moves away from the cut-and-dried notion of duplicity as evil and illuminates the ways in which deception can also be understood as a adaptive response to the demands of living with others. The book articulates the boundaries between unethical and adaptive deception demonstrating how some lies serve socially approved goals, while others provoke distrust and condemnation. Throughout, the volume focuses on the range of emotions--from feelings of shame, fear, or envy, to those of concern and compassion--that motivate our desire to deceive ourselves and others. Providing an interdisciplinary exploration of the widespread phenomenon of lying and deception, this volume promotes a more fully integrated understanding of how people function in their everyday lives. Case illustrations, humor and wit, concrete examples, and even a mock television sitcom script bring the ideas to life for clinical practitioners, behavioral scientists, and philosophers, and for students in these realms.

Uncertainty x Design
Uncertainty x Design

Author: Ronald A. Beghetto

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-10-31

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 1009081195

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Educating for possible futures requires viewing uncertainty as an opportunity for taking creative action in the here-and-now. This book is written for educators, researchers, parents, and anyone who wants to learn how to support young people in becoming the creative authors of their own lives.

The Pretenses of Loyalty
The Pretenses of Loyalty

Author: John Perry

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-07-06

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 0199339953

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In the face of ongoing religious conflicts and unending culture wars, what are we to make of liberalism's promise that it alone can arbitrate between church and state? In this wide-ranging study, John Perry examines the roots of our thinking on religion and politics, placing the early-modern founders of liberalism in conversation with today's theologians and political philosophers. From the story of Antigone to debates about homosexuality and bans on religious attire, it is clear that liberalism's promise to solve all theo-political conflict is a false hope. The philosophy connecting John Locke to John Rawls seeks a world free of tragic dilemmas, where there can be no Antigones. Perry rejects this as an illusion. Disputes like the culture wars cannot be adequately comprehended as border encroachments presided over by an impartial judge. Instead, theo-political conflict must be considered a contest of loyalties within each citizen and believer. Drawing on critics of Rawls ranging from Michael Sandel to Stanley Hauerwas, Perry identifies what he calls a 'turn to loyalty' by those who recognize the inadequacy of our usual thinking on the public place of religion. The Pretenses of Loyalty offers groundbreaking analysis of the overlooked early work of Locke, where liberalism's founder himself opposed toleration. Perry discovers that Locke made a turn to loyalty analogous to that of today's communitarian critics. Liberal toleration is thus more sophisticated, more theologically subtle, and ultimately more problematic than has been supposed. It demands not only governmental neutrality (as Rawls believed) but also a reworked political theology. Yet this must remain under suspicion for Christians because it places religion in the service of the state. Perry concludes by suggesting where we might turn next, looking beyond our usual boundaries to possibilities obscured by the liberalism we have inherited.