Emerging Design Practices and the Future of Design

What follows is a highly partial account of a number of developments within some fields of professional design over the past few decades with a focus on Western Europe and North America. It would be foolish, and dishonest, to characterise this as anything other than a very personal list of key moments that represent some of the projects, publications and events to which I have attended which I believe are relevant to discussion at this workshop. By design practices I mean the doings and sayings of people who refer to themselves as designers and think of their work as design. I distinguish between several design professions and fields such as architecture, primarily concerned with the built environment, and engineering, both of which have strong professional institutions and legitimising processes, and the design fields that often are taught and practiced within the art-school tradition of creative inquiry, which do not have strong authorising practices to identify who is a member of the community and who may practice and who may not. Such design schools are often located outside of universities although in the UK they have been part of universities since 1992. Such design schools will often offer courses in communication and graphic design, product and industrial design, jewelry, fashion, interior design, digital and interaction design, service design and design management. Within the publications, websites and conversations among these practitioners you will find terms such as user-centred design, experience design, participatory design, transdisciplinary design, post-disciplinary design, design for sustainability, and inclusive design. Design is clearly not a unified field, or a single profession, but rather is identifiable as a heterogeneous group of practices which have been changing in the past decade and which will continue to change. Below I present a selective account of where some of the concepts related to these practices have emerged and where they have been mobilized, mostly focussing on the past decade as it pertains to this workshop in ways which will become clear. It is selective in the sense that it is shaped by my own trajectory from arts practitioner to designer of interactions to educator to researcher working in a