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Discursive design :critical, speculative, and alternative things

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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. They not only offer social criticism but also explore how objects can, for example, be used by counselors in therapy sessions, by town councils to facilitate a pre-vote discussions, by activists seeking engagement, and by institutions and industry to better understand the values, beliefs, and attitudes of those whom they serve. Discursive design sparks new ways of thinking, and it is only through new thinking that our sociocultural futures can change.OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

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Detail Information

Series Title

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Call Number

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Publisher

: The MIT Press., 2019

Collation

1 online resource (632 pages).

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

0262349981

Classification

NONE

Content Type

text

Media Type

computer

Carrier Type

online resource

Edition

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Subject(s)

Design

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

Bruce M. Tharp and Stephanie Tharp.

Other Information

Cataloger

bonie

Source

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Validator

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Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4163/Discursive-DesignCritical-Speculative-and

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