Social Theory and Design Thinking

Instructors

Dr. Keerati Chenpitayaton [keerati.chenp@gmail.com]

Course Description

Through a combination of reading classic and contemporary texts, analyzing case studies and group projects, this course examines the many ways that “design”—conceived broadly to include any intentional plan, process, or product—can influence individuals’ sense of identity and possibility, structures and systems of social organization, and the expression of political power.

Learning Outcomes

• Demonstrate a basic knowledge and understanding of the ideas of design

• Critically analyze socially and politically relevant issues and themes in designs

• Be able to write a well-articulated and well-structured essay about designs

• Be able to propose a socially relevant project in designs

Course Contents

Week 1: Introduction to the Course

Week 2: The Ideas of Design 1: Wicked Problems

Week 3: The Ideas of Design 2: User-Centered Perspectives

Week 4: Things and Meanings, Objects and Identities

Week 5: Design and Democracy 1

Week 6: Design and Democracy 2

Week 7: Gender/Sexuality and Design

Week 8: City and Design 1

Week 9: City and Design 2

Week 10: Media and Design 1: Advertising and Consumer Culture

Week 11: Media and Design 2: Discursive Design

Week 12: Design and Sustainability

Week 13: Project Proposal Workshop

Week 14: Final Essay Workshop

Learning and Teaching Methods

• Lecture

• Discussion

• Presentation

• Exercises

• Written Assignments

Learning Resources

Mike Monteiro (2019), Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What Can We Do to Fix It

Ezio Manzini (2015), Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation

Bruce M. Tharp (2019), Discursive Design: Critical, Speculative, and Alternative Things

Victor Margolin & Richard Buchanan, eds. (1995), The Idea of Design: A Design Issues Reader

Mihalay Csikszentmihalyi & Eugene Rochberg-Halton (1981), The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self

Sherry Turkle (2007), Evocative Objects: Things We Think With

Donald Norman (2011), Living with Complexity

Donald Norman (2005), Emotional Design: We We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things

Donald Norman (1988), The Design of Everyday Things

Langdon Winner (1986), The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in the Age of High Technology

Nathan Shedroff (2009), Design Is The Problem: The Future of Design Must Be Sustainable

Victor Margolin (2002), The Politics of the Artificial: Essays on Design and Design Studies

William McDonough & Michael Braungart (2002), Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

Ruth Schwartz Cowan (1989), More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to Microwave

Stuart Ewen (2001), Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of Consumer Culture

James Howard Kunstler (1993), The Geography of Nowhere

Jane Jacobs (1992), The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Sara Ahmed (2019), What's the Use?: On the Uses of Use