Design has long been a practice of smoothing away the rough edges of the world. Designers continue to play a role in streamlining products, optimizing processes, improving efficiency within organizations, automating user experiences, making interfaces more “user friendly” or making services and systems more seamless. But, in the present moment, the world is kicking back. 

Whether through lived experiences with technological glitches, homes full of networked devices that fail to understand global accents, alienating and dehumanizing work cultures in organizations, the breakdown of health systems during Covid-19, and the ongoing and intensifying climate crises, it is not difficult to conclude that a great deal of uncertainty, even chaos, characterizes the present moment. It makes no sense to continue using the same methods, approaches and processes to solve problems as those that created this state of affairs in the first place.